Extension One English: Reimagined Worlds Essay

Resource Description

“Composers that construct reimagined worlds create a dialogue between the paradigms of what is known and what could be”

Through texts which translate the known paradigms of humanity into enthralling and often unsettling reimagined worlds, composers challenge contextually dominant and rivalling perspectives of humanity. This is supported by De Steale De Bonald’s argument that ‘literature is a direct reflection of various facets of social structures’. Namely, Samuel Coleridge’s epic lyrical ballads ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (ROTAM) and ‘Kubla Khan’ romantically explores complacency, existentialism and brutality to offer an alternative perspective into rivalling religious and philosophical paradigms which diverge from the ordered world of Enlightenment thought. In a similar way, Douglas Adam’spostmodern novel ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (HGG) and Guillermo Del Toro’s post-9/11film ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ dissect humanity’s pursuit for happiness by navigating societal disarray and political anxiety through absurdist and escapist narratives, respectively. Holistically, such existential texts reimagine the trauma and frustration of their audience’s known reality to strikingly object against human ignorance and acquaint difficult universal themes regarding the appearance of existence which context reshapes throughout time.