目的及意义

Robinson Crusoe is an adventure novel written by Daniel Defoe who is called “the Father of the English fiction”. The novel is based on real life of a Scottish sailor with many incidents of the writer’s own imagination. The story is mainly about Robinson's several voyages and his survival on a desert island where Robinson saves a captive, names him Friday and tames him. This novel is considered as “18th century testament to the superiority of rational civilization over nature and savagery”, “puritan spiritual autobiography” and “a celebration of hard work and faith” .

Robinson Crusoe has many revisions, imitations, translations and English editions. Moreover, it has been adapted into films many times. This paper makes a comparison between the novel and its adapted film directed by George Miller and Rod Hardy and released in 1997 from the perspective of cross-cultural communication. It focuses on a comparative analysis of the cultural colonialism presented in the novel and film and the attitudes of Robinson Crusoe and Friday towards colonialism. In the novel, Robinson is proud, even a little arrogant, of his religion. He thinks highly of his being a civilized man, especially being a White man. He thinks his religion is the best and domesticates Friday by instilling ideology. Friday is tame as expected. However, in the film, Robinson at first thinks his religion is the only true path but later realizes he is wrong. Any religion, if not hurts others, has reasons to exist. What’s more, the paper combines the analysis results with the attitudes a country should have in cross-cultural communication. Nowadays, many countries lay emphasis on cultural exports. It is hard and complicated to say whether it is good or not, correct or not, but there is no doubt that every country should enhance its cultural power and cultural confidence to prevent cultural assimilation. As is known to all, more and more opportunities are obtained for a country to communicate with others with the development of technology and globalization. It is of great importance to respect cultural diversity and treat others’ culture equally.

国内外的研究现状分析

After consulting a lot of literature review, I found that some studies were purely about colonialism embodied in the book such as zhang Guoping’s Realism and Colonialism in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, some were about the significance of the existence of personas such as Wang Chunping’s An Interpretation of the Existent Significance of Friday in Robinson Crusoe, some were about the film adaptation, concentrating on the shooting skills, such as Zhao Juntao’s A Study on the Literature and Film Adaptation of Robinson Crusoe, and others were about the comparative analysis of two novels such as Inhwan Choi’s Two Sides of Colonialism-A Comparative Study of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and A Tour of the Whol Island of Great Britain. As a matter of fact, few studies attach great importance to the comparative analysis of the novel and its adapted film especially from the perspective of cross-cultural communication, and this paper makes up for it.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

基本内容

This paper includes five chapters. The first chapter is about introduction, showing the study background, the purpose and significance of the paper and the organization of the paper. Chapter two is about literature review, which is divided into three parts. They are previous study on cross-cultural communication, previous study on Robinson Crusoe and previous study on colonialism. Chapter Three concentrates on comparative analysis of cultural colonialism in the novel and film, which is about languages, religions and social customs. The forth chapter focuses on the attitudes towards cultural colonialism, consisting of Robinson’s attitudes in the novel and film, and Friday’s attitudes in the novel and film. The last chapter is about conclusion, which includes the summary and the enlightenment to culture.

目标

This paper makes a comparative analysis of the novel Robinson Crusoe and its adapted film directed by George Miller and Rod Hardy. It concentrates on the comparative analysis of the cultural colonialism presented in the novel and film and the attitudes of Robinson Crusoe and Friday towards colonialism, and aims to combine the analysis results with the attitudes we should have in cross-cultural communication.

拟采用的技术方案及措施