Text: Foe
Task: writing an Argumentative text

OBJECTIVES
Cultural: Improving comperative and intertextual skills
Intertextual: Finding connections with other literary works
Linguistic: Improving writing skills

I quadrimestre

There are a lots differences between Foe and the classical version of Robinson Crusoe. First of all the title that is completely different, but also the message that the title wants to express to the reader should be considered.

Foe is a title that works very well, as a matter of fact it sticks better into the mind, because it is short and rather unusual. The meaning of foe is clear and simple, but fist of all it belongs to literally sphere. Nobody knows who that enemy refers to . So "Foe" creates expectations in the reader, and what about the classical version of Robinson Crusoe?

We can consider the title, that it is very long: "Robinson Crusoe: Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures". In this case the title can just create the expectation of an incredible adventure. Nowadays such title couldn't work well, but at that time when it was published it was a great choice.

Furthermore there is a structure that we have to consider. The field of action of the original version is just the island, instead in "Foe" is arranged differently:

• The novel begins with Susan's shipwreck, who arrives tired and grateful on an unknown island.
• Susan discovers that she is not alone on the island and she knows Robinson Cruoso and his servant Friday. Here a strange relationship between Susan and Cruso begins, where Susan becomes Cruso's prisoner or something like that.
• Susan and Friday go back to England. She asks a writer, called Foe to write about her story. There is just a mail contact between them.
• In the last sequence there is not an end, because there is a process of "getting behind", that links the end with the beginning.

The ideal readers of the classical version of Robinson Cruso are the middle class, but in the novel there are not implicit message that the reader has to understand. Perhaps the readers of that time were not ready to read between the lines, they just want to identify with Crusoe . "Foe" on the contrary is directed to specific readers: intelligent readers, who can read between lines. "Foe" is a post-modern novel, and so it recalls the great novel like James Joyce's Ulysses.