long: modernism and arts
The reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), experienced an emphasis on public righteousness and moral propriety. Victorian society was largely highlighted by the industrial revolution which had been rapidly transforming rural areas into industrialized landscapes. However, this development pushed the lower class workers into more difficult conditions. Furthermore, the rapid social changes and advances in science had an overwhelming effect on society. Publications like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto (1848), Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), and Freudian works such as The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904, tr. 1914) shocked people into questioning their beliefs. This conflict between religion and science emphasized an overall feeling of despair, alienation and emptiness. Then the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) caused even more devastation and depression. Together, the historical events of the Victorian age had a direct influence in the establishment of modernism. "Victorian, in other words, can be taken to mean parent of the modern -- and like most powerful parents, it provoked a powerful reaction against itself." ("Victorian and Victorianism" par3). The intellectuals and artis
(Whitman L1-9) It is clear that in modern poetry, form, style, and technique become as important, if not more so, than content or substance in modern poetry. Previous pragmatic critical theorists were involved with the purpose of the text (or any other form of art) and studied the factors within it, in order to achieve the "ideal" form. This time was recognized as the period of "Art Nouveau" (meaning "new art" in French). Usually these paintings were involved in a religious theme and had a divine quality to them like Michelangelo's paintings. Although the movements of the modern age each had their differentiating viewpoints, the progressive modernist movements shared common characteristics of modernity. Another famous poet who contributed to modernism was Walt Whitman who wrote creative, rhythmic poetry like "A Song to Myself" and "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer":When I heard the learn'd astronomer;When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. (Greenhalgh scr1) Among the most outstanding art figures of modernism was the impressionist Edouard Manet, who broke away from the inherited notions of art. His early works depict a modern world that is in ruins yet somehow beautiful and deeply meaningful.
Common topics in this essay:
LE Corbusier,
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Claude Debussy,
Virginia Woolf,
Realism Naturalism,
Learn'd Astronomer,
Queen Victoria,
Eliot L268-278,
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Acceptance Essays
