Contexts

What contexts are?


Contexts are what surround a text or situation.

If we don't know the context of something, we may misunderstand what is going on with the text or situation. This both images are some examples.





The image above happened just after a guy beated the blue haired guy.

 
In the image above a guy just gave a candy to the green guy. But if you only read the sentence... you may misunderstand.

There are two main types of contexts:

CONTEXT OF PRODUCTION
CONTEXT OF RECEPTION

The first one is the context (historical, usualy) that surrounds the author of the text. The context of reception is the context of the reader (like you).

To kill a Mockingbird: activity

Answer this questions about the author:

1. What is the cultural and educational background of the author?
2. What are the values and aesthetic concerns of the culture of the author (literature movement, cultural movement, society of that time, etc)? And: What important social, political or economic issues took place in the author's times?


ANSWERS:
1. Nelle Harper Lee was born in 1926 in the town of Monroeville (Alabama, United States). She became a writer in New York, after she went to "University of Alabama", because there she realized that she didn't liked that life and she decided to go to New York, to write. She needed to work in an airline to win some money, and then, her boss gived her as a gift, a year of vacations for her to dedicate her writer's life. That's the educational context and which were the motivations and advantages that she had to become a writer.


2. In that time, the principal movement that was having influence in the US was the fight of the rights of the black population, so that's why there is a lot of that influence showed on the book.
There are two main genres that we are able to identify in the book, the "Bildungsroman" and the "Southern Gothic" 



(Font: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mocking/context.html)