One important reason for the attraction of Robinson Crusoe is that the story introduced in the book is impossible to happen in realistic lives, however, with the manipulation by the author, it gives readers the sense of reality. And most story-listeners, just like Robinson, have the contradictory character, the desire to survive and improve life in all kinds of adversities, and more or less, the courage and means to make the desire come true. In other words, there is always a Robinson in people’s heart.源-自/751+文,论`文'网]www.751com.cn
1.2 Literary Review
It is Robinson Crusoe’s strong power—or it can be said magic—that attracts scholars to study about this book generation by generation. From the perspective of literature,the interpretation of Robinson Crusoe is always done through analyzing the characters or western ideas. For example, Han thinks the character of Robinson Crusoe is so vivid that deeply engraved in people's mind, which causes this figure image to become a classical one. So, Han analyzed the multiple personality of Robinson Crusoe. Zhou interpreted Friday’s national and cultural identity lost from the view of colonial discourse under the principle of binary opposition. Also, Robinson Crusoe is thought to be closely related to utopianism in western culture. Thus, Niu regards Robinson Crusoe as the key part both in the intellectual and literature history of western utopianism. These are interpretations under the traditional perspective of literature.
With the development of the times, the phenomenon of multi-disciplinary integration is more and more noticeable. In this context, the interdisciplinary literary interpretation arises. In terms of Robinson Crusoe,many new perspectives also have shown, like the perspective of ecology, the perspective of sociology and so on. And this thesis will reinterpret Robinson Crusoe under a totally new perspective—the perspective of communications.
Actually, with the vigorous development of the media business and the expansion of communication discipline, works to interpret social phenomenon and films and television programs under the perspective of communications have developed maturely. For example, Li did a research to explain the clash of civilization by using communication theories. And Wang did the research of Nanjing! Nanjing! under the perspective of communications. However, the trials of using this perspective to interpret literary works are still few.
However, just as stated above, the reason why Robinson Crusoe is so attractive is that the book is quite in correspondence with readers’ mentality, which conforms to a theory in Audience Analysis in communication discipline. Besides, the time that Robinson Crusoe first published and succeeded in the Great Britain was a golden age for the development of communication technologies. Meanwhile, in terms of the content of this book, Robinson’s mental activities during his life in the islet quite fit into some principles of intra-personal communication while the communications between Robinson and Friday (after Robinson’s taking back of Friday) are fit into principles of personal communication. That is to say the author Daniel Defoe put the fictional content correspond to scientific principles consciously or unconsciously, which resulted the feeling to readers that an unrealistic story is real. Therefore, in view of the close relationship between Robinson Crusoe and communications, this thesis will interpret Robinson Crusoe from the environment that the book in and content these two macroscopical views and audience analysis, environment analysis and content analysis three aspects under the perspective of communications.