Significant Texts in Any Genre Arise from Specific Social and Cultural Condition and Possess an Enduring Relevance

Significant texts in any genre arise from specific social and cultural condition and possess an enduring relevance.

Significant texts, in any genre, evolve from the context, conditions and background in which they are composed. These influences lead to the text arising from the social and cultural conditions of society, which have a major bearing on the way these texts are constructed. This has been successfully demonstrated in various significant texts throughout the ages.

Tom Stoppards "The Real inspector hound", Agatha Christies 'The Third Girl" and Ian Rankins "Rebus" all derive from the influences of social and cultural conditions of their context and possess and enduring relevance. These significant texts utilise the elements of genre such as storyline, characters and theme to convey the conditions based around the tradition and popularity of fiction murder mysteries

Thomas Hardys 'The real inspector hound' uses its absurdity and satirical format, to portray the various social and cultural conditions of the 1960's. The 17 century was a period where there was a significant increase of education and almost a death in religion. This concept of new found knowledge lead to peoples motivation to find a greater truth and meaning in life. This meant going against the status quo and questioning political authority. It became a time when people began to challenge the social order and question the absurdity of how people conduct themselves. 'The real inspector hound' is constructed as a parody of crime conventions in order to depict these notions, using intertextuality and absurdism.

The text uses all features that make up a typical golden aged crime fiction, he utilises these to demonstrate and satire the popular genre, a murder mystery based upon the 'whodunit' concept. He achieves this through the use of a bloodless crime, setting in drawing in a country house cottage, various red herrings such as "I'll kill you, Simon Gascoyne", and stereotypical behaviours of characters and the relationships between one another; all of which derive from a traditional crime fiction of the golden age. By using these features it demonstrates how Stoppard it mocking the golden age of crime writing, the texts main focus being on traditional golden age crime writing author Agatha Christie, questioning the popularity of such texts.

By strongly exploiting the conventions of golden aged crime writing, Tom Stoppard is able to successfully present a theatrical absurd version of human life. Constructed from the communism, ideology and post cold war period, nihilism was a major part of the texts theme as well as society. This concept is explicitly demonstrated through the denouement of the play, there is a lack of resolution and a strong sense of confusion still remains; portrays how absurd life is. By using the technique of 'play-within-a-play' it allows us as an audience to recognise and observe our own pretentious behaviours. Through the blurring of the line (from the play to those in the theatre) it shows us, the audience, how we all step into a role, this is shown as Birdboot not only steps into the character of Simon Gascoyne but also presents himself a different person when talking to/ about his wife, portraying himself as a devoted husband rather than a theatre critic who uses his power to womanize. By the barriers between the characters and audience broken and identities being merged, we see the absurdity of how we identify ourselves and how we behave. Stoppards stereotypical high class British social order characters demonstrate an absurd dramatisation of life through the theme and conventions of the English murder mystery genre. By presenting the characters as typical British high class people, it addresses an explicit aspect of the cultural conditions. By achieving these concepts the text exhibits a strong enduring relevance of society and culture conditions. Its enduring relevance refers to the satire of critics and reviewers language and power to encourage genres which lead to people's extensive reliance of genres. The texts is able to act as a document which allows us to review the social and cultural aspects that the text is satirising