The thesis aims to give an overview of the treatment of media in texts that have formed modern dystopian writing and to which new additions in the genre necessarily relate. This set of texts consists of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and When the Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells; first chapter substantiates this selection and proceeds to define the concepts of "media" and "dystopia". Second chapter is concerned with the understanding of history in dystopian societies and shows that the very concept of historicity is undesirable for a totalitarian state, which seeks to blur history and reduce it to a three-point schema "before the Event - the Event (revolution) - after the Event". Closer analysis then shows that the Event itself can be divided into a further triad that has to be completed in order to pass into eternal post-Event society. Third chapter describes the use of citizens as media and shows that while Huxley's society uses what Michel Foucault calls "biopower" to achieve this goal, Orwell's society rather uses the concept of "discipline". Fourth chapter turns to printed media a the privileged role they are ascribed in the novels: The authors see literature as an embodiment of individuality and, at the same time, as a guarantee of tradition established by an...
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:329193 |
Date | January 2013 |
Creators | Bakič, Pavel |
Contributors | Clark, Colin Steele, Veselá, Pavla |
Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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