1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述）

the postcolonial theory is one of the most concerned and rapidly-expanding literary and cultural theory at the turn of the century. starting to thrive at the end of the 1970s, it has revolutionary influence and meaning on the literary appreciation and literary criticism, especially the study of european and american classical literature. its main theory representatives include edward w. said, gayatric c. spivak, and homi k. bhabba. it is true that their approaches to the postcolonial theory are distinct from each other, but their genuine intentions are the same, that is to deconstruct the classical works of the western imperial colonialism, to diminish the euro-american centrism and the binary oppositions, to unveil the “progressiveness” and “universalism” of western modernity, and to reconstruct the subjectivity of the bottom and “minorities” and help them to find their own voices.

v.s. naipaul is a prolific indian-english writer. he was born in trinidad, which was one of the colonies of britain. he received fine education and graduated from a school in port of spain. after that, he won the scholarship, which enabled him to study literature in oxford university. when he was a college student, he wrote several novels, but most of them got rejected. this gave him a severe hit, but his father’s continuous encouragement helped him to insist on writing. just like many other writers, his writing career was not so smooth, but he never gave up. after graduation from oxford university, he settled down in london and continued to write. several years latter, after publishing many works, he started to become increasingly well-known for his unique writing style and has gotten conspicuous achievements in the literary world. because his works have great literary values, he won the nobel prize in literature in 2001.

the mystic masseur is naipaul’s first novel. he wrote this book in 1957 when he had not been famous. it has an artistic style of strong local characteristics and reappears the family history, the ethnic history and the social history of the indian immigrants in trinidad, reconstructs the life and history of the caribbean people and subverts the historical text of the european colonists.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

this paper will conduct a thorough study of the mystic masseur from the postcolonial perspective, focusing on the investigating and analyzing of the maturity and changes of the protagonist, ganesh. through the paper writing, the author hopes to comprehend the connotation and implications of the postcolonial theory in a better way and can explore and digest deeper meaning of the book as well.

in order to achieve these goals, firstly, the author is going to read the representative works of the postcolonial theory, including orientalism and culture and imperialism by edward w. said, to grasp the central concepts of the postcolonial theory. the second step is to read carefully the book, the mystic masseur, the english version as well the chinese version, to fully understand its contents. thirdly, after finishing the read of all these books , the author intend to browse relevant articles and reference papers online as many as possible to acquaint myself with the current researches on the issue and try to interpret the book from a completely new viewpoint. then, the last step is to rearrange the materials and to focus on the interpretation of the growth and changes of the novel’s protagonist, especially how ganesh changed from a poor boy to a famous mystic and finally to a foul politician, from the perspective of postcolonial theory.

3. 研究计划与安排

before 20th january : settlement of the title

before20th march: submission of the outline

before 25th april : submission of the first draft

4. 参考文献（12篇以上）

[1]glenn a. e. griffin. the emergency of trinidad [j]. the university of the west indies, 2016, 10(8): 161-177.

[2]gilbert, moore, bart. postcolonial theory [m]. verso, 1997.

[3]laughlin nicholas. naipaul's letters between a father and son (and mother and sister) [j]. caribbean quarterly; mona, 2016, 62(3): 406-421.