*Literary Terms*

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Allegory is a form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are
equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy.
Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.

Example:
Fairie Queen Spenser; Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan; Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in neighboring words.


Example:
In cliches: sweet smell of success, a dime a dozen, bigger and better, jump for joy
Wordsworth: And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind.


The matching or repetition of consonants is called alliteration, or the repeating of the same letter (or sound) at the beginning of words following each other immediately or at short intervals. A famous example is to be found in the two lines by Tennyson:


The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
The ancient poets often used alliteration instead of rhyme; in Beowulf there are three alliterations in every line. For example:


Now Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings, Leader beloved, and long he ruled In fame with all folk since his father had gone . . .
Modern poets also avail themselves of alliteration, especially as a substitute for rhyme. Edwin Markham's "Lincoln, the Man of the People" is in unrhymed blank verse, but there are many lines as alliterative as:


She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down To make a man to meet the mortal need A man to match the mountains and the sea The friendly welcome of the wayside well
Robert Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man" begins:


Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step. . . .
The eye immediately sees the alliteration in the "m's" in "Mary sat musing" and the "w's" in "Waiting for Warren. When. . . ." But it is the car that picks up the half-buried in "sounds in" lamp-flame sounds which act like faint and distant rhymes.

Like rhyme, alliteration is a great help to memory. It is powerful a device that prose has borrowed it. It is the alliteration which makes us remember such phrases as: "sink or swim," "do or die," "fuss and feathers," "the more the merrier," "watchful waiting," "poor but proud," "hale and hearty," "green as grass," "live and learn," "money makes the mare go."

While alliteration is the recurrence of single letter-sounds, there is another kind of recurrence which is the echo or repetition of a word or phrase. This is found in many kinds of poetry, from nonsense rhymes to ballads. The repeated words or syllables add an extra beat and accentuate the rhythm. They are often heard in "choruses" or "refrains," as in Shakespeare's "With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino" or Rudyard Kipling's:


For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' " Chuck him out, the brute!
But it's "Savior of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.

Excellent use of repetition occurs through the whole of Rudyard Kipling's "Tommy" "Danny Deever" and Alfred Noyes's "The Barrel-Organ" especially in such lines as:

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;
Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;
Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

Fun story filled with alliteration, Pecked by a Pesky Pelican.

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Allusion is a brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or ficticious, or to a work of art. Casual reference to a famous historical or literary figure or event.
An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.

Example:
Stephen Vincent Benet's story "By the Waters of Babylon" contains a direct reference to Psalm 137 in the Bible

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Amplification is use of bare expressions, likely to be ignored or misunderstood by a hearer or reader because of the bluntness. Emphasis through restatement with additional details.

Example:
Holofernes in Love's Labors Lost

Analogy is the comparison of two pairs which have the same relationship. The key is to ascertain the relationship between the first so you can choose the correct second pair. Part to whole, opposites, results of are types of relationships you should find.

Example:
hot is to cold as fire is to ice OR hot:cold::fire:ice

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a.naph.o.ra n. [LLat. Gk. anapherein, to repeat: ana-, again + pherein, to carry] The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs.
One of the devices of repetition, in which the same phrase is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines.

Example:
Poetry of Walt Whitman
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "And Brutus is an honorable man."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Graham, Vicki, Bishop's 'At the Fishhouses.' (Elizabeth Bishop)., Vol. 53, The Explicator, 01-01-1995, pp 114(4). "The suspension broken, repetition and anaphora set up a new rhythm which is as compelling and variable as the sea's: I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same, slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones, icily free above the stones, above the stones and then the world."

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anastrophe a.nas.tro.phe n. Inversion of the normal syntactic order of words, for example: To market went she.[Gk. anastrophe Example:
Woolf, Virgina, Works of Virginia Woolf: The Lighthouse., Monarch Notes, 01-01-1963. "Mrs. Woolf also makes use of other figures of speech such as anastrophe (the deliberate inversion of word order)..."

Aphorism is a brief saying embodying a moral, a concise statement of a principle or precept given in pointed words.

Example:
Hippocrates: Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult.
Pope: Some praise at morning what they blame at night.
Emerson: Imitation is suicide
Franklin: Lost Time is never Found again.

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Anthropomorphism is used with God or gods. The act of attributing human forms or qualities to an entities which are not human. Specifically, anthropomorphism is the describing of gods or goddesses in human forms and possessing human characteristics such as jealousy, hatred, or love.

Mythologies of ancient peoples were almost entirely concerned with anthropomorphic gods.The Greek gods such as Zeus and Apollo often were depicted in anthropomorphic forms. The avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu possessed human forms and qualities.

Current religious holds that is not logical to describe the Christian God, who is believed to be omnipotent and omnipresent, as human. However, it is extremely difficult for the average person to picture or discuss God or the gods without an anthropomorphic framework.

In art and literature, anthropomorphism frequently depicts deities in human or animal forms possessing the qualities of sentiment, speech and reasoning. A.G.H.

Reminds me of the old Mark Twain quotation "God created man in his image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment."

See Personification for more.

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Apostrophe is when an absent person, an abstract concept, or an important object is directly addressed.

Example:
With how sad steps, O moon, thou climbest the skies. Busy old fool, unruly sun.


Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds but not consonant sounds as in consonance.


Example:
fleet feet sweep by sleeping geeks.

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Cacophony is harsh, discordant sounds. Opposite of euphony.

Example:
finger of birth-strangled babe.

Bibliomancy prediction based on a Bible verse or literary passage chosen at random.

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Caesura is a natural pause or break.

Example:
England - how I long for thee!


Characterization is the method used by a writer to develop a character. The method includes (1) showing the character's appearance, (2) displaying the character's actions, (3) revealing the character's thoughts, (4) letting the character speak, and (5) getting the reactions of others.

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Conflict/Plot is the struggle found in fiction. Conflict/Plot may be internal or external and is best seen in (1) Man in conflict with another Man: (2) Man in conflict in Nature; (3) Man in conflict with self.

Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds, but not vowels, as in assonance.
Example:
lady lounges lazily , dark deep dread crept in

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Connotation is an implied meaning of a word. Opposite of denotation.
Example:
Good noght, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest (burial)

Denotation is the literal meaning of a word, the dictionary meaning. Opposite or connotation

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Poetry is a bringing together of many things: feelings, forms, phrases, figures of speech. It begins with -an emotion an emotion which, as Robert Frost said, develops into a thought, and the thought finds expression in words. "The poet's mind," wrote T. S. Eliot, is "a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together." In the act of creation "In all the "articles " - emotion, memory associations, a sense of rhythm - are fused, and the result is a new thing, a blending of all the parts, a union of the conscious and the unconscions: a poem. Words are the material with which the poet must frame his thoughts, and the greater the poet the more striking is his power of choosing and shaping words. Poetry is essentially a combination of the familiar and the surprising, and the most successful surprises are achieved by the use of carefully descriptive words or epithets.
An epithet is a word which makes the reader see the object described in a clearer or sharper light. It is both exact and imaginative. Distinctive epithets are found in the ancient Greek classic, The Odyssey: wine-dark sea...... wave-girdled island," blindfolding night." Our national flag is a star- spangled banner." In "Thanatopsis" Bryant (more poems) speaks of the ocean's "gray and melancholy waste." In " Home Thoughts from Abroad" Browning describes the "gaudy" melon flower and the "wise" thrush. Michael Lewis tells of an oncoming storm with its "frantic" wind, "whipped" clouds, and "panicky" trees. In A. E. Housman's poem, "Bredon Hill", there is a much-quoted verse which runs:
Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the colored counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.
A. E. Housman's brother, Laurence, has revealed how his famous brother found the exact and suggestive epithet "colored" to describe the scene. When he wrote the poem, A. E. Housman put down an ordinary adjective which did not satisfy him. Then, with the poem in his head, he went to bed and dreamed; in his dream he bit on the word "painted." This was better. But when lie awoke he was still not satisfied. He thought of using "sunny," "pleasant," "checkered," "crowded," and "patterned." Finally, he came back to "painted" which suddenly prompted "colored." This was not only exact and imaginative, but the consonant "c" in "colored" gave a musically repeated sound (alliteration) when joined to "counties," and thus made the line more memorable.
Turn now to a much-discussed modern poem, Amy Lowell's " Meeting-House Hill." You will notice several things about it that make it different from many other poems you know. For one thing, it is in "free verse" that is, it has a free, or irregular, rhythm. For another thing, it has no rhymes. But its outstanding feature is its daring use of words. Observe the way sight and sound are combined, so that "the curve of a blue bay" is "shrill and sweet" - and, to accentuate the shrill sweetness, it is like "the sudden springing of a tune." Everything is intensified. An ordinary white church in a city square seems as beautiful as the Parthenon, loveliest of Greek temples. The poet is so thrilled by the scene that the unmoving structure is given motion. The spire "sweeps" the sky - and the movement is intensified by the comparison of the spire with a mast in motion, a mast of a ship in full sail straining before a stiff wind. The comparison carries the poem abroad. The bay beyond the railroad track turns into a harbor with an old-fashioned clipper-ship returning from China - and the past is united with the present. All of this is accomplished by the skillful selection and unusual arrangement of words.
Rupert Brooke is another modern poet who used words with charm yet with great precision. His "The Great Lover" is an excellent example of the definition of poetry as "the best words in the best order"; it is full of epithets which are surprising but logical, exact and yet imaginative. Rupert Brooke delights the reader with such phrases as "unthinking silence," "drowsy Death," "we have beaconed the world's night," "crying flames," "feathery dust," "friendly bread," "the blue bitter smoke of wood," "many-tasting food," "the cool kindliness of sheets," "the keen unpassioned beauty of a great machine," "the benison [blessing] of hot water," "sweet water's dinzpling laugh," "the deep-panting train," "the cold graveness of iron," "turn with traitor breath."
Robert Frost admits that poetry is impossible to define, but he adds: " If I were forced to attempt to define it, I would say that poetry is words which have become deeds." This active power of words was emphasized by Emily Dickinson in one of the briefest of her poems:
A word is dead when said,
Some say.
I say it just begins to live
That day.
Poetry is a bringing together of many things: feelings, forms, phrases, figures of speech. It begins with -an emotion an emotion which, as Robert Frost said, develops into a thought, and the thought finds expression in words. "The poet's mind," wrote T. S. Eliot, is "a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together." In the act of creation "In all the "articles " - emotion, memory associations, a sense of rhythm - are fused, and the result is a new thing, a blending of all the parts, a union of the conscious and the unconscions: a poem. Words are the material with which the poet must frame his thoughts, and the greater the poet the more striking is his power of choosing and shaping words. Poetry is essentially a combination of the familiar and the surprising, and the most successful surprises are achieved by the use of carefully descriptive words or epithets.
An epithet is a word which makes the reader see the object described in a clearer or sharper light. It is both exact and imaginative. Distinctive epithets are found in the ancient Greek classic, The Odyssey: wine-dark sea...... wave-girdled island," blindfolding night." Our national flag is a star- spangled banner." In "Thanatopsis" Bryant (more poems) speaks of the ocean's "gray and melancholy waste." In " Home Thoughts from Abroad" Browning describes the "gaudy" melon flower and the "wise" thrush. Michael Lewis tells of an oncoming storm with its "frantic" wind, "whipped" clouds, and "panicky" trees. In A. E. Housman's poem, "Bredon Hill", there is a much-quoted verse which runs:
Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the colored counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.
A. E. Housman's brother, Laurence, has revealed how his famous brother found the exact and suggestive epithet "colored" to describe the scene. When he wrote the poem, A. E. Housman put down an ordinary adjective which did not satisfy him. Then, with the poem in his head, he went to bed and dreamed; in his dream he bit on the word "painted." This was better. But when lie awoke he was still not satisfied. He thought of using "sunny," "pleasant," "checkered," "crowded," and "patterned." Finally, he came back to "painted" which suddenly prompted "colored." This was not only exact and imaginative, but the consonant "c" in "colored" gave a musically repeated sound (alliteration) when joined to "counties," and thus made the line more memorable.
Turn now to a much-discussed modern poem, Amy Lowell's " Meeting-House Hill." You will notice several things about it that make it different from many other poems you know. For one thing, it is in "free verse" that is, it has a free, or irregular, rhythm. For another thing, it has no rhymes. But its outstanding feature is its daring use of words. Observe the way sight and sound are combined, so that "the curve of a blue bay" is "shrill and sweet" - and, to accentuate the shrill sweetness, it is like "the sudden springing of a tune." Everything is intensified. An ordinary white church in a city square seems as beautiful as the Parthenon, loveliest of Greek temples. The poet is so thrilled by the scene that the unmoving structure is given motion. The spire "sweeps" the sky - and the movement is intensified by the comparison of the spire with a mast in motion, a mast of a ship in full sail straining before a stiff wind. The comparison carries the poem abroad. The bay beyond the railroad track turns into a harbor with an old-fashioned clipper-ship returning from China - and the past is united with the present. All of this is accomplished by the skillful selection and unusual arrangement of words.
Rupert Brooke is another modern poet who used words with charm yet with great precision. His "The Great Lover" is an excellent example of the definition of poetry as "the best words in the best order"; it is full of epithets which are surprising but logical, exact and yet imaginative. Rupert Brooke delights the reader with such phrases as "unthinking silence," "drowsy Death," "we have beaconed the world's night," "crying flames," "feathery dust," "friendly bread," "the blue bitter smoke of wood," "many-tasting food," "the cool kindliness of sheets," "the keen unpassioned beauty of a great machine," "the benison [blessing] of hot water," "sweet water's dinzpling laugh," "the deep-panting train," "the cold graveness of iron," "turn with traitor breath."
Robert Frost admits that poetry is impossible to define, but he adds: " If I were forced to attempt to define it, I would say that poetry is words which have become deeds." This active power of words was emphasized by Emily Dickinson in one of the briefest of her poems:
A word is dead when said,
Some say.
I say it just begins to live
That day.

