The Role of Context in Comprehending Literature and Cinema, Readers’ Need-Assessment: A Comparative Study

Literature and cinema, as the outermost layers of reflecting and producing social values, are not disentangled from each other. Comparative literature, as a reading strategy, compares and contrasts different readers’ comprehension of the given works in different contexts. The reader might ask himself a sequence of questions whenever he is exposed to a work, including ‘why has he chosen this particular text?’, ‘what factors have led to his current identity formation?’, ‘How has he managed to access this work?’ and, in sum, ‘how do all these factors affect his reading of the given wok?’ What is of prime importance to this research is not merely the historical and geographical situation of the production of the text; rather, it tries to assess these factors in different socio-cultural contexts with respect to the readers. Unfortunately, in the past few decades, the main attention in comparative literature has been paid to either the texts or the authors, ignoring the much more important stance of the reader. In the new era, different readers’ need-assessment alongside the creation of universalized works can be the only solution for the attraction of readers and the survival of literature and cinema.