Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (review)

136 Cast Away (2000), starring Tom Hanks, to show alternative possible solutions to challenges Crusoe faces in the novel. ‘‘Classroom Contexts for Robinson Crusoe,’’ the last, and to me the weakest , section of the collection, comprises essays that for the most part emphasize pedagogy by placing Crusoe in very broad contexts. Christina Sassi-Lehner (‘‘Teaching Robinson Crusoe in the Introduction to Literature Course’’) introduces her students, most of whom have little experience in literary analysis, to Crusoe by relating it to their knowledge of self-help books, romances, and thrillers . Once she has familiarized the unfamiliar , she uses Crusoe to introduce a range of literary techniques and themes. To teach her students how to read closely , Anne Chandler (‘‘‘Great Labour and Difficulty’: Robinson Crusoe as Introduction to Literary Analysis’’) gives them assignments intended to make them see the work involved in reading the novel as akin to the work Crusoe faced in learning to ‘‘read’’ the island. In ‘‘From Beowulf to Virginia Woolf: Is There Room for Robinson Crusoe in an English Literature Survey Course?’’ Carl Fisher suggests teaching Robinson Crusoe in a British literature survey course as a transitional text. Similarly, Mr. Novak’s ‘‘Teaching Robinson Crusoe in a Survey of the Novel Course’’ discusses the ways Robinson Crusoe’s place in literary studies has changed during the last half century. With ‘‘Robinson Crusoe and Children’s Literature ,’’ Anne Lundin offers a course in children’s Robinsonades, many of which include heroines. Cheryl Nixon’s ‘‘Accounting for the Self: Teaching Robinson Crusoe at a Business School,’’ the strongest piece in the final section due to its narrower focus, concludes the collection by demonstrating the ways Crusoe exemplifies the concept of homo economicus. Approaches to Teaching Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe should serve as a vade mecum for anyone teaching Robinson Crusoe at any academic level. Vincent Carretta University of Maryland DANIEL DEFOE. Moll Flanders, ed. Paul A. Scanlon. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2005. Pp. 437. $9.95. The author (who is not Mr. Scanlon) of the back-cover blurb on this new edition of Moll Flanders proclaims that ‘‘instructors are at last well-equipped to teach Defoe’s challenging and enigmatic novel,’’ suggesting that we were not up to the job before. The truth of this statement depends on a critical assumption that is probably shared by Mr. Scanlon: that literary works are the products of particular social environments, and that understanding the environment is essential to appreciating the works themselves . Like other Broadview editions, this text is accompanied by almost a hundred pages—about a quarter of the book, apart from front and back matter —of supplementary readings, in three categories: ‘‘Related Writings by Defoe ’’; ‘‘Related Works by Other Authors ’’; and ‘‘Defoe and Moll Flanders: Eighteenth-Century Views.’’ Unlike the Norton edition, it does not include commentaries by nineteenth- and twentiethcentury critics. It is an edition for instructors for whom literature is a cultural artifact that can best be revealed by excavating its foundations. Instructors who agree with Mr. Scanlon ’s precept from the Introduction, that ‘‘Defoe’s conception of this novel was definitely shaped by the conventions of 137 criminal biography,’’ will want their students to read the selections from Hell Upon Earth, a contemporary (1703) account of Newgate; the account of the execution of George Skelthorpe (1709), written by Paul Lorrain, the Ordinary of Newgate; and the biographies of Moll Hawkins, Anne Holland, and Mary Carleton from Alexander Smith’s collection (1714). Those who agree that literary excellence grows out of an apprenticeship in journalism will find the selections from Defoe’s Essay Upon Projects, the Review, and Applebee’s Journal of interest. Those who think that a writer is defined dialectically by his contemporaries will call in the testimony of Swift, Pope, Gay, Savage, Gildon, and others, most of whom would happily have rid themselves of Defoe the shortest way. Those, however, who think a literary work great because it has somehow escaped the limitations of its own time may be puzzled about how to use this supplementary material. In his choice of a copy text, Mr. Scanlon follows David Blewett’s decision to base his Penguin edition (1989) on the first (1722) edition, corrected by the...