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EUPHONY

Euphony is soothing pleasant sounds. Opposite of cacophony.
Example:
O star (the fairest one in sight)

FLASHBACK
Flashback is action that interrupts to show an event that happened at an earlier time which is necessary to better understanding.

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FORESHADOWING

Foreshadowing is the use of hints or clues to suggest what will happen later in literature.


HYPERBOLE
Hyperbole is exaggeration or overstatement.
Example:
I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.
He's as big as a house

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IMAGE
Image is language that evokes one or all of the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching.

INTERNAL RHYME
Internal Rhyme is rhyming within a line.
Example:
I awoke to black flak.

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WORDS OUT OF ORDER: INVERSION Another device of poetry is the changing of the usual order of words. This is called inversion, and is found mostly in the work of older classical poets. But it is sometimes used by modern writers for the sake of emphasis. Emily Dickinson was fond of arranging words outside of their familiar order. For example in "Chartless" she writes "Yet know I how the heather looks" and "Yet certain am I of the spot." Instead of saying "Yet I know" and "Yet I am certain" she reverses the usual order and shifts the emphasis to the more important words. In these lines she calls attention to the swiftness of her knowledge and the power of her certainty. Similarly in "Love in Jeopardy" there is a peculiar but logical inversion. Humbert Wolfe wrote:
Here by the rose-tree
they planted once
of Love in Jeopardy
an Italian bronze.
Wolfe was describing an old statue and he wanted to suggest an old-fashioned effect. He got his "antique" effect partly by using queer rhymes like "once-bronze," and "zither-together," partly by twisting the ordinary manner of speaking. Had he written "Once upon a time they erected (or planted) a bronze figure named 'Love in Jeopardy' (or Danger) next to a rose-tree" it would have seemed commonplace, and the poet would have lost the quaintness of the picture as well as the arresting oddity of phrasing.
This is one reason why a writer chooses poetry rather than prose. By a trick of a word or the turn of a phrase, he arrests the attention of the reader, and makes him see old things in a new light. Even the very shape of a poem says " Stop! Look! and Listen!"

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Irony is an implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meant.
Three kinds of irony:
1. verbal irony is when an author says one thing and means something else.
2. dramatic irony is when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know.
3. irony of situation is a discrepency between the expected result and actual results.
Example:
"A fine thing indeed!" he muttered to himself.

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Metaphor comparison of two unlike things using the verb "to be" and not using like or as as in a simile.
Example:
He is a pig. Thou art sunshine.
Poetry is, first of all, a communication - a thought or message conveyed by the writer to the reader. It is not only an act of creation, but an act of sharing. It is therefore important to the reader that he understands how the poet uses words, how he puts fresh vigor and new meaning into words. The reader's understanding is immeasurably increased if he is familiar with the many techniques or devices of poetry. Some of these are extremely simple; a few are rather elaborate.
The simplest and also the most effective poetic device is the use of comparison. It might almost be said that poetry is founded on two main means of comparing things: simile and metaphor. We heighten our ordinary speech by the continual use of such comparisons as "fresh as a daisy," "tough as leather," "comfortable as an old shoe," "it fits like the Paper on the wall," "gay as a lark," "happy as the day is long, pretty as a picture." These are all recognizable similes; they use the words "as" or "like."
A metaphor is another kind of comparison. It is actually a condensed simile, for it omits "as" or "like." A metaphor establishes a relationship at once; it leaves more to the imagination. It is a shortcut to the meaning; it sets two unlike things side by side and makes us see the likeness between them. When Robert Burns wrote "My love is like a red, red rose" he used a simile. When Robert Herrick wrote "You are a tulip" he used a metaphor. Emily Dickinson used comparison with great originality. She mixed similes and metaphors superbly in such poems as "A Book," "Indian Summer," and "A Cemetery." One of the Poems in her group ("A Book") illustrates another device -Of poetry: association - a connection of ideas. The first two lines of "A Book" compare poetry to a ship; the next two to a horse. But Emily Dickinson thought that the words "ship" and "horse" were too commonplace. The ship became a "frigate," a beautiful full-sailed vessel of romance; and the everyday "horse," the plodding beast of the field and puller of wagons, became instead a "courser," a swift and spirited steed, an adventurous creature whose hoofs beat out a brisk rhythm, "prancing" - like a page of inspired poetry.
Thus, because of comparison and association, familiar objects become strange and glamorous. It might be said that a Poet is a man who sees resemblances in all things.
Metaphors: Ideas That Tickle Your Mind

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Metonymy
Metonymy is substituting a word for another word closely associated with it.
Example:
bowing to the sceptered isle. (Great Britain)




Motif
*A recurrent thematic element in an artistic or literary work.
*A dominant theme or central idea.

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The term has several possible meanings: (1) the principle of retributive justice (sometimes referred to as "poetic justice") by which good characters are rewarded and bad characters are appropriately punished; (2) the agent or deliverer of such justice, who exacts vengeance and meets out rewards, as, for example the Duke in Shakespeare's *Measure for Measure*. In classical mythology, Nemesis was the patron goddess of vengeance; the expression often denotes a character in a drama who brings about another's downfall, so that Hamlet may be said to be Claudius's nemesis in Shakespeare's tragedy

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Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it represents.
also imitative harmony
Example:
splash, wow, gush, kerplunk
Such devices bring out the full flavor of words. Comparison and association are sometimes strengthened by syllables which imitate or reproduce the sounds they describe. When this occurs, it is called onomatopoeia (a Greek word meaning name-making "), for the sounds literally make the meaning in such words as "buzz," "crash," "whirr," "clang" "hiss," "purr," "squeak," "mumble," "hush," "boom." Poe lets us hear the different kinds of sounds made by different types of bells in his famous poem "The Bells." His choice of the right word gives us the right sound when he speaks of "tinkling" sleigh bells; "clanging" fire bells; mellow "chiming" wedding bells; "tolling," "moaning," and "groaning" funeral bells.
Tennyson makes us feel the heaviness of a drowsy summer day by using a series of "in" sounds in the wonderfully weighted lines:
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Countless examples of association of ideas and imitation of sounds may be found in this volume. Two of the most striking and dramatic are Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo" and G. K. Chesterton's "Lepanto". No poems written in our time are richer in vivid colors, galloping rhythms, and constantly varying sound effects

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Paradox reveals a kind of truth which at first seems contradictory.
Example:
Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage
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PUNS
the usually humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound.
A pun is a figure of speech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. A pun can rely on the assumed equivalency of multiple similar words (homonymy), of different shades of meaning of one word (polysemy), or of a literal meaning with a metaphor. Bad puns are often considered to be cheesy.
Walter Redfern (in Puns, Blackwell, London, 1984) succinctly said: "To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms".

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An Oxymoron is a combination of contradictory or incongruous words, such as 'Cruel Kindness' or 'Jumbo Shrimp' (Jumbo means 'large' while Shrimp means 'small').
It is a literary figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory words, terms, phrases or ideas are combined to create a rhetorical effect by paradoxical means.
The word 'Oxymoron' is originally derived from the Greek elements: oxy = sharp and moros (moron) = dull (foolish). 'Oxymoron' is the singular form, and 'Oxymora' (or 'Oxymorons') is the plural form.
Some Oxymorons are not obvious, some may require an understanding of verbal or regional interpretations, and some may even indicate certain prejudices.
Oxymorons are not necessarily mistakes or errors. They make effective titles and appealing phrases, and some are meant to be humorous.

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Pathetic fallacy (puh-THET-ik FAL-uh-see) noun
The attribution of human traits to nature or inanimate objects.
[Coined by John Ruskin in 1856.]
"A good metaphor should never be missed, and Hardie, a poet before she was a novelist, is alert, in a labored sort of way, to the possibilities of some fine pathetic fallacy. One passage, after a pointless bout of cruelty by Hannie, describes her black mood: `She felt rudderless and directionless, like the dead sheep the November rains had carried down the river. Day after day it had drifted up and down, up and down, moving swiftly away with the pull of the sea's ebbing tide, pushing back again as it rose. Bloated, a perch for the gulls. Until it snagged on some drowned tree and left off its journeying.'" Catherine Lockerbie, Green Unpleasant Land, New York Times Book Review, Dec 22, 2002.
"Sefan Ruzowitzky generates terror and suspense effectively with an eccentric cast, film and lighting techniques. Flickering fluorescent lights and other eerie phenomena function effectively as pathetic fallacy."
`Anatomie': A Good Film to Dissect, The Korea Times (Seoul), Jun 20, 2001.

