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бесплатно рефератыDaniel Defoe and His Novel Robinson Crusoe

Studying English literature and acquaintance with it begins with the appearance of the first modern languages. Without getting acquaintance the students with this period of development of English a teacher will not be able to demonstrate from what sources the English words which we are learning nowadays have appeared. The teacher as a “Dawn of Modern English” should characterize this period of time. The studied period in teaching process must be observed through the history of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic languages. Here a teacher is recommended to devote one language to the first Anglo-Saxon epic “Beowulf” (700's) - the elegiac history of the last hero of a dying Germanic people. A brief revision of the later epics is also strongly recommended: “Dream of the Rood”, Widsith” (the oldest Anglo-Saxon fragment), “Deor”, the “Wanderer”, and “Seafarer”. The educational aspect of this period concludes the idea of the first written sources of the literature of the British Isles. Teacher should also underline that the peculiarity of this literature is that it has no concrete author: all this epic novels are of collected folk authorship, based on the life experience of the people and the aural retelling from fathers to sons.

The next literary milestone of English, which must be observed and taught by teachers, is the period of 1300's - the period of rediscovering of the English literature from its Norman influence. Teacher should underline for his students that the language of this period was far cry from the Anglo-Saxon tongue spoken before 1066. It was greatly expanded and strengthened by the addition of thousands of new words from the Norman French; - especially abstract words from intellectual use. Yet, it was not French at all; its grammar and its homely everyday words were of German origin. Teaching aspect of this period is that this combination we call the Middle English, but it is recognizable as the basis for the language we speak today. This period should be taught on the basis of the works as “the Owl and the Nightingale”, “Ancren Riwle” (guide for women on meditation) and others. But the most significant milestone, which ought to be mentioned when teaching the English literature, is the preparation of the first Bible in English by John Wicliffe's.

The third milestone of the English literature, which is to be analyzed when teaching English, is pre-Renaissance time. This epoch is the epoch of Geoffrey Chaucer - the founder of the English poetry. The most famous work of him is “Canterbury Tales” - a series of stories linked together by their story-teller. Chaucer' work is rather poetry than prose, however, and his story-tellers are still recognizable through 600 years later. That is why teaching English is impossible without thorough studying of “Canterbury Tales”.

The next period in the history of the English literature which should be taught is the literature of 1500's. In this period the first lyrics appeared: John Scelton wrote it. Here created Sir Thomas Wyatt. A greater writer still was William Tyndale. His translations of the Bible, made under a ban, greatly influenced the later King James's version (1611). The statesman who most wanted Tyndale silenced and yet the leading humanists of his age, Sir Thomas More, like his friend Erasmus, unable to break to Catholicism, turned pay for his consciousness. Thomas More's circle, which included John Colet, Thomas Lynacre, Desiderius Erasmus and Sir Thomas Elyot, was responsible for important translations from Greek, Latin, and Italian. So the teaching of this period must be looked through the history of translation. Sir Thomas More rested in literary history for his» Utopia” non-existing land where everything is good and prosperous. Amongst the other educationally valued authors of that period were Christopher Marlowe and Sir Francis Bacon, Edmund Spencer and Philip Sydney. This period is also significant for studying because of the reason that it was the last period before Shakespeare. All that existed referred to pre-Shakespearean language.

No one doubts that Shakespeare is the most mysterious figure in the world medieval literature. Born in 1594, he stood alone amongst the English writers. The greatest poet and dramatist, Shakespeare left nothing similar to the database of his life. Throughout Shakespeare worked with the simplest of principles, writing at the mind's own speed, using everything he read, but reworking it first, and depending for character upon the defining trait of flaw. Having written 37 plays and more than 250 sonnets and little poems, Shakespeare up to nowadays rested misunderstood and the argues around his works and his authorship do not become calmer. However, it was Shakespearean language, on the basis of which we teach our students literary English.

The literature of the XVII century has its “i-dots” on John Milton - the author of the poem “Lycidas”. After becoming blind, he wrote one of the most English epic - “Paradise Lost” which retold the story of Adam and Eve and of their temptation by the Satan and fall from God's favor. The story of Satan's rebellion can be read in the life of the actual rebellion in which Milton had taken part. In fact, generations of readers have found Satan the most attractive and sympathetic character in the great poem. The educational value for what it is worth teaching is that it was the first call to the traditional preferences of the society.

The 1670's were the beginning point in the appearing of the new genre in literature - entertaining novel. And the founder of this was Daniel Defoe - a journalist who used to be both the King's favorite and hostile. In his “Robinson Crusoe”, “Moll Flanders”, and “The Journal of the Plague Year” he turned, as many a journalist before and since, to simulated facts, without bothering to inform the public of its technique. The educational value of Defoe's works is that his racy and essentially nonliterary efforts stand one of the major building blocks of the English novel. “Robinson Crusoe” was seemingly the most read book since 1700's up to nowadays. For learning process it is important by the following reason: having written in the plain literary English, it affords to a foreign learner to cognate the English language through entertained reading. This book is also important for us for its being first adventure novel.

