Beyond the Sound Bites
Should we go with our gut feelings or plan responsibly for the future?
Prudential: Feeling or Thinking: (In Marshmallows and in Life), 2:55
Prudential placed kids before a marshmellow to see if they would go with their gut and eat, or wait responsibly to get two marshmellows. What would you do?
Comments, questions, reactions?
Ch. 12 Sec. 4 Culture: Romanticism and Realism
Note Taking:
Identify Supporting Details
In-class assignment:
As you read and we cover the material fill in a table with details about the artistic movements in the 1800s.
Main Ideas
At the end of the eighteenth century, Romanticism emerged as a reaction to the ideas of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was seen as overly rational and head oriented whereas romanticism emphasized gut feelings, and the heart.
Nineteenth-century Romanticism—with its escape from an increasingly complex and industrialized world to the simplicity and purity of nature—is experienced through the literature of Hugo, Brontë, Shelley and Byron. In Les Miserables for instance, Victor Hugo views society as the force that makes men evil. Attitudes toward passions are typified in scenes from Wuthering Heights. Ideals of life and death are brought home in the reenactment of Shelley's funeral pyre on the beach, as his friend and fellow poet, Lord Byron, swims out to sea for a better view.
Video intro: a commentary on Realism (sometimes called Naturalism).
Literary Realism and Naturalism, 2:53
In-class assignment: copy the formula to understand Realism.
Fate = C (chance) + E (environment) + H (heredity).
Key Terms
romanticism
Romanticism
Albert Bierstadt, Hetch Hetchy Canyon, 1875
realism
Objectives, at the end of the section the student should:
*Understand what themes shaped romantic art, literature, and music.
*Explain how realists responded to the industrialized, urban world.
*Describe how the visual arts changed.
People to Identify
Some initial examples will be identified.
Ludwig van Beethoven
William Wordsworth
Lord Byron
Claude Monet
In-class assignment:
Thinking Critically
1. Summarize
How did impressionism depart from tradition?
In-class assignment: paraphrase Wordsworth, in your own words, how is this a Romantic understanding of nature?
As I am suggesting, Romanticism does not refer to romance in the sense of an affectionate relationship, but rather to an artistic style emphasizing nature, imagination, freedom, and emotion. Romanticism was a reaction to the neoclassical writers of the Enlightenment, who had turned to classical Greek and Roman literature and ideals that stressed order, harmony, reason, and emotional restraint. In contrast to Enlightenment literature, the works of romantic writers included simple, direct language, intense feelings, and a glorification of nature. Artists, composers, and architects were also followers of the movement.
The Romantic Hero
Indiana Jones: The American Romantic Hero
This video considers Indiana Jones, and how he is portrayed as a true American Romantic Hero throughout, 7:29.
In-class assignment: in a word cloud, summarize the important characteristics of Indiana Jones as a Romantic hero.
A sample word cloud is suggestive of what you should understand at this point.
Romantic writers created a new kind of hero—a mysterious, melancholy figure who felt out of step with society. “My joys, my grief, my passions, and my powers, / Made me a stranger,” wrote Britain’s George Gordon, Lord Byron. He himself was a larger-than-life figure equal to those he created. After a rebellious, wandering life, he joined Greek forces battling for freedom. When he died of a fever there, his legend bloomed. In fact, public interest in his poetry and adventures was so great that moody, isolated romantic heroes came to be described as “Byronic.”
One of the first rebels in American post-war pop culture was Marlon Brando in "The Wild One."
The Wild One is a 1953 outlaw biker film. It is remembered for Marlon Brando's portrayal of the gang leader Johnny Stabler as a juvenile delinquent, dressed in a leather jacket and driving a 1950 Triumph Thunderbird 6T. Acting opposite of Brando was Lee Marvin as a rival gang leader. This low-budget production had Brando playing a rebel without a cause two years before James Dean.