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Rhyme is a pattern of words that contain similar sounds.
Example:
go/show/glow/know/though
Rhythm: The dictionary tells us it is "a movement with uniform recurrence of a beat or accent." In its crudest form rhythm has a beat with little or no meaning. Savages repeat strongly marked syllables to evoke a charm or magic- spell; children use them in games and counting-out rhymes. In poetry, rhythm, broadly speaking, is a recognizable pulse, or "recurrence," which gives a distinct beat to a line and also gives it a shape.
Rhyme is not only a recurrence but a matching of sounds. The pleasure of pairing words to make a kind of musical echo is as old as mankind. The child of this generation may be millions of years away from prehistoric man, but the lullabies and dancing games of today are not much different from those of the cave-dweller. As in the old days, there is a real connection between poetry and magic, between poetry and memory. Children begin with rhyme and rhythm; even before they can talk, boys and girls echo nursery rhymes and the jingles of Mother Goose. They learn their numbers painlessly by repeating such rhymes as:
One, two,
Buckle my shoe.
Three, four,
Shut the door.
They know the days of the month by memorizing:
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November....
They even pick up bits of history by remembering such simple rhymes as:
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
In fourteen-hundred-ninety-two
But it is not only children who find things easier when they are said in rhyme and rhythm. Farmers and housewives prefer verse to prose for their wise sayings; the music of a rhyme helps them to remember. It points up their proverbs and gives a quick turn to the meaning:
A sunshiny shower
Won't last an hour.
Rain before seven;
Clear by eleven.
March winds and April showers
Bring forth May flowers.
Wishes
Won't wash dishes.
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
The devices of poetry are always being used - and abused in daily life. Not only children and farmers but businessmen understand the value of verse and "apt alliteration's artful aid." Roadside signs, cards in buses, advertisements in newspapers, commercials on radio and television, prove that an idea fastens itself quickly in the mind when it is rhymed. Christmas cards, birthday wishes, condolences, and greetings are most effective when they are in verse. The fourteenth of February brings out the poet in everyone.
Even on the lowest plane, poetry is rarely "rhyme without reason." It sharpens the wit's cleverness and heightens the lover's dearest sentiments. Poetry ranges all the way from the childish " Roses are red, violets are blue" to Robert Burns's immortal song "My love is like a red, red rose." When we are deeply aroused, we express ourselves in some sort of poetry; our emotions spill over into a football cheer, a ballad, or a love lyric. A poem expresses our inner excitement, eases our pain, and glorifies our joy. Because of its strongly accented beat ana its ability to convey intense feeling, poetry is the most powerful form of speech.
Rhyme has been called a kind of musical punctuation. It is not only an aid to memory, as we have discovered in proverbs and nursery rhymes, but it is also a pleasure to the ear. Poetry should not only be read, it should be read aloud. To see it on the printed page is not enough; poetry should be heard as well as seen. "The Ballad of Father Gilligan" by William Butler Yeats and "Gunga Din" by Rudyard Kipling are both narrative. Totally different in theme, they have one thing in common: a simple but superb use of rhyme. The strong accent of the rhyming captivates the reader and lifts the story above its prose statement into poetry.
Rhyme is the matching of vowels and the coupling of vowel sounds. Like rhythm, it is a kind of recurrence - but rhyme has a recurrence of sound as well as beat. The following jingle has rhythm:
One, two,
Buckle my belt;
Three, four,
Snap the lock.
The rhythm of these lines becomes more musical - and much easier to remember -when rhyme is added. We then get the recurring vowel sound of:
One, two,
Buckle my shoe;
Three, four,
Shut the door.

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Simile is the comparison of two unlike things using like or as. Related to metaphor
Example:
He eats like a pig. Vines like golden prisons.
Poetry is, first of all, a communication - a thought or message conveyed by the writer to the reader. It is not only an act of creation, but an act of sharing. It is therefore important to the reader that he understands how the poet uses words, how he puts fresh vigor and new meaning into words. The reader's understanding is immeasurably increased if he is familiar with the many techniques or devices of poetry. Some of these are extremely simple; a few are rather elaborate.
The simplest and also the most effective poetic device is the use of comparison. It might almost be said that poetry is founded on two main means of comparing things: simile and metaphor. We heighten our ordinary speech by the continual use of such comparisons as "fresh as a daisy," "tough as leather," "comfortable as an old shoe," "it fits like the Paper on the wall," "gay as a lark," "happy as the day is long, pretty as a picture." These are all recognizable similes; they use the words "as" or "like."
A metaphor is another kind of comparison. It is actually a condensed simile, for it omits "as" or "like." A metaphor establishes a relationship at once; it leaves more to the imagination. It is a shortcut to the meaning; it sets two unlike things side by side and makes us see the likeness between them. When Robert Burns wrote "My love is like a red, red rose" he used a simile. When Robert Herrick wrote "You are a tulip" he used a metaphor. Emily Dickinson used comparison with great originality. She mixed similes and metaphors superbly in such poems as "A Book," "Indian Summer," and "A Cemetery." One of the Poems in her group ("A Book") illustrates another device -Of poetry: association - a connection of ideas. The first two lines of "A Book" compare poetry to a ship; the next two to a horse. But Emily Dickinson thought that the words "ship" and "horse" were too commonplace. The ship became a "frigate," a beautiful full-sailed vessel of romance; and the everyday "horse," the plodding beast of the field and puller of wagons, became instead a "courser," a swift and spirited steed, an adventurous creature whose hoofs beat out a brisk rhythm, "prancing" - like a page of inspired poetry.
Thus, because of comparison and association, familiar objects become strange and glamorous. It might be said that a Poet is a man who sees resemblances in all things.

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. A manner of writing that mixes a critical attitude with wit and humor in an effort to improve mankind and human institutions. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and several other techniques are almost always present. The satirist may insert serious statements of value or desired behavior, but most often he relies on an implicit moral code, understood by his audience and paid lip service by them. The satirist's goal is to point out the hypocrisy of his target in the hope that either the target or the audience will return to a real following of the code. Thus, satire is inescapably moral even when no explicit values are promoted in the work, for the satirist works within the framework of a widely spread value system. Many of the techniques of satire are devices of comparison, to show the similarity or contrast between two things. A list of incongruous items, an oxymoron, metaphors, and so forth are examples..

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Stream of consciousness:

* phrase used by William James in 1890 to describe the unbroken flow of thought and awareness of the waking mind

* a special mode of narration that undertakes to capture the full spectrum and the continuous flow of a character's mental process

* sense perceptions mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts and memories, experiences, feelings and random associations

* in a literary context used to describe the narrative method where novelists describe the unspoken thoughts and feelings of their characters without resorting to objective description or conventional dialogue

* Eduard Dujardin's Les lauriers sont coupés credited by Joyce as the first example of this technique

* 'interior monologue' an alternate term

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SymbolSymbol is using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning.
*The practice of representing things by means of symbols or of attributing symbolic meanings or significance to objects, events, or relationships.
*A system of symbols or representations.
*A symbolic meaning or representation.
Example:
the bird of night (owl is a symbol of death)



Synecdoche

Synecdoche is when one uses a part to represent the whole.
Example:
lend me your ears (give me your attention).

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verisimilitude \ver-uh-suh-MIL-uh-tood; -tyood\, noun:
1. The appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be true.
2. Something that has the appearance of being true or real.

In an attempt to create verisimilitude, in addition to the usual vulgarities, the dialogue is full of street slang.
--Wilborn Hampton, "'Sugar Down Billie Hoak': An Unexpected Spot to Find a Father," New York Times, August 1, 1997

For those plays, Ms. Smith interviewed hundreds of people of different races and ages, somehow managing to internalize their expressions, anger and quirks enough to be able to portray them with astonishing verisimilitude.
--Sarah Boxer, "An Experiment in Artistic Democracy," New York Times, August 7, 2000

Since his death in 1883, the father of modern communism has attracted a legion of biographers, and most have depicted him as not only extremely stormy--vicious towards his enemies, brusquely domineering even among friends--but as the worst kind of arid intellectual, a Teutonic pedant who inhabited a world of theory and who never hesitated to elevate his abstractions above the concerns of common humanity. The old man's massive forehead, penetrating eyes and enormous beard lent verisimilitude to this unappealing portrait.
--"Charm itself," Economist, October 16, 1999

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Aristotelian Definition of Tragedy

Aristotelean defined tragedy as "the imitation of an action that is serious
and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself." It incorporates
"incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish the catharsis of
such emotions."

The tragic hero will most effectively evoke both our pity and terror if he
is neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly evil but a combination of both.

The tragic effect will be stronger if the hero is "better than we are," in
that he is of higher than ordinary moral worth. Such a man is shown as
suffering a change in fortune from happiness to misery because of a mistaken
act, to which he is led by his hamartia (his "effort of judgment") or, as it
is often literally translated, his tragic flaw.

One common form of hamartia in Greek tragedies was hubris, that "pride" or
overweening self-confidance which leads a protagonist to disregard a divine
warning or to violate an important law

Definition of a Tragic Hero

A tragic hero has the potential for greatness but is doomed to fail. He is
trapped in a situation where he cannot win. He makes some sort of tragic
flaw, and this causes his fall from greatness. Even though he is a fallen
hero, he still wins a moral victory, and his spirit lives on.


TRAGIC HEROES ARE:

BORN INTO NOBILITY:

RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN FATE

ENDOWED WITH A TRAGIC FLAW

DOOMED TO MAKE A SERIOUS ERROR IN JUDGEMENT

EVENTUALLY, TRAGIC HEROES

FALL FROM GREAT HEIGHTS OR HIGH ESTEEM

REALIZE THEY HAVE MADE AN IRREVERSIBLE MISTAKE

FACES AND ACCEPTS DEATH WITH HONOR

MEET A TRAGIC DEATH

FOR ALL TRAGIC HEROES

THE AUDIENCE IS AFFECTED BY PITY and/or FEAR

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SyntaxFrom the Webster's:
Main Entry: syn•tax<br Pronunciation: 'sin-"taks
Function: noun
Etymology: French or Late Latin; French syntaxe, from Late Latin syntaxis, from Greek, from syntassein to arrange together, from syn- + tassein to arrange
1 a : the way in which linguistic elements (as words) are put together to form constituents (as phrases or clauses) b : the part of grammar dealing with this
2 : a connected or orderly system : harmonious arrangement of parts or elements
3 : syntactics especially as dealing with the formal properties of languages or calculi
Theme

Theme is the general idea or insight about life that a writer wishes to express. All of the elements of literary terms contribute to theme. A simple theme can often be stated in a single sentence.
Example:
"After reading (this book, poem, essay), I think the author wants me to understand......." provided by Judy Iliff & Fran Claggett
---------
Tone
Tone is the attitude a writer takes towards a subject or character: serious, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, solemn, objective. Similar to Mood
Example: The tone set by the mayor, made the city a very tense and angry place to live and work.

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Setting is determining Time and Place in fiction.

Stanza
Stanza is a unified group of lines in poetry.
(notice: there is no equivalent for ii in persian literature.)

Verse
Verse is a line of poetry.

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What is Literature?


The Elements of Literature can be at times very hard to define. First we must ask ourselves one question. "What is literature? Nobody has found a universally satisfactory answer to that question. Many people would agree that literature is words artfully arranged to stimulate feelings and impart understanding. Some would also agree that literature can be grouped into three genres: fiction, poetry, and Drama" (Jacobus 3). From these three basic genres, more genres branch out. Historical fiction is one of these branches. "A work of literature must both entertain and enlighten the reader; most other kinds of writing, by contrast, aim only at enlightenment" (Jacobus 3).



Elements of Fiction

A close reading accounts for setting, character, theme, plot, style, action, and other important elements of literature in fiction. By identifying those elements and by understanding how they work, you prepare yourself to read closely and interpret well" (Jacobus 68). "[When analyzing fiction], one job is to decide which elements are most interesting to talk about in any story you decide to interpret. When you find that character is most important or most challenging, then your discussion may center on character. Other times setting and mood or point of view will provide you with most of your opportunities" (Jacobus 70)

Setting and Mood
"Setting refers to the environment, the physical place and time, in which the story takes place. [...] The mood [which is the] feelings communicated by the setting [...] is usually established by description" (Jacobus 68).

