Format your response according to MLA guidelines for margins, spacing, name, date, etc., headers, etc. as outlined on my "simple stuff" page. Works cited pages are unnecessary for critical responses, although do still follow the MLA conventions for documenting quotations as explained on my quotations page.

1.1 Due Saturday, January 24th: choose one, do not address both:  
a) Discuss the most striking formal, technical features that "date" Moll Flanders. That is, focusing on the first half of the novel, and aside from matters of content and fundamental differences in language between 18th-century English and our American English today, how is Moll Flanders different from most contemporary fiction?  Include at least three quotations to illustrate your observations.

b) Analyze Defoe's portrayal of a convincingly credible world peopled by believable characters in the first half of the book. Include at least three quotations to illustrate your claims.

1.2 Due Saturday, January 24th: address one, not both:
a) Some fiction is concerned primarily with external description of characters, places, events, etc. (action and adventure novels, for instance); at the other extreme is fiction dealing more exclusively with the internal psychology of the main character(s). Is Moll Flanders more internal or external in orientation? Quote three or more passages from the book's second half to support your claims.

b) Consider Moll's resolution at the end of the novel, that she and her husband will spend the rest of their lives in "Sincere Penitence, for the wicked Lives we have lived." Do you believe Moll's contrition is genuine? Why, or why not?  Further, does Defoe seem ultimately more concerned with moral instruction truly, or with tantalizing sensationalism that may help book sales?  Explain.