The Many Faces of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe: Examining the Crusoe Myth in Film and on Television

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

The Many Faces of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe: Examining the Crusoe Myth in Film and on Television THE MANY FACES OF DANIEL DEFOE'S ROBINSON CRUSOE: EXAMINING THE CRUSOE MYTH IN FILM AND ON TELEVISION A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy by SOPHIA NIKOLEISHVILI Dr. Haskell Hinnant, Dissertation Supervisor DECEMBER 2007 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled THE MANY FACES OF DANIEL DEFOE’S ROBINSON CRUSOE: EXAMINING THE CRUSOE MYTH IN FILM AND ON TELEVISION presented by Sophia Nikoleishvili, a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Haskell Hinnant Professor George Justice Professor Devoney Looser Professor Catherine Parke Professor Patricia Crown ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of my adviser, Dr. Haskell Hinnant, to whom I would like to express the deepest gratitude. His continual guidance and persistent help have been greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank the members of my committee, Dr. Catherine Parke, Dr. George Justice, Dr. Devoney Looser, and Dr. Patricia Crown for their direction, support, and patience, and for their confidence in me. Their recommendations and suggestions have been invaluable. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...................................................................................................ii INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 Novel to Film Problematic....................................................................................20 2 Transferring Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe into Film......................................43 3 A Voice of Friday: Jack Gold's Man Friday..........................................................88 4 Simplifying the Crusoe Myth: Adapting Robinson Crusoe for Children.............105 5 Romanticizing the Crusoe Myth..........................................................................127 6 Science Fiction Robinsonade...............................................................................147 7 Twenty-First Century Crusoes and Their Audiences...........................................164 8 Making the Crusoe story a "Reality" Story..........................................................202 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................225 APPENDIX..........................................................................................................................229 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................................232 VITA.....................................................................................................................................245 iii INTRODUCTION “We do not usually think of Robinson Crusoe as a novel. Defoe’s first full-length work of fiction seems to fall more naturally into place with Faust, Don Juan, and Don Quixote, the great myths of our civilization.” Ian Watt. “Robinson Crusoe as a Myth.” When my friends and students hear that my dissertation studies the cinematic versions of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, their immediate reply is that they are familiar with the Crusoe story. When I ask whether they have read the book, however, most admit that they have not. Yet, all of them know who Robinson Crusoe is. Everyone recalls that he is a castaway, shipwrecked and marooned on a deserted island for many years. As for the rest of the story, each has a different version of it. Some remember Man Friday – “Crusoe’s faithful slave;” others mention cannibals and Crusoe’s crusade with them; and there are those who think of Friday as Crusoe’s female companion, surprised to find out that in the book, the Friday figure is, in fact, a man, not a woman. It is obvious that what my friends and students know about Robinson Crusoe comes from the fame Crusoe’s character has maintained throughout years. Their recollections are based not on the original version of Defoe’s novel, but rather on its numerous abridgments and editions, or on various cinematic adaptations and retelling of the Crusoe story. Robinson Crusoe has undoubtedly attained the status of a myth, and continues to live outside its original context, time and