Character and Psychology
"The characters are the people that are in the story. Character, characterization A character is a person presented in a dramatic or narrative work, and characterization is the process by which a writer makes that character seem real to the reader. A hero or heroine, often called the protagonist, is the central character who engages the reader’s interest and empathy. The antagonist is the character, force, or collection of forces that stands directly opposed to the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of the story. A static character does not change throughout the work, and the reader’s knowledge of that character does not grow, whereas a dynamic character undergoes some kind of change because of the action in the plot. A flat character embodies one or two qualities, ideas, or traits that can be readily described in a brief summary. They are not psychologically complex characters and therefore are readily accessible to readers. Some flat characters are recognized as stock characters; they embody stereotypes such as the "dumb blonde" or the "mean stepfather." They become types rather than individuals. Round characters are more complex than flat or stock characters, and often display the inconsistencies and internal conflicts found in most real people. They are more fully developed, and therefore are harder to summarize. Authors have two major methods of presenting characters: showing and telling. Showing allows the author to present a character talking and acting, and lets the reader infer what kind of person the character is. In telling, the author intervenes to describe and sometimes evaluate the character for the reader. Characters can be convincing whether they are presented by showing or by telling, as long as their actions are motivated. Motivated action by the characters occurs when the reader or audience is offered reasons for how the characters behave, what they say, and the decisions they make. Plausible action is action by a character in a story that seems reasonable, given the motivations presented" (Meyer). "In some works characters possess a psychological complexity resembling our own. Hamlet, for instance, is one of literature's most psychologically complex characters" (Jacobus 69). "Characterization is the method used by a writer to develop a character. The method includes (1) showing the character's appearance, (2) displaying the character's actions, (3) revealing the character's thoughts, (4) letting the character speak, and (5) getting the reactions of others" (Nellen Literary Terms).

Style and Theme
"Style refers to artistic decisions in language and narrative techniques. Writers usually develop distinctive personal styles. All stories are about something and therefore have one or more themes" (Jacobus 69). One theme of The Bluest Eye, is the "fall of 1941"(Morrison 213).

Plot and Narrative Structure
"An author’s selection and arrangement of incidents in a story to shape the action and give the story a particular focus. Discussions of plot include not just what happens, but also how and why things happen the way they do. Stories that are written in a pyramidal pattern divide the plot into three essential parts. The first part is the rising action, in which complication creates some sort of conflict for the protagonist. The second part is the climax, the moment of greatest emotional tension in a narrative, usually marking a turning point in the plot at which the rising action reverses to become the falling action. The third part, the falling action (or resolution) is characterized by diminishing tensions and the resolution of the plot’s conflicts and complications" (Meyer).

Point of view
"The question of point of view is, Who tells the story? Do you trust the narrator's accuracy?" (Jacobus 69). "Every story is told by a narrator, who is created by the author and usually different from the author's voice. The narrator controls the story by talking from a particular point of view. Points of view have traditionally been classed as first person, second person, and third-person" (Jacobus 121).

Irony and Tone
"Some stories are meant to be ironic: they say one thing, but mean another. You recognize irony by observing the language in which the story is told. In a few cases, you may not be able to tell whether the writer is being sincere or ironic. [...] The tone of a story may reveal an author's attitude toward characters or the values. The tone of these stories suggests sympathy for the characters. In some stories the tone is judgmental; in others it is neutral" (Jacobus 69).

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Another element of literature are the "elements of drama, such as plot, characterization, setting, dialogue, [style,] and theme, overlap those of short fiction. Others, such as stage directions, are specific to drama. In certain kinds of plays specific elements may dominate. [...] In most good plays the elements balance one another"(Jacobus1113). "Itself a genre of literature, drama can also be divided into two main genres: tragedy and comedy. These two genres, [...] constituted the forms of drama known to the Greeks. Successive ages have added the genre tragicomedy, a mixed form. For instance the Elizabethen stage added histories and romances, which sometimes combined tragedy and comedy"(Jacobus 1051).

Climax
"Occurs when the forces of the [protagonist] and the antagonist meet head-on. In some plays, it occurs simultaneously with the crisis, the moment in which the rising action changes to the falling action" (Jacobus 1113-14).

Comedy "A less serious kind of drama than tragedy. It is not always funny, nor do things always end absolutely happily, but the resolution is brighter than in tragedies. Comedies are also more amusing and do not excite the emotions of pity and [fear]. [...] Comedy often relies on complications that center on mistaken identity, conflicts between generations, and numerous misunderstandings. Comedy usually relies on wit and humor for its effect. [...] The subject of comedy is often the weakness of human ambition of the pretences of characters who think they are better than others. Comedy often relies on the dynamics of multiple plots, often contrasting the actions of characters in high station with those in low station" (Jacobus 1064).

Conclusion
"Includes the remaining falling action. [...] This section of the play is [also] called the denouement, which means an untying or unraveling. One description of a dramatic plot is the tying of a knot: the beginning and middle of the play tie things into knots; the denouement unties the knot or unravels the plot. In a tragedy, the denouement is often called the catastrophe" (Jacobus 1114).

Dialogue
"The verbal exchanges between characters. Dialogue makes the characters seem real to the reader or audience by revealing firsthand their thoughts, responses, and emotional states" (Meyer).

Exposition
Is also known as the introduction. "Not all plays follow this pattern, but most tragedies begin by introducing the characters with an exposition of previous action that reveals their current circumstances" (Jacobus 1113).

Falling action
"Includes the elements of the plot in which the hero [protagonist] moves steadily toward the inevitable conclusion" (Jacobus 1113).

Rising action
"Introduces the conflict: the problems that must be solved of the trials that must be faced. The rising action in Hamlet begins with the appearance of the ghost, and the exciting force is the ghost's revelation that he has been murdered and that Hamlet must avenge him. The middle of the drama includes the conflicts facing the hero. Among them in Hamlet are Hamlet's mixed feelings regarding his mother, Claudius's attempt to get Hamlet to stop mourning his father, the plot to spy on Hamlet, and Hamlet's own efforts to discover the truth about his father's death. All of these constitute the rising action, the period in which the [protagonist] is in ascendancy" (Jacobus 1113).

Stage directions
"Are not provided by every playwright. Some playwrights, like Shakespeare, provide only scant suggestions for action.[...] Some directions suggest emotions [...]. Yet other directions are more complex and subtle, suggesting difficult actions for performance onstage" (Jacobus 1118).

Tragedy
"Tragedy tells of the fall of a worthwhile, usually noble, character. Greek and Elizabethan tragedies relied on a protagonist [...] who was of high station, but modern tragedies also use protagonists of low or middle station as a means of exploring their worthiness. Traditionally, tragic heroes or heroines faced an unexpected fate. Fate, or destiny, dominates tragedy, and the plot reveals the protagonist resisting fate before finally yielding to it. Fate in classical tragedy was determined by the will of the gods; in modern tragedy it is sometimes determined by inherent characteristics of the heroes, by the force of the environment, or by both. Tragic heroes and heroines face their fate with determination, courage and bravery. Thus, they are worthy of our respect. [...] Tragedy is, above all, serious in tone and importance. It focuses on a hero or heroine whose potential is great but whose efforts to realize that potential are thwarted by fate: circumstances beyond his or her control" (Jacobus 1052). Tragedies also need to invoke the emotions of pity and terror.

Tragicomedy
"Tragedy usually ends with exile, death, or a similar resolution. Comedy usually ends with a new beginning: a marriage or another chance of some sort. But tragicomedy often ends with no clear resolution: the circumstances are so complex that the audience may feel perplexed at the ending.[...] Tragicomedy cannot be described in terms of nameable emotions such as pity and fear or ridicule and contempt. Every tragicomedy explores a range of emotions that may include all these and more. Thus the audience response to tragicomedy is usually complex and unsettling.[...] Clear resolutions are often not possible in tragicomedy" (Jacobus 1074-5).

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First-Person Narrator
"The story is told from the point of view 'I,' as in Charles Boxter's "Gryphon." The I-narrator may be part of the action or an observer. As readers, we cannot know or witness anything the narrator does not tell us. We therefore share all the limitations of the narrator. This technique has the advantage of a sharp and precise focus. Moreover, you feel part of the story because the narrator's 'I' echoes the 'I' already in your own mind" (Jacobus 121).

Second-Person Narrator
"This narrator speaks directly to the reader: "You walk in the room and what do you see? It's Mullins again, and you say, 'Out. I've done with him.'" This point of view is rare primarily because it is artificial and self-conscious. It seems to invite identification on the part of the reader with the narrator, but it often fails"(Jacobus 121).

Third-Person Narrator
"This is the most common narrative style, illustrated by John Cheever's "The Swimmer":"His life was not confining and the delight he took in this observation could not be explained by its suggestion of escape" [(Cheever 2044).] Third-person narration permits the author to be omniscient (all-knowing) when necessary but also to bring the focus tightly in on the central character by limiting observation only to what that character could possible witness or recall. One emotional effect of the technique is the acceptance of the authority of the narrator. In essence, the narrator sounds like the author" (Jacobus 121).

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Modernism, is a trend of thought which affirms the power of human beings to make, improve and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation. The term covers a variety of political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. Broadly, modernism describes a series of progressive cultural movements in art and architecture, music, literature and the applied arts which emerged in the decades before 1914. Embracing change and the present, modernism encompasses the works of artists, thinkers, writers and designers who rebelled against late 19th century academic and historicist traditions, and confronted the new economic, social and political aspects of the emerging modern world.

In the search for continual improvement that characterizes modernism, individual modern movements often disclaim the authenticity of other modern movements over issues such as the relative importance of objectivity and subjectivity, simplicity versus complexity, high versus low and other perceived dichotomies. The reconciliation of apparent opposites has then given rise to additional modernist forms.

Some divide the 20th century into modern and postmodern periods, whereas others see them as two parts of the same movement.

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Historical outline


Modernism as a tendency emerged in the mid-19th century, particularly in Paris, France, and was rooted in the idea that the "traditional" forms of art, literature, social organization and daily life had become outdated, and that it was therefore essential to sweep them aside. In this it drew on previous revolutionary movements, including liberalism and communism. Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was "holding back" progress, and replacing it with new, and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end. In essence, the modernist movement argued that the new realities of the industrial and mechanized age were permanent and imminent, and that people should adapt their world view to accept that what was new was also good and beautiful.

Precursors to modernism

The first half of the 19th century for Europe was marked by a number of wars and revolutions, which reveal the rise of the ideas and doctrines now identified as Romanticism: Emphasis on individual subjective experience, the supremacy of "Nature" as a subject for art, revolutionary or radical extensions of expression, and individual liberty. By mid-century, however, a synthesis of these ideas with stable governing forms had emerged, partly in reaction to the failed Romantic Revolutions of 1848. It was exemplified by Otto von Bismarck's realpolitik and by "practical" philosophical ideas such as positivism. Called by various names — in Great Britain it is designated the "Victorian era" — this stabilizing synthesis was rooted in the idea that what was real dominated over what was subjective.

Central to this synthesis were common assumptions and institutional frames of reference, including the religious norms found in Christianity, scientific norms found in classical physics, and doctrines that asserted that the depiction of external reality from an objective standpoint was in fact possible. Cultural critics and historians label this set of doctrines Realism, though this term is not universal. In philosophy, the rationalist and positivist movements established a primacy of reason and system.