The film version was based on a January, 1951 short story in Harper's Magazine "The Cyclists' Raid" by Frank Rooney that was published in book form as part of "The Best American Short Stories 1952." The story took a cue from an actual biker street party on the Fourth of July weekend in 1947 in Hollister, California that was elaborately trumped up in Life Magazine (dubbed the Hollister riot) with staged photographs of wild motorcycle outlaw revellers. The Hollister event is now celebrated annually. In the film, the town is located somewhere in California.
Deemed scandalous and dangerous, the film was banned by the British Board of Film Censors from showing in the United Kingdom for fourteen years. Its first UK public showing, to a mostly Rocker audience at the then famous 59 Club of Paddington in London.
In a famous exchange from the movie Brando's character is asked: "What are you rebelling against?"
Brando's character slyly responds: "What have you got?"
The rebellious pop image was thereafter popularized by James Dean:
Arguably the most famous Romantic, Byronic rebel was Elvis.
In a well-known scene from one of his first movies, 'Jailhouse Rock', 1957, Elvis' character, a former penitentiary inmate (also starring Judy Tyler), has a chance to meet the parents.
Elvis Presley - Scene from "Jailhouse Rock" (MGM 1957), 3:24
In this scene Vince joins his manager/girl-friend Peggy who's visiting a party at her parent's house. The people there obviously don't know what to think of Elvis and what he's doing. They're trying to get him involved into a conversation about music but on both sides there's a lack of understanding for each other's position. The only change in music they can imagine is actually a setback to Dixieland. They're instead discussing jazz music and things like atonality, something to which Vince only can reply: "Lady, I don't know that the hell you're talkin' about..." making the generation gap obvious.
When accused of insulting her family and friends by Peggy the only thing Vince can possibly answer is a quote that has become famous over the years: "Honey, that's just the beast in me..." Something untamed, different from what was possible until now. Youth was starting to go its own way. A new age was about to dawn.
The Byronic figure in pop culture can be seen in diverse figures from Jim Morrison, to Michael Jackson, and many others such as Tupac Shakur.
The romantic hero often hid a guilty secret and faced a grim destiny. German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (gur tuh) wrote the dramatic poem Faust. The aging scholar Faust makes a pact with the devil, exchanging his soul for youth. After much agony, Faust wins salvation by accepting his duty to help others. In Jane Eyre, British novelist Charlotte Brontë weaves a tale about a quiet governess and her brooding, Byronic employer, whose large mansion conceals a terrifying secret.
Music Stirs Emotions
Romantic composers also tried to stir deep emotions.
Ludwig van Beethoven
The passionate music of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven combined classical forms with a stirring range of sound. He was the first composer to take full advantage of the broad range of instruments in the modern orchestra. In all, Beethoven produced nine symphonies, five piano concertos, a violin concerto, an opera, two masses, and dozens of shorter pieces. To many, he is considered the greatest composer of his day.
An accomplished musician by age 12, composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) agonized over every note of every composition. The result was stunning music that expresses intense emotion. The famous opening of his Fifth Symphony conveys the sense of fate knocking at the door. "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which he began in 1804, was first performed in Vienna in December 1808 (Cf. Hickok, Music, p. 206)."
Beethoven wrote Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 between 1804 and 1808. It comprises four movements: an opening sonata allegro, an andante, and a fast scherzo which leads attacca to the finale.
This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.
Yngwie Malmsteen, a Swedish musician, plays here in a 1985 rock version of Beethoven`s 5th symphony, 1:29.
Romanticism in Art
Painters, too, broke free from the discipline and strict rules of the Enlightenment. Landscape painters like J.M.W. Turner sought to capture the beauty and power of nature. Using bold brush strokes and colors, Turner often showed tiny human figures struggling against sea and storm.