culture. Scholars frequently refer to “the Crusoe myth,” (Spaas 98), “the Crusoe phenomenon” (James 1). Margaret Drabble states that 1 Defoe “created one of the most familiar and resonant myths of modern literature” (qtd. in Spaas 98); Ian Watt claims that Robinson Crusoe is “almost universally known, almost universally thought of as at least half real,” and that it “cannot be refused the status of myth” (“Robinson Crusoe as a Myth” 313); French critic Arlette Bouloumie writes that Crusoe is “a mythological character through the mere fact that he has become autonomous” (qtd. in Spaas 98). To Michel Tournier, one of the best known French novelists, and an author of Friday and Robinson – a rewriting of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – the Crusoe myth is “one of the most topical and vital that we possess,” one that in fact “possesses us” (183). “Never has a myth been more living” than that of Robinson Crusoe, Tournier declares in a 1996 interview. Indeed, the story of Robinson Crusoe has been rediscovered, retold and reinterpreted through generations. “The strength and fascination of the story, encapsulated by Defoe but not restricted to his telling, is that it escapes all ideological strictures and continues to suggest alternative readings and prompt rewritings from alternative vantage points,” Brian Stimpson asserts in the preface to Robinson Crusoe. Myths and Metamorphoses (ix). Certainly, since its publication in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has gone through hundreds of versions. Michael Seidel claims that “no single book in the history of Western literature has spawned more editions, translations, imitations, continuations, and sequels than Crusoe” (8). Pat Rogers’ study lists “at least 200 English editions, including abridged texts; 110 translations; 115 revisions and adaptations; and 277 imitations” by 1900 (11). The Crusoe story has also been rendered in poems, an opera by Offenbach, an ice-show by Tom Arnold and countless British pantomime, the earliest example being Robinson Crusoe, or Harlequin Friday, performed at the Drury Lane Theater in 1781. 2 That the Crusoe myth extends beyond literature is obvious from numerous non- literary materials, ranging from pottery and paper dolls to cartoons and stamps. Ian Watt mentions a restaurant tree, called “Robinson,” which was opened up by an enterprising French industrialist in 1848 near Paris. Also in France, “un Robinson” has become a popular term for a large umbrella (“Robinson Crusoe as a Myth” 312). Robinson Crusoe has generated many new stories, usually referred to as “Robinsonades.” Robinsonade, to define it broadly, “repeats the themes of Robinson Crusoe; usually it incorporates or adapts specific physical aspects of Crusoe’s experience and is an obvious rewriting of the Crusoe story. Other times, it shares ideas or narrative style” (Fisher 130). Thus, Robinson Crusoe adaptors have metamorphosed Defoe’s castaway into a dog, a woman, a child, a family, a doctor, and an idyllic lover, among many others. Rogers’ study catalogs a great number of imitations of Defoe’s novel. An incomplete list of popular Robinsonades includes the following works: The Voyages, Dangerous Adventures, and Imminent Escapes of Captain Richard Falconer (1720), John Barnard’s Ashton Memorial (1725), Johann Rudolph Wyss’s The Swiss family Robinson (1812-27), Captain Marryat’s Masterman Ready (1843), The Dog Crusoe (1860), The Catholic Crusoe (1862), Six Hundred Robinson Crusoes (1877). Serious revisions of Robinson Crusoe continue to be made. The most recent permutations of the Crusoe story include Derek Walcott’s Castaway poems, Muriel Spark’s Robinson (1958), Michel Tournier’s Friday and Robinson (1972) and J. M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986). My dissertation focuses on the cinematic versions of the Crusoe story. Starting from the early 1900s, a significant number of films use the Crusoe myth as the text for an entire movie, or as a set piece within a film. Undying fascination with a mythic figure of a castaway led numerous filmmakers to rewrite, reinvent, and rework the Robinson Crusoe 3 story. Some of the cinematic adaptations of Defoe's first novel include the following works: Otis Turner’s Robinson Crusoe (1913), George Marion's American Robinson Crusoe (1916), Robert Leonard's Robinson Crusoe (1917), Edward Cline's Little Robinson Crusoe (1924), Bryan