Against the current ran a series of ideas, some of them direct continuations of Romantic schools of thought. Notable were the agrarian and revivalist movements in plastic arts and poetry (e.g. the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the philosopher John Ruskin). Rationalism also drew responses from the anti-rationalists in philosophy. In particular, Hegel's dialectic view of civilization and history drew responses from Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard, who were major influences on Existentialism. All of these separate reactions together began to be seen as offering a challenge to any comfortable ideas of certainty derived by civilization, history, or pure reason.

From the 1870s onward, the ideas that history and civilization were inherently progressive and that progress was always good came under increasing attack. Writers like Wagner and Ibsen had been reviled for their own critiques of contemporary civilization and for their warnings that accelerating "progress" would lead to the creation of individuals detached from social norms and isolated from their fellow men. The argument arose not merely that the values of the artist and those of society were different, but that society was antithetical to progress, and could not move forward in its present form. Philosophers called into question the previous optimism. The work of Schopenhauer was labelled "pessimistic" for its idea of the "negation of the will", an idea that would be both rejected and incorporated by later thinkers such as Nietzsche.

Two of the most disruptive thinkers of the period were, in biology, Charles Darwin and, in political science, Karl Marx. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty of the general public, and the sense of human uniqueness of the intelligentsia. The notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as "lower animals" proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx seemed to present a political version of the same proposition: that problems with the economic order were not transient, the result of specific wrong doers or temporary conditions, but were fundamentally contradictions within the "capitalist" system. Both thinkers would spawn defenders and schools of thought that would become decisive in establishing modernism.

Separately, in the arts and letters, two ideas originating in France would have particular impact. The first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors (en plein air). Impressionist paintings demonstrated that human beings do not see objects, but instead see light itself. The school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners, and became increasingly influential. Initially rejected from the most important commercial show of the time — the government-sponsored Paris Salon — the art was shown at the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by inferior artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention, and opened commercial doors to the movement.

The second school was Symbolism, marked by a belief that language is expressly symbolic in its nature, and that poetry and writing should follow whichever connection the sheer sound and texture of the words create. The poet Stéphane Mallarmé would be of particular importance to what would occur afterwards.

At the same time social, political, and economic forces were at work that would become the basis to argue for a radically different kind of art and thinking. Chief among these was steam-powered industrialization, which produced buildings that combined art and engineering in new industrial materials such as cast iron to produce railroad bridges and glass-and-iron train sheds, or the Eiffel Tower, which broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be, and at the same time offered a radically different environment in urban life.

The miseries of industrial urbanity, and the possibilities created by scientific examination of subjects brought changes that would shake a European civilization which had, until then, regarded itself as having a continuous and progressive line of development from the Renaissance. With the telegraph's harnessing of a new power, offering instantaneity at a distance, the experience of time itself was altered.

The breadth of the changes can be seen in how many disciplines are described, in their pre-20th century form, as being "classical", including physics, economics, and arts such as ballet.

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Clement Greenberg wrote "What can be safely called Modernism emerged in the middle of the last century— and rather locally, in France, with Baudelaire in literature and Manet in painting, and perhaps with Flaubert, too, in prose fiction. (It was a while later, and not so locally, that Modernism appeared in music and architecture)."[1] The "avant-garde" was what Modernism was called at first, and the term remained to describe movements which identify themselves as attempting to overthrow some aspect of tradition or the status quo.

In the 1890s a strand of thinking began to assert that it was necessary to push aside previous norms entirely, instead of merely revising past knowledge in light of current techniques. The growing movement in art paralleled such developments as the Theory of Relativity in physics; the increasing integration of the internal combustion engine and industrialization; and the rise of social sciences in public policy. It was argued that, if the nature of reality itself was in question, and if restrictions which had been in place around human activity were falling, then art, too, would have to radically change. Thus, in the first fifteen years of the twentieth century a series of writers, thinkers, and artists made the break with traditional means of organizing literature, painting, and music.

Sigmund Freud offered a view of subjective states involving an unconscious mind full of primal impulses and counterbalancing restrictions, a view that Carl Jung would combine with a belief in natural essence to stipulate a collective unconscious that was full of basic typologies that the conscious mind fought or embraced. This suggested that people's impulses towards breaking social norms were not the product of being childish or ignorant, but were instead essential to the nature of the human animal, the ideas of Darwin having already introduced the concept of "man, the animal" to the public mind.

Friedrich Nietzsche championed a philosophy in which forces, specifically the 'Will to power', were more important than facts or things. Similarly, the writings of Henri Bergson championed the vital 'life force' over static conceptions of reality. What united all these writers was a romantic distrust of the Victorian positivism and certainty. Instead they championed, or, in the case of Freud, attempted to explain, irrational thought processes through the lens of rationality and holism. This was connected with the century-long trend to thinking in terms of holistic ideas, which would include an increased interest in the occult, and "the vital force".

Out of this collision of ideals derived from Romanticism, and an attempt to find a way for knowledge to explain that which was as yet unknown, came the first wave of works, which, while their authors considered them extensions of existing trends in art, broke the implicit contract that artists were the interpreters and representatives of bourgeois culture and ideas. These "modernist" landmarks include Arnold Schoenberg's atonal ending to his Second String Quartet in 1908, the abstract expressionist paintings of Wassily Kandinsky starting in 1903 and culminating with the founding of the Blue Rider group in Munich, and the rise of cubism from the work of Picasso and Georges Braque in 1908.

Powerfully influential in this wave of modernity were the theories of Freud, who argued that the mind had a basic and fundamental structure, and that subjective experience was based on the interplay of the parts of the mind. All subjective reality was based, according to Freud's ideas, on the play of basic drives and instincts, through which the outside world was perceived. This represented a break with the past, in that previously it was believed that external and absolute reality could impress itself on an individual, as, for example, in John Locke's tabula rasa doctrine.

This wave of the modern movement broke with the past in the first decade of the twentieth century, and tried to redefine various artforms in a radical manner. Leading lights within the literary wing of this movement (or, rather, these movements) include:

Rafael Alberti
Gabriele D'Annunzio
Guillaume Apollinaire
Louis Aragon
Djuna Barnes
Basil Bunting
Jean Cocteau
Joseph Conrad
H.D.
T. S. Eliot
Paul Eluard
William Faulkner
Sigrid Hjertén
Max Jacob
James Joyce
Franz Kafka
D. H. Lawrence
Wyndham Lewis
Federico García Lorca
Marianne Moore
Robert Musil
Ezra Pound
Marcel Proust
Pierre Reverdy
Gertrude Stein
Wallace Stevens
Tristan Tzara
Paul Valery
Robert Walser
William Carlos Williams
Virginia Woolf
W. B. Yeats

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On the eve of World War I a growing tension and unease with the social order, seen in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the agitation of "radical" parties, also manifested itself in artistic works in every medium which radically simplified or rejected previous practice. In 1913, famed Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, working for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, composed Rite of Spring for a ballet, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky that depicted human sacrifice, and young painters such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were causing a shock with their rejection of traditional perspective as the means of structuring paintings—a step that none of the Impressionists, not even Cézanne, had taken.

These developments began to give a new meaning to what was termed 'Modernism': It embraced disruption, rejecting or moving beyond simple Realism in literature and art, and rejecting or dramatically altering tonality in music. This set modernists apart from 19th century artists, who had tended to believe in 'progress'. Writers like Dickens and Tolstoy, painters like Turner, and musicians like Brahms were not 'radicals' or 'Bohemians', but were instead valued members of society who produced art that added to society, even if it was, at times, critiquing less desirable aspects of it. Modernism, while it was still "progressive" increasingly saw traditional forms and traditional social arrangements as hindering progress, and therefore the artist was recast as a revolutionary, overthrowing rather than enlightening.

Futurism exemplifies this trend. In 1909, F.T. Marinetti's first manifesto was published in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro; soon afterward a group of painters (Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, and Gino Severini) co-signed the Futurist Manifesto. Modeled on the famous "Communist Manifesto" of the previous century, such manifestoes put forward ideas that were meant to provoke and to gather followers. Strongly influenced by Bergson and Nietzsche, Futurism was part of the general trend of Modernist rationalization of disruption.

Modernist philosophy and art were still viewed as being part, and only a part, of the larger social movement. Artists such as Klimt and Cézanne, and composers such as Mahler and Richard Strauss were "the terrible moderns"—those farther to the avant-garde were more heard of than heard. Polemics in favour of geometric or purely abstract painting were largely confined to 'little magazines' (like The New Age in the UK) with tiny circulations. Modernist primitivism and pessimism were controversial but were not seen as representative of the Edwardian mainstream, which was more inclined towards a Victorian faith in progress and liberal optimism.

However, World War I and its subsequent events were the cataclysmic upheavals that late 19th century artists such as Brahms had worried about, and avant-gardists had embraced. First, the failure of the previous status quo seemed self-evident to a generation that had seen millions die fighting over scraps of earth—prior to the war, it had been argued that no one would fight such a war, since the cost was too high. Second, the birth of a machine age changed the conditions of life—machine warfare became a touchstone of the ultimate reality. Finally, the immensely traumatic nature of the experience dashed basic assumptions: Realism seemed to be bankrupt when faced with the fundamentally fantastic nature of trench warfare, as exemplified by books such as Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. Moreover, the view that mankind was making slow and steady moral progress came to seem ridiculous in the face of the senseless slaughter of the Great War. The First World War, at once, fused the harshly mechanical geometric rationality of technology with the nightmarish irrationality of myth.

Thus in the 1920s, modernism, which had been such a minority taste before the war, came to define the age. Modernism was seen in Europe in such critical movements as Dada, and then in constructive movements such as Surrealism, as well as in smaller movements such as the Bloomsbury Group. Each of these "modernisms", as some observers labelled them at the time, stressed new methods to produce new results. Again, Impressionism was a precursor: breaking with the idea of national schools, artists and writers adopted ideas of international movements. Surrealism, Cubism, Bauhaus, and Leninism are all examples of movements that rapidly found adopters far beyond their original geographic base.


Illustration of the Spirit of St. Louis
Exhibitions, theatre, cinema, books and buildings all served to cement in the public view the perception that the world was changing. Hostile reaction often followed, as paintings were spat upon, riots organized at the opening of works, and political figures denounced modernism as unwholesome and immoral. At the same time, the 1920s were known as the "Jazz Age", and the public showed considerable enthusiasm for cars, air travel, the telephone, and other technological advances.

By 1930, modernism had won a place in the establishment, including the political and artistic establishment, although by this time modernism itself had changed. There was a general reaction in the 1920s against the pre-1918 modernism, which emphasized its continuity with a past while rebelling against it, and against the aspects of that period which seemed excessively mannered, irrational, and emotionalistic. The post-World War period, at first, veered either to systematization or nihilism and had, as perhaps its most paradigmatic movement, Dada.

