From Syllabus:
This module requires students to compare texts in order to explore them in relation to their contexts. It develops the students’ understanding of the effects of context and questions of value.
Students examines ways in which social, cultural and historical context influences aspects of texts, or the ways in which changes of context lead to changed values being reflected in texts.
Elective 2: Texts in Time
In this elective students compare how the treatment of similar content in a pair of texts composed in different times and contexts may reflect changing values and perspectives. By considering the texts in their contexts and comparing values, ideas and language forms and features, students come to a heightened understanding of the meaning and significance of each text.
The major considerations here are how the changed context and the different genre of the later text affect the message and how the message is represented.
TEXTS: Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley; Blade Runner (Director’s cut – 1982) directed by Ridley Scott
- The texts are a product of their times, that capture the discourses of the historical social & political contexts in which each emerges
- Frankenstein represents Romantic view of World whilst Blade Runner has a dystopic (state in which the conditions of life are extremely bad as from deprivation or oppression or terror) society
- Both texts, Frankenstein and Blade Runner share a common premise. If scientists were capable of creating such life then the relationship between the creations and the rest of humanity would be an uneasy and tense one.
Frankenstein & Blade Runner Context (Requires Modification)
FRANKENSTEIN (Context)
In the summer of 1816, a young, well-educated woman from England travelled with her lover to the Swiss Alps. Unseasonable rain kept them trapped inside their lodgings, where they entertained themselves by reading ghost stories. At the urging of renowned poet Lord Byron, a friend and neighbour,...