Flashcards on Literature, Travel, and Empire
Literature, Travel, and Empire: An SEO Student Guide
Tap to flip · Swipe to navigate
Colonialism and Robinson Crusoe
16 cards
Card 1
Question: How does Crusoe's self-imagining reflect early eighteenth-century English culture?
Answer: Crusoe's grandiose self-image mirrors a growing national pride from 1688 onward as England expanded overseas and linked national prominence to colonia
Card 2
Question: When did imperialism begin to influence English national identity, according to the content?
Answer: Imperialism began to influence English national identity as early as the mid-seventeenth century and continued through the eighteenth century.
Card 3
Question: How does Robinson Crusoe address British insecurities about colonial competition?
Answer: The novel defuses insecurities by portraying Crusoe as an exceptional English subject whose mastery of self and circumstance legitimizes English colon
Card 4
Question: Summarize the chain of mastery described in the presentation that underpins Crusoe's authority.
Answer: Master yourself → master your destiny → master others → master economic contingencies of life.
Card 5
Question: What role does Friday play in relation to Crusoe's authority?
Answer: Friday mirrors Crusoe's character while reinforcing Crusoe's authority, serving as a cultural inferior who validates Crusoe's power.
Card 6
Question: What is a 'robinsonade' and how did it relate to Robinson Crusoe?
Answer: A robinsonade is an imitation or extension of Defoe's novel that emerged in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, allowing metropolitan reader
Card 7
Question: How did Rousseau and Thomas Spence differently interpret the island theme inspired by Crusoe?
Answer: Rousseau praised the novel in Émile as a secular natural-education tale; Thomas Spence imagined the island as 'Crusonia,' a utopia with communal prope
Card 8
Question: How does Swiss Family Robinson reinterpret the Robinsonade theme?
Answer: Swiss Family Robinson presents the island as a Rousseauian university for a family, teaching Christian morals through encounters with exotic geography
Card 9
Question: What evidence is given that Robinson Crusoe influenced colonial readers?
Answer: Defoe’s novel was repeatedly republished; Charles Brockden Brown recounted reading it with rapture as a child and later viewing it as a depiction of s
Card 10
Question: How does the colonial setting in Robinson Crusoe enable an ordinary Englishman to become powerful?
Answer: The colonial world offers a context where a common Englishman can, in limited ways, become master, king, or emperor—achieving extraordinary power unav