While some writers attacked the madness of the new modernism, others described it as soulless and mechanistic. Among modernists there were disputes about the importance of the public, the relationship of art to audience, and the role of art in society. Modernism comprised a series of sometimes contradictory responses to the situation as it was understood, and the attempt to wrestle universal principles from it. In the end science and scientific rationality, often taking models from the 18th Century Enlightenment, came to be seen as the source of logic and stability, while the basic primitive sexual and unconscious drives, along with the seemingly counter-intuitive workings of the new machine age, were taken as the basic emotional substance. From these two poles, no matter how seemingly incompatible, modernists began to fashion a complete worldview that could encompass every aspect of life, and express "everything from a scream to a chuckle

[Asalbanoo]

By 1930, Modernism had entered popular culture. With the increasing urbanization of populations, it was beginning to be looked to as the source for ideas to deal with the challenges of the day. As modernism gained traction in academia, it was developing a self-conscious theory of its own importance. Popular culture, which was not derived from high culture but instead from its own realities (particularly mass production) fueled much modernist innovation. Modern ideas in art appeared in commercials and logos, the famous London Underground logo being an early example of the need for clear, easily recognizable and memorable visual symbols.

Another strong influence at this time was Marxism. After the generally primitivistic/irrationalist aspect of pre-World War One Modernism, which for many modernists precluded any attachment to merely political solutions, and the neoclassicism of the 1920s, as represented most famously by T. S. Eliot and Igor Stravinsky—which rejected popular solutions to modern problems—the rise of Fascism, the Great Depression, and the march to war helped to radicalise a generation. The Russian Revolution was the catalyst to fuse political radicalism and utopianism, with more expressly political stances. Bertolt Brecht, W. H. Auden, Andre Breton, Louis Aragon and the philosophers Gramsci and Walter Benjamin are perhaps the most famous exemplars of this Modernist Marxism. This move to the radical left, however, was neither universal, nor definitional, and there is no particular reason to associate Modernism, fundamentally, with 'the left'. Modernists explicitly of 'the right' include Wyndham Lewis, William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, the Dutch author Menno ter Braak and many others.

One of the most visible changes of this period is the adoption of objects of modern production into daily life. Electricity, the telephone, the automobile—and the need to work with them, repair them and live with them—created the need for new forms of manners, and social life. The kind of disruptive moment which only a few knew in the 1880's, became a common occurrence. The speed of communication reserved for the stock brokers of 1890 became part of family life.

Modernism as leading to social organization would produce inquiries into --- and the basic bondings of the nuclear, rather than extended, family. The Freudian tensions of infantile sexuality and the raising of children became more intense, because people had fewer children, and therefore a more specific relationship with each child: the theoretical, again, became the practical and even popular

[Asalbanoo]

Many modernists believed that by rejecting tradition they could discover radically new ways of making art. Arnold Schoenberg believed that by rejecting traditional tonal harmony, the hierarchical system of organizing works of music which had guided music making for at least a century and a half, and perhaps longer, he had discovered a wholly new way of organizing sound, based in the use of twelve-note rows (See Twelve-tone technique). This led to what is known as serial music by the post-war period. Abstract artists, taking as their examples the Impressionists, as well as Paul Cézanne and Edvard Munch, began with the assumption that color and shape formed the essential characteristics of art, not the depiction of the natural world. Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich all believed in redefining art as the arrangement of pure colour. The use of photography, which had rendered much of the representational function of visual art obsolete, strongly affected this aspect of modernism. However, these artists also believed that by rejecting the depiction of material objects they helped art move from a materialist to a spiritualist phase of development.


Other modernists, especially those involved in design, had more pragmatic views. Modernist architects and designers believed that new technology rendered old styles of building obsolete. Le Corbusier thought that buildings should function as "machines for living in", analogous to cars, which he saw as machines for travelling in. Just as cars had replaced the horse, so modernist design should reject the old styles and structures inherited from Ancient Greece or from the Middle Ages. Following this machine aesthetic, modernist designers typically reject decorative motifs in design, preferring to emphasise the materials used and pure geometrical forms. The skyscraper, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York (1956 – 1958), became the archetypal modernist building. Modernist design of houses and furniture also typically emphasised simplicity and clarity of form, open-plan interiors, and the absence of clutter. Modernism reversed the 19th century relationship of public and private: in the 19th century, public buildings were horizontally expansive for a variety of technical reasons, and private buildings emphasized verticality—to fit more private space on more and more limited land. Whereas in the 20th century, public buildings became vertically oriented, and private buildings became organized horizontally. Many aspects of modernist design still persist within the mainstream of contemporary architecture today, though its previous dogmatism has given way to a more playful use of decoration, historical quotation, and spatial drama.

In other arts such pragmatic considerations were less important. In literature and visual art some modernists sought to defy expectations mainly in order to make their art more vivid, or to force the audience to take the trouble to question their own preconceptions. This aspect of modernism has often seemed a reaction to consumer culture, which developed in Europe and North America in the late 19th century. Whereas most manufacturers try to make products that will be marketable by appealing to preferences and prejudices, high modernists rejected such consumerist attitudes in order to undermine conventional thinking. The art critic Clement Greenberg expounded this theory of modernism in his essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch. Greenberg labelled the products of consumer culture "kitsch", because their design aimed simply to have maximum appeal, with any difficult features removed. For Greenberg, modernism thus formed a reaction against the development of such examples of modern consumer culture as commercial popular music, Hollywood, and advertising. Greenberg associated this with the revolutionary rejection of capitalism.

Some modernists did see themselves as part of a revolutionary culture—one that included political revolution. Others rejected conventional politics as well as artistic conventions, believing that a revolution of consciousness had greater importance than a change in political structures. Many modernists saw themselves as apolitical. Others, such as T. S. Eliot, rejected mass popular culture from a conservative position. Indeed, one could argue that modernism in literature and art functioned to sustain an elite culture which excluded the majority of the population.

[Asalbanoo]

The most controversial aspect of the modern movement was, and remains, its rejection of tradition. Modernism's stress on freedom of expression, experimentation, radicalism, and primitivism disregards conventional expectations. In many art forms this often meant startling and alienating audiences with bizarre and unpredictable effects: the strange and disturbing combinations of motifs in Surrealism, or the use of extreme dissonance and atonality in modernist music. In literature this often involved the rejection of intelligible plots or characterisation in novels, or the creation of poetry that defied clear interpretation.

The Soviet Communist government rejected modernism after the rise of Stalin on the grounds of alleged elitism, although it had previously endorsed Futurism and Constructivism; and the Nazi government in Germany deemed it narcissistic and nonsensical, as well as "Jewish" and "Negro" (See Anti-semitism). The Nazis exhibited modernist paintings alongside works by the mentally ill in an exhibition entitled Degenerate art (Louis A. Sass (Bauer 2004) compares madness, specifically schizophrenia, and modernism in a less fascist manner by noting their shared disjunctive narratives, surreal images, and incoherence). Accusations of "formalism" could lead to the end of a career, or worse. For this reason many modernists of the post-war generation felt that they were the most important bulwark against totalitarianism, the "canary in the coal mine", whose repression by a government or other group with supposed authority represented a warning that individual liberties were being threatened.

In fact, modernism flourished mainly in consumer/capitalist societies, despite the fact that its proponents often rejected consumerism itself. However, high modernism began to merge with consumer culture after World War II, especially during the 1960s. In Britain, a youth sub-culture even called itself "moderns", though usually shortened to Mods, following such representative music groups as The Who and The Kinks. The likes of Bob Dylan, Serge Gainsbourg and The Rolling Stones combined popular musical traditions with modernist verse, adopting literary devices derived from Eliot, Apollinaire and others. The Beatles developed along similar lines, creating various modernist musical effects on several albums, while musicians such as Frank Zappa, Syd Barrett and Captain Beefheart proved even more experimental. Modernist devices also started to appear in popular cinema, and later on in music videos. Modernist design also began to enter the mainstream of popular culture, as simplified and stylized forms became popular, often associated with dreams of a space age high-tech future.

This merging of consumer and high versions of modernist culture led to a radical transformation of the meaning of "modernism". Firstly, it implied that a movement based on the rejection of tradition had become a tradition of its own. Secondly, it demonstrated that the distinction between elite modernist and mass consumerist culture had lost its precision. Some writers declared that modernism had become so institutionalized that it was now "post avant-garde", indicating that it had lost its power as a revolutionary movement. Many have interpreted this transformation as the beginning of the phase that became known as Postmodernism. For others, such as, for example, art critic Robert Hughes, postmodernism represents an extension of modernism.

"Anti-modern" or "counter-modern" movements seek to emphasize holism, connection and spirituality as being remedies or antidotes to modernism. Such movements see Modernism as reductionist, and therefore subject to the failure to see systemic and emergent effects. Many Modernists came to this viewpoint, for example Paul Hindemith in his late turn towards mysticism. Writers such as Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, in The Cultural Creatives (2000), Fredrick Turner in A Culture of Hope and Lester Brown in Plan B, have articulated a critique of the basic idea of modernism itself — that individual creative expression should conform to the realities of technology. Instead, they argue, individual creativity should make everyday life more emotionally acceptable.

In some fields the effects of modernism have remained stronger and more persistent than in others. Visual art has made the most complete break with its past. Most major capital cities have museums devoted to 'Modern Art' as distinct from post-Renaissance art (circa 1400 to circa 1900). Examples include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. These galleries make no distinction between modernist and postmodernist phases, seeing both as developments within 'Modern Art'.

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Until recently, the word "modern" used to refer generically to the contemporaneous; all art is modern at the time it is made. In his Il Libro dell'Arte (translated as "The Craftsman's Handbook") in 1437, Cennino Cennini explains that Giotto made painting "modern" [see BIBLIOGRAPHY]. Giorgio Vasari writing in 16th-century Italy refers to the art of his own period as "modern." [see BIBLIOGRAPHY]

As an art historical term, "modern" refers to a period dating from roughly the 1860s through the 1970s and is used to describe the style and the ideology of art produced during that era. It is this more specific use of modern that is intended when people speak of modern art. The term "modernism" is also used to refer to the art of the modern period. More specifically, "modernism" can be thought of as referring to the philosophy of modern art.

In her book of the same title [see BIBLIOGRAPHY], Suzi Gablik asks "Has Modernism Failed?" Does she mean "failed" simply in the sense of coming to an end? Or does she mean that Modernism failed to accomplish something? The presupposition of the latter is that modernism had goals, which it failed to achieve. What were these goals?

For reasons that will become clear later, the question of modernism has been couched largely in formal terms. Art historians speak of modern art as concerned primarily with essential qualities of colour and flatness and as exhibiting over time a reduction of interest in subject matter. It is generally agreed that Édouard Manet is the first modernist painter, and that modernism in art originated in the 1860s. Paintings such as his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe are seen to have ushered in the era of modernism.

But the question can be posed: Why did Manet paint Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe? The standard answer is: Because he was interested in exploring new subject matter, new painterly values, and new spatial relationships.

But, there is another more interesting question beyond this: Why was Manet exploring new subject matter, new painterly values and spatial relationships? He produced a modernist painting, but why did he produce such a work?

When Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe was exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863 a lot of people were scandalized. When his painting of Olympia was exhibited the public were even more upset. Why was Manet painting pictures that he knew many people would find shocking?

It is in trying to answer questions like these that forces us to adopt a much broader perspective on the question of modernism. It is within this larger context that we can discover the underpinnings of the philosophy of modernism and identify its aims and goals. It will also reveal another dimension to the perception of art and the identity of the artist in the modern world.

The roots of modernism lie much deeper in history than the middle of the 19th century. For historians (but not art historians) the modern period actually begins with the Renaissance. A discussion of modernism might easily begin in the Renaissance period when we first encounter secular humanism, the notion that man (not God) is the measure of all things, a worldly civic consciousness, and "utopian" visions of a more perfect society, beginning with Sir Thomas More's Utopia in 1516.