The same period is also interesting from the educational viewpoint for the first appearing the magazine language of English. The founders of it were Joseph Addison with his “Tatler” and Richard Steel with his “Spectator”.

The appearance of the first dictionaries is also the education peculiarity of 1770's. Samuel Johnson edited the first English dictionary. Among the other important literary figures significant for modern teaching process was Alexander Pope - the most admired poet of 1700's with his own sense of the words. Many English poets tried to imitate Pope's language but couldn't. Among the writers the most significant after Defoe was Jonathan Swift. His educational value was in foundation of the English satire. According to the opinions of modern critics, Swift is the best satirist of England now and then. В.Г. Белинский Робинзон Крузо. Собр.соч. в 45тт. Т.44 стр.478-483

The second half of the 1700's is also noticeable for teaching as its poetic significance The first near Romantic, the poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), spoke as a voice of reviving nationalism (Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, 1786). Burns drew from the Scots' traditions and folklore and proved that a Scot need no longer be Anglicized to write great poetry in English. The educational value of Burns is in enlarging the English language with the words of Scotch origin. The second significant poet, whose “Songs of Innocence” are worth teaching the students is William Blake. The works of William Blake (1757-1827), whose Songs of Innocence appeared in 1789, contained a special kind of visionary indepen-dence. Its roots were partly in a tradition of religious mysticism of a deeply individual kind. Blake's later Prophetic Books (1793-1804) anticipated the mixture of politics, religion, and individualism that make up much of modern literature. His "high" lyric style had not been heard in England since the age of Milton. But Blake remained all but unheard in his lifetime. And now we understand that Blake's poetry is the Example of “pure English” we learn at schools. So that is why his works can serve as an example of literary English which is to be taught by teachers.

The next period of literature which is to be basic for teaching English is the period of Romanticism and its best English representatives - Wordsworth and Coleridge. The real beginning of English Romanticism was the publication of the Lyri-cal Ballads (1798) by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) World Book Encyclopedia Vol 4 New York 1993 pp.146-148 and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) ”Robinson Crusoe and his adventure“ М. Prosveshcheniye 1973 pp.59,64. We must teach students to it because Wordsworth, the greatest poet of the age, combined a Miltonic dignity with the plain speech and direct feeling of the English country folk among whom he had grown up. Coleridge's more polite and more inhibited poems often provided the trigger to Wordsworth's deeper, but slower response and, what is more important, his works were written on simply understood language, which students can use for improving lexical skills. The other famous poet whose works must be studied is George Gordon (Lord) Byron (1738-1824), whose popularity, political involvement, and frequent lapses of taste made him the chief literary celebrity of his day, is perhaps best known for his Don Juan (1819-1824), a brilliant comic assertion of wit, sex-uality, and physical self-confidence. Byron showed in The Vision of Judgment (1822 Z. N. Shuravskaya About Daniel Defoe and his novel “Robinson Crusoe” L. Art Literature Publishing House. 1974 pp.56-59) and a half-dozen lyrics even more concentrated instances of a prodigious and prodigal talent. John Keats, the other romantic poet, (1795-1821) is probably the best loved lyric poet in the language. The great poems of the end of his life (among them, "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "To Autumn," and "La Belle Dame sans Merci") show a faith in the imagination far in advance of the symbolists. His best poems, along with those of Wordsworth, Byron, and Blake are with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope the center of English literary achievement. So learning English without learning his works seems as impossible.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) is a possible addition to the other four Romantic masters. Other writers continue to rediscover him, admiring his heroic intellectual conceptions and his mastery of propulsive rhythmic force.

Almost as swiftly as the Romantic movement began, it ended. With the death of Keats, the high lyric style disappeared. Lesser writers were not of the same inspiration, and the succeeding generation seemed to hear other voices, abandoning the lyric or writing it without conviction.

The 1800's became a new age of novelists' approaching. Jane Austen wrote three of her novels in the 1790's but published only after 1810 (Pride and Prejudice, 1813; Mansfield Park, 1814; Emma, 1816). She is meaningful for teaching for she went to Keats's imaginative church of the open heart but sat at the pew of keen observation and careful structure, and her language was the same as beautiful as Keats's but written in prose.

Sir Walter Scott, a Scotsman, be-came a model for intelligent commercial success all over Europe (Waverley, 1814; Ivanhoe, 1820). Mary Shelley Frankenstein, 1818) and Maria Edge-worth (Castle Rackrent, 1800) extended the daring of women in literature to the portrayal of psychological and social nightmares. In mid-century, an extraordinary trio, Charlotte and Emily Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell, widened this range still further. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) also became a major English novelist (The Mill on the Floss, I860; Middlemarch, 1871-1872).

