The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Emergence of Romanticism
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Announcements:
(1) Bambi showings this week 7:30 pm in Fernow 14 (basement).
(2) Probable writing assignment this week, Wednesday or Friday
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Lowenthal’s essay develops the themes of the next 5-6 weeks
Plan this week is to cover broadly four historical periods:
(1) Conclude hunting and medieval period
(2) The Renaissance, including its impact of art and culture
(3) The Enlightenment, including effects on philosophy and politics
(4) Romanticism
The Renaissance roughly the period from 1450 or so to 1600.
Bruegel, Hunters in the Snow
E. H. Gombrich commentary about Peasant Wedding, from The Story of Art, see http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftptoc/bruegel_ext.html
William Carlos Williams
Pour the wine bridegroom
where before you the
bride is enthroned her hair
loose at her temples a head
of ripe wheat is on
the wall beside her the
guests seated at long tables
the bagpipers are ready
there is a hound under
the table the bearded Mayor
is present women in their
starched headgear are
gabbing all but the bride
hands folded in her
lap is awkwardly silent simple
dishes are being served
clabber and what not
from a trestle made of an
unhinged barn door by two
helpers one in a red
coat a spoon in his hatband
Jean Cocteau, The Beauty and the Beast (1946) , and influence of Vermeer and others
[SLIDE]
Vermeer biography
[SLIDEs]:
[SLIDES]:
Material drawn from Matt Cartmill’s book, A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History
Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (1511)
Sir Thomas More, Utopia (1516)
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, “Of Cruelty” (1580)
Shakespeare plays (1580s)
Cartmill concludes: “But though aversion to hunting was still something out of the ordinary, it does show up in important and influential writers [such as] More and Montaigne. We see it occasionally in the graphic arts too. Albrecht Dürer’s 1504 drawing of a stag dying with a crossbow bolt in its skull testifies to the appearance of a new set of attitudes. This drawing could not have been turned out by a medieval artist; the technique is too subtle and complicated, and so are the feelings expressed. The respect with which Dürer has observed his subject reflects the new Renaissance practice of sketching from life instead of copying conventional models. Getting away from medieval conventions of hunting art gave Dürer the freedom to express unconventional emotions in this work—powerful, complicated, ambivalent, and not easily put into words” (80).
IV. The Enlightenment
Roughly the period 1600-1780
“Modernism”
“The Age of Reason” or the age of rationalism
V. The Protestant Reformation
Martin Luther “protested” the Catholic authorities (1517)