Foy's Robinson Crusoe (1924), Walter Lantz's animated Robinson Crusoe (1925), M. Wetherel's Robinson Crusoe (1927), Edward Sutherland's Mr. Robinson Crusoe (1932), Frank Moser's Robinson Crusoe (1933), Luis Bunuel's Robinson Crusoe (1952), George Miller/Rod Hardy Robinson Crusoe (1996). There are Mexican, Russian, French, Italian, Brazilian, and Dutch filmic adaptations of Defoe's novel as well. As Carl Fisher notes, “there are few places without a specific national Robinson” (131). In addition to these “literal” adaptations, there have also been features, serials and television series using the Crusoe narrative one way or another. Some of these works completely rewrite Defoe's novel. Many versions alter the physical elements of the
Recommended publications
  • War of Words: Daniel Defoe and the 1707 Union Anne M
    War of Words: Daniel Defoe and the 1707 Union Anne M. McKim Thus, on both Sides, the case stood between the nations, a Pen and Ink War made a daily Noise in either Kingdom, and this served to Exasperate the People in such a manner, one against another, that never have two Nations Run upon one another in such a manner, and come off without Blows.1 The Union of Scotland and England on 1 May 1707 was – and for some still is – undoubtedly contentious. Polemic and political pamphleteering flourished at the time, reflecting and fanning the debate, while the newssheets and jour- nals of the day provided lively opinion pieces and a good deal of propaganda. Recent commentators have recognised the importance of public discourse and public opinion regarding the Union on the way to the treaty. Leith Davis goes as far as to say that the ‘new British nation was constructed from the dialogue that took place regarding its potential existence’.2 While the treaty articles were still being debated by the last Scottish parlia- ment, Daniel Defoe, who had gone to Scotland specifically to promote the Union, began compiling his monumental History of the Union of Great Britain in Edinburgh.3 He expected to see it published before the end of 1707 although, for reasons that are still not entirely clear, it was not published until late 1709 or early 1710.4 As David Hayton notes, ‘a great deal of it must already have 1 Daniel Defoe, The History of the Union of Great Britain, D. W.
    [Show full text]
  • Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe @300 Grant Glass Over 300 Years
    Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe @300 Grant Glass Over 300 years ago, Daniel Defoe immortalized the story of Robinson Crusoe with the publication of The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe—creating long tradition of stories about being marooned in an inhospitable place understood as the Robinsonade genre. While the intimate details of Crusoe’s story might be unfamiliar, many of its adaptations like The Martian or Cast Away still persist. Those are just a few, if you look closely enough, there are religious, survivalist, social gospel, colonizationist and anti-colonial, martially masculine, feminist Robinsonades, in overlapping circles emanating out from this central text. The best estimates place these variants in the hundreds. Yet the original novel provides the reader with a gauntlet of historical baggage ranging from colonialism and slavery to climate change and industrialization—forcing us to confront not only our past, but how we represent it in the present. What, then, is Crusoe’s legacy at 300, and what do its retellings tell us about how we think of our past and our future? When you start to notice the Robinsonade, it appears everywhere, and you start to realize you cannot put the horse back in the stable when it comes to Crusoe. Long before the days of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Lena Dunham, Crusoe became an international phenomenon on the star power of its writer, Daniel Defoe, who much like a prolific Tweeter, “seemed to have strong opinions about everything, and wrote about almost everything in his world and his time,”1 with topics ranging from economics, politics and history to space travel.2 While Defoe wrote over 500 books, pamphlets, addresses and letters in his lifetime, Crusoe became his most well-known and well-read work.3 Crusoe was a major hit right from its first printing, it was so well received that Defoe quickly produced a sequel within only a few months after publication of the first.