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (1775-1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. [Cf. Wikipedia]
Romantics painted many subjects, from simple peasant life to medieval knights to current events. Bright colors conveyed violent energy and emotion. The French painter Eugène Delacroix (deh luh krwah) filled his canvases with dramatic action. In Liberty Leading the People, the Goddess of Liberty carries the revolutionary tricolor as French citizens rally to the cause.
The focus here is "Liberty Leading the People," reimagined as a fictional Nintendo game. :)
Artwork: ‘Viva La Vida’
Here is a little background about this amazing work of art. It’s by Eugène Delacroix (French Romantic Painter) and was painted in 1830 titled “Liberty Leading The People”. Eugene Delacroix is numbered among the greatest and most influential of French painters. He is most often classified as an artist of the Romantic school. His remarkable use of colour was later to influence impressionist painters and even modern artists such as Pablo Picasso.
Liberty Leading The People; Painted on 28 July 1830, to commemorate the July Revolution that had just brought Louis-Philippe to the French throne; Louvre.
This painting, which is a sort of political poster, is meant to celebrate the day of 28 July 1830, when the people rose and dethroned the Bourbon king. Alexandre Dumas tells us that Delacroix’s participation in the rebellious movements of July was mainly of a sentimental nature. Despite this, the painter, who had been a member of the National Guard, took pleasure in portraying himself in the figure on the left wearing the top-hat. Although the painting is filled with rhetoric, Delacroix’s spirit is fully involved in its execution: in the outstretched figure of Liberty, in the bold attitudes of the people following him contrasted with the lifeless figures of the dead heaped up in the foreground, in the heroic poses of the people fighting for liberty, there is without a doubt a sense of full participation on the part of the artist, which led Argan to define this canvas as the first political work of modern painting.
Liberty Leading the People caused a disturbance. It shows the allegorical figure of Liberty as a half-draped woman wearing the traditional Phrygian cap of liberty and holding a gun in one hand and the tricolour in the other. It is strikingly realistic; Delacroix, the young man in the painting wearing the opera hat, was present on the barricades in July 1830. Allegory helps achieve universality in the painting: Liberty is not a woman; she is an abstract force.
Resources and HW:
Beethoven 5th Symphony 5 (7:38, graphical score animation):
Wikipedia on the composer Beethoven is instructive.
Chuck Berry - "Roll over Beethoven," 3:32, 1972 live on the Beat Club (German TV):
Lyrics:
I'm gonna write a little letter,
Gonna mail it to my local dj.
Its a rockin' rhythm record
I want my jockey to play.
Roll over Beethoven, I gotta hear it again today.
You know, my temperatures risin
And the jukebox blows a fuse.
You know, my hearts beatin rhythm
And my soul keeps on singin the blues.
Roll over Beethoven and tell Tschaikowsky the news.
Well if you reel and rock it,
Go get your lover, reel and rock it
Roll it over and move on up just
A trifle further and reel and rock it,
one another
Roll over Beethoven and tell Tschaikowsky the news.
Roll over Beethoven,
Roll over Beethoven,
Roll over Beethoven,
Roll over Beethoven,
Roll over Beethoven and tell Tschaikowsky the news.
(Instrumental)
Well, well,Well, early in the mornin Im a-givin you a warnin
Dont you step on my blue suede shoes.
Hey diddle diddle, I am playin my fiddle,
Aint got nothin to lose.
Roll over Beethoven and tell Tschaikowsky the news.
Roll over Beethoven,
Roll over Beethoven,
Roll over Beethoven,
Roll over Beethoven,
Roll over Beethoven and tell Tschaikowsky the news.
Electric Light Orchestra - "Roll Over Beethoven," 4:37
ELO performing on the Midnight Special in 1973.
The Romantics - "What I Like About You"
William Wordsworth updated in hip-hop style, 2:02.
HW
Preview Questions:
1. What were the major features of romanticism and realism?
2. How did the Scientific Revolution lead to secularization?
3. You should finish reading Ch. 12 Sec. 4.
4. Reading Check, p. 389