In retrospect we can recognize in Renaissance humanism that modernist expression of confidence that humankind can learn to understand, and then master, nature and natural forces, that we can grasp the nature of the universe, and even shape our individual destinies and the future of the world.

The modernist thinking which emerged in the Renaissance began to take shape as a larger pattern of thought in the 18th century. Mention may be made first of the so-called "Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns," a dispute that dominated European intellectual life throughout the century. The crux was the issue of whether Moderns (i.e. those living in 18th century) were now morally and artistically superior to the Ancients (i.e. the Greeks and Romans). The argument introduces an important dichotomy that is to remain fundamental to the modernist question. In it may be recognized the division between conservative forces, who tended to support the argument for the Ancients, and the more progressive forces who sided with the Moderns.

In the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment saw the intellectual maturation of the humanist belief in reason as the supreme guiding principle in the affairs of humankind. Through reason the mind achieved enlightenment, and for the enlightened mind, freed from the restraints of superstition and ignorance, a whole new exciting world opened up.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement for which the most immediate stimulus was the so-called Scientific Revolution of the 17th and early 18th centuries when men like Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton, through the application of reason to the study of Nature (i.e. our world and the heavens) had made spectacular scientific discoveries in which were revealed various scientific truths.

These truths more often than not flew in the face of conventional beliefs, especially those held by the Church. For example, contrary to what the Church had maintained for centuries, the "truth" was that the Earth revolved around the sun. The idea that "truth" could be discovered through the application of reason was tremendously exciting.

The open-minded 18th-century thinker believed that virtually everything could be submitted to reason: tradition, customs, history, even art. But, more than this, it was felt that the "truth" revealed thereby could be applied in the political and social spheres to "correct" problems and "improve" the political and social condition of humankind. This kind of thinking quickly gave rise to the exciting possibility of creating a new and better society.

The "truth" discovered through reason would free people from the shackles of corrupt institutions such as the Church and the monarchy whose misguided traditional thinking and old ideas had kept people subjugated in ignorance and superstition. The belief was that "the truth shall set you free." The concept of freedom became central to the vision of a new society. Through truth and freedom, the world would be made into a better place.

Progressive 18th-century thinkers believed that the lot of humankind would be greatly improved through the process of enlightenment, from being shown the truth. With reason and truth in hand, the individual would no longer be at the mercy of religious and secular authorities which had constructed their own truths and manipulated them to their own self-serving ends. At the root of this thinking is the belief in the perfectibility of humankind.

The vision that began to take shape in the 18th century was of a new world, a better world. In 1763, Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed a new society for the individual in his Inquiry into the Nature of the Social Contract. Rousseau declared the right of liberty and equality for all men.

Such declarations were found not only in books. In the 18th century, two major attempts were made to put these ideas into practice. Such ideas, of course, were not popular with conservative and traditional elements, and their resistance had to be overcome in both cases through bloody revolution.

The first great experiment in creating a new and better society was undertaken in what was literally the new world and the new ideals were first expressed in the Declaration of Independence of the newly founded United States. It is Enlightenment thinking that informs such phrases as "we hold these truths to be self-evident" and which underpins the notion "that all men are created equal." Its wordly character is clearly reflected in its stated concern for man's happiness and welfare in this lifetime, a new notion that runs counter to the Christian focus on the afterlife.

Fundamental, too, is the notion of freedom; liberty was declared one of man's inalienable rights. In 1789, the French also attempted through bloody revolution to create a new society, with the revolutionaries rallying to the cry of equality, fraternity, and liberty.

The French Revolution, however, failed to bring about a radically new society in France. Mention may be made here of a third major attempt to create a new society along fundamentally Enlightenment lines that took place at the beginning of the 20th century. The Russian Revolution, perhaps the most idealistic and utopian of all, also failed.

It is in the ideals of the Enlightenment that the roots of Modernism, and the new role of art and the artist, are to be found. Simply put, the overarching goal of Modernism, of modern art, has been the creation of a better society.

What were the means by which this goal was to be reached? If the desire of the 18th century was to produce a better society, how was this to be brought about? How does one go about perfecting humankind and creating a new world?

As we have seen, it was the 18th-century belief that only the enlightened mind can find truth; both enlightenment and truth were discovered through the application of reason to knowledge, a process that also created new knowledge. The individual acquired knowledge and at the same time the means to discover truth in it through proper education and instruction.

Cleansed of the corruptions of religious and political ideology by open-minded reason, education brings us the truth, or shows us how to reach the truth. Education enlightens us and makes us better people. Educated enlightened people will form the foundations of the new society, a society which they will create through their own efforts.

Until recently, this concept of the role of education has remained fundamental to western modernist thinking. Enlightened thinkers, and here might be mentioned for example Thomas Jefferson, constantly pursued knowledge, sifting out the truth by subjecting all they learned to reasoned analysis. Jefferson, of course, not only consciously cultivated his own enlightenment, but also actively promoted education for others, founding in Charlottesville an "academical village" that later became the University of Virginia. He believed that the search for truth should be conducted without prejudice, and, mindful of the Enlightenment suspicion of the Church, deliberately did not include a chapel on the campus in his plans. The Church and its narrow-minded influences, he felt, should be kept separate not only from the State, but also from education.

Jefferson, like many other Enlightenment thinkers, saw a clear role for art and architecture. Art and architecture could serve in this process of enlightenment education by providing examples of those qualities and virtues that it was felt should guide the enlightened mind.

In the latter half of the 18th century, the model for the ideals of the new society was the world of ancient Rome and Greece. The Athens of Pericles and Rome of the Republican period offered fine examples of emerging democratic principles in government, and of heroism and virtuous action, self-sacrifice and civic dedication in the behaviour of their citizens.

It was believed, in fact, certainly according to the "ancients" in that quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns mentioned earlier, that the ancient world had achieved a kind of perfection, an ideal that came close to the Enlightenment understanding of truth. Johann Winckelmann was convinced that Greek art was the most perfect and directed contemporary artists to examples such as the Apollo Belvedere.
It is under these circumstances that Jacques-Louis David came to paint the classicizing and didactic historical painting Oath of the Horatii exhibited at the Salon in 1785. This was a noble and edifying work treating a grand and moralizing subject.
David himself saw the role of art in building a new society in no uncertain terms. Speaking as a member of the Revolutionary Committee on Public Instruction a few years later he explains that the Committee:

considered the arts in all respects by which they should help spread the progress of the human spirit, to propagate and transmit to posterity the striking example of the sublime efforts of an immense people, guided by reason and philosophy, restoring to earth the reign of liberty, equality, and law.
He states categorically that "the arts should contribute forcefully to public instruction."

With respect to the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, David can be associated with the supporters of the Ancients. He envisioned a new society based on conservative ideals. In contrast, there were others, we can call them Moderns, whose vision of a new world order was more progressive.

The Moderns envisioned a world conceived anew, not one that merely imitated ancient models. The problem for the Moderns, however, was that their new world was something of an unknown quantity. The nature of truth was problematical from the outset, and their dilemma over the nature of humans who possessed not only a rational mind open to reason but also an emotional life (love, for example, which is demonstrably beyond all reason) which had to be taken into account.

It was also felt that reason stifled imagination, and without imagination no progress would be made. Reason alone was inhuman, but imagination without reason also "produces monsters" (see Francisco de Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters). It was agreed, though, that freedom was central and was to be pursued through the very exercise of freedom in the contemporary world.

After the Revolution of 1789, the Ancients came to be identified with the old order, the ancien régime, while the Moderns became identified with a new movement we call Romanticism. In the wake of the 1789 revolution, these two movements, each with their own vision of the future, were soon politicized.

The Ancients, on the one hand, were caste as politically conservative and associated with classicizing, academic art. On the other hand, the Moderns were seen as progressive in a left-wing, revolutionary sense and associated with anti-academic Romanticism. The nature of this division is best seen in the rivalry of Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

In the Salon of 1824, in which Ingres exhibited his Vow of Louis XIII, and Delacroix his Massacre of Scios, Ingres' work, painted in a style the critics called "le beau" (the beautiful), was identified with classical academic theory and the right-wing conservative forces of the ancien régime. In contrast, Delacroix, whose style was labeled "le laid" (the ugly), clearly exhibited more liberal attitudes in his choice of subject matter and was associated with anarchy, materialism, and contemporary or modern life
For conservatives, Ingres represented order, traditional values, and the good old days of the ancien régime. Political progressives saw Delacroix as the representative of intellectuals, of revolution, of anarchy; his supporters said he had overthrown tyranny and established the principle of liberty in art.

It is from Delacroix that the line of progressive modernism extends directly to Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet. In the conservative view, Delacroix's Romanticism, Courbet's Realism, and Manet's Naturalism were all manifestations of the cult of ugliness that opposed the Academic ideal of the beautiful. Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet, were each in turn accused by conservatives of carrying on subversive work that was intended to undermine the State.

For conservatives, Ingres represented order, traditional values, and the good old days of the ancien régime. Political progressives saw Delacroix as the representative of intellectuals, of revolution, of anarchy; his supporters said he had overthrown tyranny and established the principle of liberty in art.

It is from Delacroix that the line of progressive modernism extends directly to Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet. In the conservative view, Delacroix's Romanticism, Courbet's Realism, and Manet's Naturalism were all manifestations of the cult of ugliness that opposed the Academic ideal of the beautiful. Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet, were each in turn accused by conservatives of carrying on subversive work that was intended to undermine the State.

This may sound strange to us today. Orthodox art historians and critics have tended to treat modern art as contentless and politically neutral. The process of neutralizing and depoliticizing art was taken in hand by the State, with the support of conservative forces and compliance of formalist critics and art historians, beginning as early as 1855.
Delacroix, whose support of the revolution of 1830 is made clear in his painting Liberty Leading the People, 28 July 1830, for example, came to be spoken of as a colorist. The socialist statements forcefully made by Gustave Courbet in his The Stonebreakers, for example, and the sharp political commentary of Manet in his The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian, 1868, for example, are glossed over in discussions of the formal qualities of each work; their painterly technique and the flattened treatment of pictorial space.
In this way, the prevailing conservative ethos of society maintained control over the impulses of progressive modernism.

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The 20th century has focused its artistic attention on progressive modernism, to the extent that conservative modernism has been neglected and, indeed, derided as an art form.

The so-called academic painters of the 19th century believed themselves to be doing their part to improve the world in presenting images that contain or reflect good conservative moral values, examples of virtuous behaviour, of inspiring Christian sentiment, and of the sort of righteous conduct and noble sacrifice that would serve as an appropriate model toward which we should all aspire to emulate.

The new world order reflected in academic modernism was seen by the progressives as merely supportive of the status quo and offered a future that was little more than a perpetuation of the present.

The conservatives wished to maintain existing institutions and preferred gradual development over radical change. The progressives, on the other hand, were critical of institutions, both political and religious, as restrictive of individual liberty. Progressives placed their faith in the goodness of mankind, a goodness which they believed, starting with Rousseau in the 18th century, had become corrupted by such things as the growth of cities.

Others would argue that man had been turned into a vicious, competitive animal by capitalism, the corrosive inhumanity of which was plain to see in the blighted landscape of the industrial revolution.

Rousseau had glorified Nature, and a number of modernists idealised the country life. Thomas Jefferson lived in the country close to nature and desired that the United States be entirely a farming economy; he characterized cities as "ulcers on the body politic."

In contrast to conservative modernism, which remained fettered to old ideas and which tended to support the status quo, progressive modernism adopted an antagonistic position towards society and its established institutions. In one way or another it challenged all authority in the name of freedom and, intentionally or not, affronted conservative bourgeois values.