    [Show full text]
  • RBH Cocktail Menu 6 3 20.Indd
    Crafted Cocktails Local Brews RBH MAI TAI 17 LONGBOARD 9 Bacardi Light Rum Lager, Kona Brew Orange Curacao HANALEI ISLAND IPA 9 Lemon Juice Kona Brewing Orgeat Syrup FIRE ROCK 9 ROSE ALL DAY 19 Pale Ale, Kona Brew Grandin Brut Rose BIG WAVE 9 Cîroc Vodka Golden Ale, Kona Brew Aperol Aperitivo WAILUA 9 Strawberry puree, mint Sweet n Sour Wheat Ale, Kona Brew CASTAWAY 9 SPIKED MANGO 18 IPA, Kona Brew Patron Reposado Mango BIKINI BLONDE 9 Fresh Lime Lager, Maui Brew BEACH HOUSE TONIC 19 Bombay Sapphire Gin Wine by the Glass St. Germain Cucumber mint juice BISOL CREDE PROSECCO SUPERIORE, 2017 15/60 Fresh lime juice Fever Tree Tonic Bouquet of wild flowers, followed by fresh apples, pears CHARLES HEIDSIECK BRUT RESERVE,NV,CHAMPAGNE 28/130 KIAWE HEAT 18 Deliciously balanced between the rich white fruits and Del Maguey Vida Mezcal good acidity Grapefruit GRANDIN BRUT ROSE, NV, LOIRE, FRANCE 17/68 Fresh lime juice Elegant, refreshing with hints of red berry fruit Housemade jalapeño syrup Pinch of Hawaiian sea salt CHATEAU GASSIER ESPRIT ROSE, 2017 16/64 Bright red stoned fruit, fresh and balanced Specialty Mocktails ANDRIAN, PINOT GRIGIO, 2017 18/72 Fruity bouquet, ripe honeydew melons and balanced finis LILIKOʻI MOJITO 8 LOVEBLOCK SAUVIGNON BLANC, 2018 17/68 Liliko‘i puree Complex/elegant bouquet of tropical fruits & grassy notes Fresh mint JEAN REVERDY SANCERRE, 2017 19/76 Fresh lime Sparkling water Estate grown for 10 generations in the finest district of the Loire valley NAʻĀLEHU FRUIT STAND 9 LES TOURELLES CHARDONNAY, PREMIER CRU 22/88 Mango
    [Show full text]
  • Robinson Crusoe
    READING GROUP GUIDE ROBINSON CRUSOE BY DANIEL DEFOE Restless Classics presents the Three-Hundredth Anniversary Edition of Robinson Crusoe, the classic Caribbean adventure story and foundatio- nal English novel, with new illustrations by Eko and an introduction by Jamaica Kincaid that recontextualizes the book for our globalized, post- colonial era. Three centuries after Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, this gripping tale of a castaway who spends thirty years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being ultimately rescued, remains a classic of the adventure genre and is widely considered the first great English novel. But the book also has much to teach us, in retrospect, about entrenched attitudes of coloni- zers toward the colonized that still resound today. As celebrated Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid writes in her bold new introduction, “The vivid, vibrant, subtle, important role of the tale of Robinson Crusoe, with his triumph of individual resilience and ingenuity wrapped up in his European, which is to say white, identity, has played in the long, unin- BUY FROM RESTLESS terrupted literature of European conquest of the rest of the world must not be dismissed or Paperback List Price: $19.99 ignored or silenced.” ISBN: 9781632061195 Publication: 8/27/19 Daniel Defoe (c. 1660 - 1731) was an English writer, journalist, and spy, who gained 5.5” x 8.25” • 384 pages enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest Fiction: Classics/ World Litera- ture / Caribbean/ Adventure/ practitioners of the novel and helped popularize the genre in Britain.
    [Show full text]
  • The Foundations of US Air Doctrine
    DISCLAIMER This study represents the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the Air University Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education (CADRE) or the Department of the Air Force. This manuscript has been reviewed and cleared for public release by security and policy review authorities. iii Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Watts, Barry D. The Foundations ofUS Air Doctrine . "December 1984 ." Bibliography : p. Includes index. 1. United States. Air Force. 2. Aeronautics, Military-United States. 3. Air warfare . I. Title. 11. Title: Foundations of US air doctrine . III. Title: Friction in war. UG633.W34 1984 358.4'00973 84-72550 355' .0215-dc 19 ISBN 1-58566-007-8 First Printing December 1984 Second Printing September 1991 ThirdPrinting July 1993 Fourth Printing May 1996 Fifth Printing January 1997 Sixth Printing June 1998 Seventh Printing July 2000 Eighth Printing June 2001 Ninth Printing September 2001 iv THE AUTHOR s Lieutenant Colonel Barry D. Watts (MA philosophy, University of Pittsburgh; BA mathematics, US Air Force Academy) has been teaching and writing about military theory since he joined the Air Force Academy faculty in 1974 . During the Vietnam War he saw combat with the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing at Ubon, Thailand, completing 100 missions over North Vietnam in June 1968. Subsequently, Lieutenant Colonel Watts flew F-4s from Yokota AB, Japan, and Kadena AB, Okinawa. More recently, he has served as a military assistant to the Director of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and with the Air Staff's Project CHECKMATE.
