Recontextualizing Literary Classics With Modernity: A Social Semiotic Analysis of a Comic Adaptation of Journey to the West

Abstract

A large number of literary classics have been transformed into comic works with varied adaptation strategies. As a typical example, Cai Zhizhong’s comic adaptation of Journey to the West has made successful attempts in rewriting the story with modern elements that carry socio-cultural values. Under the general theoretical frameworks of social semiotics, this article seeks to explain what and how these elements are presented and explore how such elements are infused with values that affiliate people of different communities and provoke thoughts on cultural diversity and global issues. It is found that (a) modern elements have been presented with particular ideational, interpersonal, and textual semiotic options and (b) different values have been implanted into these elements through bondicons, iconization, and visual attitudes.

Development of Environmental and Technology Literacy-Oriented Science Comics as a Learning Media on Environmental Pollution

“…The display will be presented by the researcher in figure 1 as follows: The final result of this edutainment science-based comic media can be used as additional media in learning activities both at school and at home. The results of this media research and development are data about the specific needs needed in developing android-based comic media and media feasibility (Zhong, Chen, and Xuan 2021). The data on the feasibility of android-based comics media was obtained from the calculation of the questionnaire during validation by material experts and media (product) experts as validators and questionnaires to determine student responses (Lo et al, 2022, & Kuttner et al, 2021.…”

“…After making revisions to material experts and media experts, then improvements were made so that when tested, students got a good response to the comic media of edutainment science concepts that had been developed. After going through the media testing stage, the final product in the form of comic media for the science concept of edutainment is categorized as feasible and does not require revision so that it can be used in the learning process (Zhong et al 2021). Excellence Comic-making is an explicit means for me to demonstrate and experience more tacit ways of knowing about complex terms like agency, identity, and meaning-making (Kuttner et al 2021).…”

The Identity Development of Onscreen Legendary Heroes: A Visual Affect Analysis of Mulan in Three Movie Adaptions

“…While some movie adaptations are attempts to reach genre creativity such as turning the classic stories into comics (c.f. Zhong et al, 2021) and animated films (e.g., the Mulan 1998 version), in this study we focus on the mechanism of identity variation across different adaptations of the same traditional figure. From the quantitative and qualitative analyses above, we could observe that in the three adaptations of the same story of Mulan , different narrative threads and characters come to elicit emotional episodes that form a certain pattern to develop Mulan ’s identity.…”

“…18-19). As the adapted work can differ more or less significantly from the original one, film adaptation, along with adaptation of other genres, has been examined in a continuum between fidelity and creativity (e.g., Hutcheon, 2006;Komporaly, 2014;Stam, 2000;Zhong, 2021;Zhong et al, 2021).…”

Perceiving the poetic world: A corpus-assisted transitivity analysis of poetry comics

“…Most remarkably, he managed to adapt Chinese classical poems into comics, which is rarely seen in poetry literature. However, his work of comic adaptation from poems has not been investigated, though there are a few scholars who have conducted scanty research on Cai’s comic adaptation of Chinese classics (e.g., Yu, 2019 on Journey to the West ; Zhong et al, 2021b ).…”