There were to be no English moral giants on the scale of the great French and Russian novelists. Charles Dickens, however (The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, 1836-1837; David Copperfield, 1850; Bleak House, 1853; Our Mutual Friend, 1865; among many others), attained to something at least as great. He wrote, like the early Wordsworth, with the courage of the decent lower middle class, though of city rather than country folk. We teach it for every writer in Europe learned from his broad sympathies, skillful characterizations, and shrewd sense of pace. If he lacked philosophic vision, he made up for it with a stage nearly as broad and all-encompassing as Shakespeare's.

William Makepeace Thackeray, Dickens' contemporary, continued the tradition of 18th-century social satire with a new vitality and a deft hand at well turned and swift moving prose (Vanity Fair, 1848; Henry Esmond, 1852).

As the century progressed, English writers of fiction who worked at a very high level and should be taught include George Meredith (The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 1859), Anthony Trollope (the "Barsetshire" novels, 1855-1867), Samuel Butler (The Way of All Flesh, 1903), and the remarkable Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 1891; Jude the Obscure, 1896), also recognized as among the most enduring of English poets.

Next noticeable period for teaching was the period of Victorian poetry which underwent a difficult time after the death of Keats. The large voices among the Victorians belonged to Alfred Tennyson (Poems, 1832; In Memoriam, 1851; Idylls of the King, 1859-1885) and Robert Browning (Men and Women, 1855; The Ring and the Book, 1868). Both were so preoccupied with the responsibilities of national greatness that their considerable gifts were ultimately betrayed. Educational value of them is that Tennyson's saving grace is his occasional flight of sober lyric; Browning's is his delight in the sheer variety of life's ironies.

Other interesting, intelligent poets seemed unable to find a sense of identity. They include Matthew Arnold and the gifted friend, whose premature elegy he was to write,-Arthur Hugh Clough; and the "Pre-Raphaelites," a group seeking a supposed medieval spiritual unity; the group included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Coventry Patmore. Even a few of great promise seemed somehow blocked from fully realizing their gifts. These include Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1850) and Christina Rossetti (Goblin Market, 1862 ;) Thus these poets had no any meaningful educational significance.

Thus we can draw the following conclusions:

· Teaching English is impossible without treating to the literary sources of this beautiful language.

· Every period of the English literature had its significant language peculiarities which must be observed when learning English.

· One who knows the English literature well owes the conversation partners of any rank and position!

Bibliography:

1. Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe McMillan Publishers 1997 pp.34-39, 45-49, 59-63, 128, 214-226

2. ”Robinson Crusoe and his adventure“ М. Prosveshcheniye 1973 pp.59,64, 78-79

3. M. A. Shishmoreva About the translation of “Robinson Crusoe” M. “Knowledge” 1987 pp.55-58, 99, 114

4. Z. N. Shuravskaya About Daniel Defoe and his novel “Robinson Crusoe” L. Art Literature Publishing House. 1974 pp.56-59

5. J.Priestley Novel School in Britain Washington University Press W.2002 pp.17-46

6.Readings on the English Literature M. High School 1978 pp.161-165

7. History of the English Literature M. Prosveshcheniye 1971 pp.204-212

8. G.H.Healey The history of writing of “Robinson Crusoe” London University Press London 2001 pp.329-330

9. I.Turgenev Collection of works in 27 volumes Vol.26 pp.311-312

10. В.Г. Белинский Робинзон Крузо. Собр.соч. в 45тт. Т.44 стр.478-483

11. П.А.Корсаков Л.Н.Толстой о Даниэле Дефо М. Просвещение 1967 стр.63

12. П. Кончаловский

Among many publish and bad translations we may mansion. P. A. Korsakov and P. Konchalovsky's translation.

13. Даниэль Дефо Робинзон Крузо М. ИХЛ 1986 стр. 45-46, 90-93, 101-107, 27б, 298

14. World Book Encyclopedia Vol 4 New York 1993 pp.146-148

15. Internet: www.online-literature.com/defoe./ Extensive Biography of Daniel Defoe and a searchable collection of works.pmp. pp.1-9

16. Internet:http://www.academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_18c/

defoe/ Daniel Defoe in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature.txt pp.3-7

17. Internet: http//www.cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/defoe. / Texts of classic literature, drama, and poetry together with detailed literature study guides.html pp.45-47.

18. Internet: http//www.bibliomania.com/0/0/17/31/frameset./ The selected works of Daniel Defoe .htm pp.14-15

19. Internet: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/defoe.htm / Daniel Defoe:A depth look at the author's life and his impact on the world of literature.htm pp.2-9

20. Internet: http ://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jdefoe.htm/Short biography of Daniel Defoe.html pp. 4-8

21. Internet: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Defoe/ The Letters of Daniel Defoe edited by GH Healey.htm. pp. 45-49

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