    [Show full text]
  • Hugo Award -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
    10/10/2017 Hugo Award -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia Hugo Award Hugo Award, any of several annual awards presented by the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS). The awards are granted for notable achievement in science �ction or science fantasy. Established in 1953, the Hugo Awards were named in honour of Hugo Gernsback, founder of Amazing Stories, the �rst magazine exclusively for science �ction. Hugo Award. This particular award was given at MidAmeriCon II, in Kansas City, Missouri, on August … Michi Trota Pin, in the form of the rocket on the Hugo Award, that is given to the finalists. Michi Trota Hugo Awards https://www.britannica.com/print/article/1055018 1/10 10/10/2017 Hugo Award -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia year category* title author 1946 novel The Mule Isaac Asimov (awarded in 1996) novella "Animal Farm" George Orwell novelette "First Contact" Murray Leinster short story "Uncommon Sense" Hal Clement 1951 novel Farmer in the Sky Robert A. Heinlein (awarded in 2001) novella "The Man Who Sold the Moon" Robert A. Heinlein novelette "The Little Black Bag" C.M. Kornbluth short story "To Serve Man" Damon Knight 1953 novel The Demolished Man Alfred Bester 1954 novel Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury (awarded in 2004) novella "A Case of Conscience" James Blish novelette "Earthman, Come Home" James Blish short story "The Nine Billion Names of God" Arthur C. Clarke 1955 novel They’d Rather Be Right Mark Clifton and Frank Riley novelette "The Darfsteller" Walter M. Miller, Jr. short story "Allamagoosa" Eric Frank Russell 1956 novel Double Star Robert A. Heinlein novelette "Exploration Team" Murray Leinster short story "The Star" Arthur C.
    [Show full text]
  • Ian Watt, the Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (Chatto & Windus 1957; Rep
    Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (Chatto & Windus 1957; rep. Univ. of California Press 1957). Note: this copy has been made from a PDF version of the 1957 California UP edition. The footnotes in that editon have been transposed to endnotes here and the page-numbers have been omitted. Chapter I: Realism and the Novel Form THERE are still no wholly satisfactory answers to many of the general questions which anyone interested in the early eighteenth-century novelists and their works is likely to ask: Is the novel a new literary form? And if we assume, as is commonly done, that it is, and that it was begun by Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, how does it differ from the prose fiction of the past, from that of Greece, for example, or that of the Middle Ages, or of seventeenth-century France? And is there any reason why these differences appeared when and where they did? Such large questions are never easy to approach, much less to answer, and they are particularly difficult in this case because Defoe, Richardson and Fielding do not in the usual sense constitute a literary school. Indeed their works show so little sign of mutual influence and are so different in nature that at first sight it appears that our curiosity about the rise of the novel is unlikely to find any satisfaction other than the meagre one afforded by the terms ‘genius’ and ‘accident’, the twin faces on the Janus of the dead ends of literary history. We cannot, of course, do without them: on the other hand there is not much we can do with them.
