Transcript From Romanticism to Realism romanticism_to_realism

 That
“notes” are not word for word.
Use your “txt spk”
This presentation is short and will help your understanding…. Take
notes, you’ll need this information.
I will place a red bullet point next to what should be written down.
 Chatting
among yourselves signals to me that
it is time to move to the next slide
 I will not go back if you missed information
 For the sake of your classmates, FOCUS. It is
a short presentation.
 You will have time in class to discuss your
observations and opinions
At the end of this presentation we will finish
Act 1. Then you will work in small groups of
your choice.
With industrialization, trading and
manufacturing joined agriculture as major
sources of wealth.
 Urban areas were booming, increase in wealth
and population
 More leisure time for the new numbers of middle
classes
 The super rich and aristocratic went to ballets
and operas, the middle classes now went to the
theater
 Romanticism was the dominating aesthetic by
the end of 18th-mid 19th century

Industrialization is the process that moves a
society from an Agrarian one to an Industrial
one.
Basically:
rural -> urban
farming -> factories
human hands -> machines
Its exact start is debated, but basically by the
1830s Western Europe was feeling its effects.
1750-1800, “Romanticism” rises in opposition to
Enlightenment Rationalism. Dominating aesthetic 17891843
 No clear definition, but generally it was:
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Nature is supreme
Emotions and instinct, rather than reason
Idealism and hope in the nature of man
Ideas of the “Noble Savage” (education and reason were both
corruptible), “savages” worthy to observe
 Equality of social classes (in theory… middle classes still
asserted themselves over lower classes). Meritocracy vs.
Aristocracy
 Artists as misunderstood geniuses, blessed and cursed by their
art, commoners couldn’t understand. It led to a melancholy in
the art
 There was no objective set of external criteria for achieving
art or critiquing art.
 Interest in the old and classic (closer to Primitivism):
folktales, epics, ancient civilizations, Egypt, and mythology
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 The
focus was not so much on the art, but on
the artist or the perceiver of the art.
This subjectivity is used again now, the reader/viewer brings meaning to art!
Just like your IB training.
Delacroix
Goya
Opinions Vary (esp. across historical texts) but:
 Beethoven
 Franz Schubert
 Hector Berlioz
 Frédéric Chopin
 Giuseppi Verdi (Aida by the way is playing at the
Seattle Opera this year)
 Franz Liszt
 Joahnnes Brahms
 Pytor Tchaikovsky
 George Bizet (Carmen is playing Seattle now)
 Richard Wagner (remember Brunnhilde?)
 Edvard Grieg (Norwegian, composed for Ibsen)
 Edgar
Victor Hugo, for example, was
so into “the old”, in this case lofty
and ridiculous gothic architecture,
that he wrote The Hunchback of
Notre-Dame to save the cathedral
from demolition.
Allan Poe
 Nathaniel Hawthorn
 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 Erasmo
 Victor Hugo
 Washington Irving
 Herman Melville
Poetry:
 Alexander Pushkin
 José de Espronceda
 William Wordsworth
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“Rhyme
of the Ancient Mariner”)
 Lord
Byron
 Percy Bysshe Shelley
Romantic Plays
 Appealed to emotions rather than intellect
 Visual over aural
 Special effects focused on supernatural
 Retained the elevated language and noble characters of
Neoclassicism*
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Audience sizes increased
Closer seats (as opposed to balcony) became valuable
Audience participated
Natural settings
Gas lighting
Many Special Effects: Flying, trap doors, water pump
systems, moving panoramas (illusions of traveling),
treadmills (horse races on stage!), volcanic eruptions, etc.
Moving Panorama
 While
Romanticism was not at all realistic in
its acting, drama, or direction, in set,
costume, and lighting, it attempted to be as
realistic as possible.
 Romanticism inadvertently paved the way for
easier acceptance of Realism.
 The theater became popular and accepted by
common man
 An
experiment, make theater useful to society
 New thinking in the world:
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Scientific Observation
Truth verified through science
Human problems should be solved through science
THREE INFLUENCES ON EUROPE AND AMERICA
 Charles Darwin
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“survival of the fittest”
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Karl Marx
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People were controlled by heredity and environment
Behaviors beyond our control
Humans are natural, not above all else
Equality of the classes, equal distribution of wealth
August Comte - Ordem e Progresso (Order and
Progress)
Positivism
 “Father of Sociology” Social Sciences (Ibn Khaldun
1332 AD Egypt, Chanakya 370 BC, India)
 Science and observation can be applied to society
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Jean-Baptiste Chardin
Konstantin Korovin
 Theater
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reaches numbers of people
Art as medium for change!
 Drama
was to reflect the human condition
 Drama must use contemporary settings and
time periods, deal with everyday life and
problems as subjects
 Characters are ordinary, powerless and
without answers to their human conditions
 Still
around today
 Historically
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George Eliot
Stephen Crane
Balzac
Dostoyevsky
Tolstoy
Flaubert
Turgenev
Guy de Maupassant
Chekhov
Zola
 Considered
the father of modern realistic
drama
 Attack societies values and dealt with
unconventional subjects
 Psychological motivation emphasized
Did away with many traditional theater
techniques, soliloquies, asides, etc.
 Natural Dialogue, no lofty style of delivery
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He uses everyday language and modes of speaking,
including sentence fragments and exclamations, that
often shocked his audiences
Serious matters hide behind the banalities of
everday life
 Created a new acting style, emotion through
small gestures, pauses, and shifts in action
 Drama as social commentary and not just
entertainment
 Anticipated Modernism: individual alienation

 Political
Science Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 2,
Jun., 1929
 http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/klf.ht
m
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/arts/
design/03antiques.html
 http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/ro
mantic.html
 http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/spd130et/re
alism.htm