    [Show full text]
  • Sam Davis • Critical Essay by Elizabeth Howie
    weep not for the future: the photographs of Sam Davis • Critical Essay by Elizabeth Howie Sam Davis’s work, in particular images from his portfolios Tragic Heroes, Rocketships, and Tin, consists of a variety of approaches to exploring our longstanding fascination with outer space. Utilizing such devices as pinhole, medium format and 4x5 cameras, as well as processing ranging from daguerreotypes to tintypes, silver gelatin, and Chromira C-prints, Davis shows us our memories, dreams, and fantasies about our hopes and fears of the universe around us. Tragic Heroes, consisting almost entirely of panoramic shots, brings us into the proximity of solitary moon-suit clad figures. They are reminiscent of spacemen of cinema and television, such as the 1939 Buck Rogers movie serial, the 1952 serial Commando Cody, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers of 1956, 1959’s When Worlds Collide, or the all-too-earnest space travelers of the original Star Trek, which ran from 1966-69. The gadgets and spacecraft (also made by Davis) evoke even earlier examples, such as ray-guns from the 1936 film Flash Gordon. The above classic early sci-fi vehicles utilized special effects, which now appear quite clunky, to try to demonstrate the wonders and threats of the future.[1] Despite their retro stylings, Davis’s heroes have arrived in that future, and strangely, things have not advanced all that much. But some things are definitely different. Countering the myth of the NASA astronaut as idealized he-man, someone who possesses “the right stuff,”[2] Davis’s figures—and perhaps" spacemen" is a better word than "astronauts," to suggest their relation to science fiction— demonstrate instead a kind of wistful vulnerability we would never have been permitted to observe in the Apollo age.
    [Show full text]
  • THE RHETORIC of PROBABILITY from the NEW SCIENCE to COMMON SENSE by Alex Solomon
    THE RHETORIC OF PROBABILITY FROM THE NEW SCIENCE TO COMMON SENSE by Alex Solomon A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Literatures in English Written under the direction of Michael McKeon And approved by __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Rhetoric of Probability from the New Science to Common Sense By ALEX SOLOMON Dissertation Director: Michael McKeon Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, probability, hitherto primarily a quality of rhetoric, expands to become a field of mathematics, a criterion of experimental demonstration, and a guiding principle for the development of the English novel. These applications overlap but are far from coextensive. “The Rhetoric of Probability from the New Science to Common Sense” traces the role of probability, as a fluid concept, in the binding and eventual disassociation of science and fiction during this time. The species of probability generated by fictional narrative is utilized to support empirically indemonstrable hypotheses before and after the rise of experimental culture in the seventeenth century. While the early novel, especially the corpus of Daniel Defoe, has long been spoken of as a fictional imitation of experimental practice, there are significant cases in which fiction is part of the process of experimental demonstration. The exclusively fictional character of the novel later solidifies in the works of Richardson and Fielding as the forms of mathematical and experimental probability developed over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are internalized for aesthetic effect.
    [Show full text]
  • A Comparative Study of Robinson Crusoe and Foe
    Journal of Foreign Languages, Cultures and Civilizations December 2020, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 20-24 ISSN 2333-5882 (Print) 2333-5890 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: 10.15640/jflcc.v8n2a3 URL: https://doi.org/10.15640/jflcc.v8n2a3 His-Story and Her-Story: A Comparative Study of Robinson Crusoe and Foe Dr. Shakira Khatoon1, Prof. M. Asim Siddiqui2 & Prof. Nazia Hasan3 Abstract History is often said to be his-story owing to it being exclusively written by men about men. It consists of heroic as well as tragic tales of men, heroic and tragic both terms being exploited by Aristotle in the context of men again. Literature of any nation or language is also History per se as it reflects the ethos of the time in which it is created, and can also be called His-story because of dominant presence of male voices on the literary horizon for centuries. It is only after the surge of movements and theories like Feminism and Postcolonialism, that Her-story started to surface up in literary works. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (first published in 1719) and Foe by J. M. Coetzee (rewriting of Robinson Crusoe, first published in 1986) are the two works showcasing this transition in focus from His-story to Her-story. Whereas one tells the story of a male castaway Robinson Crusoe who turns out to be a powerful, colonial patriarch, completely avoiding the existence of woman; the other tells the story of Susan Barton, a female castaway introduced by Coetzee into the world of Crusoe (Cruso here).
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Stephen King: Issues of Censorship, Student Choice, and Popular Literature
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 414 606 CS 216 137 AUTHOR Power, Brenda Miller, Ed.; Wilhelm, Jeffrey D., Ed.; Chandler, Kelly, Ed. TITLE Reading Stephen King: Issues of Censorship, Student Choice, and Popular Literature. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, IL. ISBN ISBN-0-8141-3905-1 PUB DATE 1997-00-00 NOTE 246p. AVAILABLE FROM National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096 (Stock No. 39051-0015: $14.95 members, $19.95 nonmembers). PUB TYPE Collected Works - General (020) Opinion Papers (120) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC10 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Censorship; Critical Thinking; *Fiction; Literature Appreciation; *Popular Culture; Public Schools; Reader Response; *Reading Material Selection; Reading Programs; Recreational Reading; Secondary Education; *Student Participation IDENTIFIERS *Contemporary Literature; Horror Fiction; *King (Stephen); Literary Canon; Response to Literature; Trade Books ABSTRACT This collection of essays grew out of the "Reading Stephen King Conference" held at the University of Mainin 1996. Stephen King's books have become a lightning rod for the tensions around issues of including "mass market" popular literature in middle and 1.i.gh school English classes and of who chooses what students read. King's fi'tion is among the most popular of "pop" literature, and among the most controversial. These essays spotlight the ways in which King's work intersects with the themes of the literary canon and its construction and maintenance, censorship in public schools, and the need for adolescent readers to be able to choose books in school reading programs. The essays and their authors are: (1) "Reading Stephen King: An Ethnography of an Event" (Brenda Miller Power); (2) "I Want to Be Typhoid Stevie" (Stephen King); (3) "King and Controversy in Classrooms: A Conversation between Teachers and Students" (Kelly Chandler and others); (4) "Of Cornflakes, Hot Dogs, Cabbages, and King" (Jeffrey D.
    [Show full text]
  • A Dangerous Method
    A David Cronenberg Film A DANGEROUS METHOD Starring Keira Knightley Viggo Mortensen Michael Fassbender Sarah Gadon and Vincent Cassel Directed by David Cronenberg Screenplay by Christopher Hampton Based on the stage play “The Talking Cure” by Christopher Hampton Based on the book “A Most Dangerous Method” by John Kerr Official Selection 2011 Venice Film Festival 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, Gala Presentation 2011 New York Film Festival, Gala Presentation www.adangerousmethodfilm.com 99min | Rated R | Release Date (NY & LA): 11/23/11 East Coast Publicity West Coast Publicity Distributor Donna Daniels PR Block Korenbrot Sony Pictures Classics Donna Daniels Ziggy Kozlowski Carmelo Pirrone 77 Park Ave, #12A Jennifer Malone Lindsay Macik New York, NY 10016 Rebecca Fisher 550 Madison Ave 347-254-7054, ext 101 110 S. Fairfax Ave, #310 New York, NY 10022 Los Angeles, CA 90036 212-833-8833 tel 323-634-7001 tel 212-833-8844 fax 323-634-7030 fax A DANGEROUS METHOD Directed by David Cronenberg Produced by Jeremy Thomas Co-Produced by Marco Mehlitz Martin Katz Screenplay by Christopher Hampton Based on the stage play “The Talking Cure” by Christopher Hampton Based on the book “A Most Dangerous Method” by John Kerr Executive Producers Thomas Sterchi Matthias Zimmermann Karl Spoerri Stephan Mallmann Peter Watson Associate Producer Richard Mansell Tiana Alexandra-Silliphant Director of Photography Peter Suschitzky, ASC Edited by Ronald Sanders, CCE, ACE Production Designer James McAteer Costume Designer Denise Cronenberg Music Composed and Adapted by Howard Shore Supervising Sound Editors Wayne Griffin Michael O’Farrell Casting by Deirdre Bowen 2 CAST Sabina Spielrein Keira Knightley Sigmund Freud Viggo Mortensen Carl Jung Michael Fassbender Otto Gross Vincent Cassel Emma Jung Sarah Gadon Professor Eugen Bleuler André M.
    [Show full text]