Generally speaking, progressive modernism tended to concern itself with political and social issues, addressing aspects of contemporary society, especially in its poorer ranks, that an increasingly complacent middle class, once they had achieved a satisfactory level of comfort for themselves, preferred to ignore.

Through their art, in pictures that showed directly or indirectly the plight of the peasants, the exploitation of the poor, prostitution, and so on, the progessives repeatedly drew attention to the political and social ills of contemporary society, conditions they felt needed to be addressed and corrected.

Fundamentally, the intention was to educate the public, to keep alive in the face of conservative forces the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality through which the world would be made a better place.

The position taken by progressive modernism came to be referred to as the avant-garde (a military term meaning "advance-guard"). In contrast to the conservative modernists who looked to the past and tradition, the avant-garde artist consciously rejected tradition.

Rather than existing as the most recent manifestation of a tradition stretching back into the past, the avant-garde artist saw him- or herself as standing at the head of a new tradition stretching, hopefully, into the future. The progressive modernist looked to the future while the conservative modernist looked to the past.

The rejection of the past became imperative for the progressives with the advent of the First World War which signalled for them the catastrophic failure of tradition. The senseless, mechanized carnage of the "Great War" starkly showed that modernism's faith in scientific and technological progress as the path to a better world was patently wrong. For the Dadaists, World War One also signalled the failure of all modernist art. It could be claimed that Dada in fact marks the emergence of a post-modernist cast of mind.

Today, we would characterize progressive modernism, the avant-garde, as left-leaning and liberal in its support of freedom of expression and demands of equality. Since the 18th century, the modernist belief in the freedom of expression has manifested itself in art through claims to freedom of choice in subject matter and to freedom of choice in style (i.e. in the choice of brushstroke and colour). It was in the exercise of these rights that the artist constantly drew attention to the goals of progressive modernism.

As the 19th century progressed, the exercise of artistic freedom became fundamental to progressive modernism. Artists began to seek freedom not just from the rules of academic art, but from the demands of the public. Soon it was claimed that art should be produced not for the public's sake, but for art's sake.

Art for Art's Sake is basically a call for release from the tyranny of meaning and purpose. From a progressive modernist's point of view, it was a further exercise of freedom. It was also a ploy, another deliberate affront to bourgeois sensibility which demanded art with meaning or that had some purpose such as to instruct, or delight, or to moralize, and generally to reflect in some way their own purposeful and purpose-filled world. A progressive modernist painter like James Abbott McNeill Whistler, for example, blithely stated that his art satisfied none of those things.

In his 1891 essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", Oscar Wilde wrote:

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.
Art for Art's Sake, however, was a ploy that backfired. The same bourgeois whose tastes and ideas and prescriptions Whistler was confronting through his art, quickly turned the call of "Art for Art's Sake" into a tool to further neutralize the content and noxious effects of progressive modernist art.

In the late 19th century, we find art beginning to be discussed by critics and art historians largely in formal terms which effectively removed the question of meaning and purpose from consideration. From now on, art was to be discussed in terms of style -- colour, line, shape, space, composition -- conveniently ignoring or playing down whatever social, political, or progressive statements the artist had hoped to make in his or her work.

This approach became pervasive to the extent that artists, too, certainly the weaker ones, and even some of the strong ones as they got older or more comfortable, lost sight of their modernist purpose and became willy-nilly absorbed into this formalist way of thinking about art.

In defense of this attitude, it was argued that as the function of art is to preserve and enhance the values and sensibilities of civilized human beings, it should attempt to remain aloof from the malignant influences of an increasingly crass and dehumanizing technological culture.

Eventually there emerged the notion that modernist art is practised entirely within a closed formalist sphere, necessarily separated from, so as not to be contaminated by, the real world.

The formalist critic Clement Greenberg, in an article first published in 1965 entitled "Modernist Painting," saw Modernism as having achieved a self-referential autonomy. The work of art came to be seen as an isolated phenomenon, floating in some rarefied, ideal "Platonic" zone, governed not by human impulse so much as by the mysterious internal laws of stylistic development. Painting and sculpture stood separate from the materialistic world and the mundane affairs of ordinary people.

The underlying assumptions at work here first of all posit that the visual artist, by virtue of special gifts, is able to express the finer things of humanity through a "purely visual" understanding and mode of expression. This "purely visual" characteristic of art makes it an autonomous sphere of activity, completely separate from the everyday world of social and political life.

The autonomous nature of visual art means that questions asked of it may only be properly put, and answered, in its own terms. The history of modernism is contructed only in reference to itself, it is (or was until recently) entirely self-referential.

Impressionism gains much of its art historical significance through its place within a scheme of stylistic development that has its roots in the preceding Realism of Courbet and Manet, and by its also providing the main impetus for the successive styles of Post-Impressionism.

Traditional art historians and critics are fond of extending this sort of approach beyond the modernist period to other artists and periods to enhance the illusion of a history of art composed along one great thread of stylistic interconnection. The system allowed one to connect the preferred art of the present to an authentic art of the past by means of a retrospectively perceived logic of development. By this means a supposedly disinterested judgment could be justified in terms of a supposedly inexorable historical tendency.

In the hands of the conservative establishment, formalism became a very effective instrument of control over unruly and disruptive art. Many of the art movements spawned in the first half of the 20th century could be seen as various attempts to break the formalist grip on progressive modernism.

The system, though, articulated by the more academic art historians and critics, operating hand-in-hand with the art market which was only interested in money and not meaning, effectively absorbed all attempts at subversion and revolt into a neutral, palatable, only occasionally mildly offensive history of art of the kind you encounter in art history textbooks.

Unfortunately for the history of art, in the process of neutralizing progressive modernism, art history also had to neutralize all other art from earlier periods and from elsewhere in the world. The same reductionist, schematic approach was employed across the board creating a history of art largely devoid of any real meaning original to the artwork. It was generally agreed that aesthetic quality would have priority in deciding the function of art instead of its social or political relevance. It was also agreed that painting and sculpture should remain central to the concept of high art and the "Fine Arts."

Formalism, though, could also be turned to the advantage of the progressives who were able to use it in defense of modernism, abstraction in particular, which has been especially open to criticism. Formalism also neatly dovetailed in the early 20th century with another goal of progressive modernism, universalism.

For art to be an effective instrument of social betterment, it needed to be understood by as many people as possible. But it was not a matter of simply articulating images, it was the "true" art behind the image that was deemed important. Art can be many things and one example may look quite different from the next. But something called "art" is common to all. Whatever this art thing was, it was universal; like the scientific "truth" of the Enlightenment. All art obviously possessed it.

Some artists went in search of "art". From an Enlightenment point of view, this was a search for the "truth" or essence of art, and was carried out using a sort of pictorial reasoning. The first step was to strip away distracting elements such as recognizable objects which tended to conceal or hide the art thing; an example would be Wassily Kandinsky

[Asalbanoo]

In the period between World War One and World War Two, progressive modernism continued to pursue its goals, but now often in association with other forces.

Progressive artists actively supported political revolution. Pablo Picasso, for example, joined the communist party in 1944, as did many other artists. The Russian Revolution seemed at the time, and for a long time after, to be the answer to the progressive modernist's dream. Marxist communism was the boldest attempt to create a better society, adopting not a political democracy like the United States, but an economic democracy wherein all were economically equal.

The ideas of Karl Marx infused the Surrealist movement that saw itself as promoting, in the words of Salvador Dali, "a revolution in consciousness." Communism offered the vision of universal freedom predicated on freedom of ideas. Progressive modernist artists, in the imaginative freedom of their works, exemplified or encouraged this freedom.

Under Josef Stalin, however, this freedom was sharply curtailed. Modernism persisted, but in a state-manipulated and controlled form. This same form, generally called Social Realism, also flourished at the other end of the political spectrum in Hitler's Nazi Germany.

World War One left progressive modernism dazed and confused. World War Two was a blow that only in later decades do we understand as having been mortal. World War Two effectively destroyed the spirit of modernism. After Auschwitz, Theodor Adorno asks if any art has a right to exist. The Nazi holocaust reduced the modernist dream to ashes. The Germans, after all, were a civilized people who had actively participated in the modernist enterprise from the beginning.

The basic Enlightenment assumption that art improves people warranted serious re-examination. It was claimed (and is still claimed in some circles) that from the study of art comes a moral education all by itself. Further exposure to and learning about art only served to improve the student. But, does art improve people?

Artists, art historians, curators, critics, to mention a few who are in contact with art everyday; are they noticeably different, better, than anyone else who hasn't studied art?

As we have seen, the Enlightenment pictured the human race as engaged in an effort towards universal moral and intellectual self-realization. It was believed that reason allowed access to truth, and knowledge of the truth would better humankind. These tenets were fundamental to the notion of Modernism, the goal of which was the creation of a new world order

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4. Modernism & Postmodernism

In the later half of the 20th century there has been mounting evidence of the failure of the Modernist enterprise. Progressive modernism is riddled with doubt about the continued viability of the notion of progress. Conservative modernism, in the United States at least, has fallen prey in the political realm to the influences of the Church in the form of the so-called religious right which in recent years especially has seriously undermined the very constitutional foundations of the whole American experiment.

Since Suzi Gablik wrote her book, the communist experiment undertaken in the former Soviet Union has collapsed. Fundamentalism in nearly all of the world's major organized religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism) has risen sharply in recent years in direct opposition to modernism. American Christian fundamentalists still agree with Martin Luther who recognized that "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it struggles against the divine word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."

A growing number of people believe the modernist enterprise has failed. In the search for reasons to explain this failure, questions have necessarily been raised about the whole Western humanist tradition.

It has become apparent to many that the worldview fostered through Modernism (and by the Western humanist tradition) is flawed, corrupt, and oppressive. Both recent events (i.e. since the World War Two), and the perception of those events, have given rise to the notion that Modernism has played itself out and is now floundering and directionless.

If Modernism is at an end, we are now facing a new period. The name given this new period is Postmodernism.

The term postmodernism is used in a confusing variety of ways. For some it means anti-modern; for others it means the revision of modernist premises.

The seemingly anti-modern stance involves a basic rejection of the tenets of Modernism; that is to say, a rejection of the doctrine of the supremacy of reason, the notion of truth, the belief in the perfectability of man, and the idea that we could create a better, if not perfect, society. This view has been termed deconstructive postmodernism.

An alternative understanding, which seeks to revise the premises of Modernism, has been termed constructive postmodernism.

Deconstructive postmodernism seeks to overcome the modern worldview, and the assumptions that sustain it, through what appears to be an anti-worldview. It "deconstructs" the ideas and values of Modernism to reveal what composes them and shows that such modernist ideas as "equality" and "liberty" are not "natural" to humankind or "true" to human nature but are ideals, intellectual constructions.

This process of taking apart or "unpacking" the modernist worldview reveals its constituent parts and lays bare fundamental assumptions. Questions are then frequently raised about who was responsible for these constructions, and their motives. Who does modernism serve?

From the history outlined is this essay, it should be clear that modernist culture is Western in its orientation, capitalist in its determining economic tendency, bourgeois in its class character, white in its racial complexion, and masculine in its dominant gender.

Deconstructive postmodernism is seen perhaps as anti-modern in that it seems to destroy or eliminate the ingredients that are believed necessary for a worldview, such as God, self, purpose, meaning, a real world, and truth. (This point of view, though, that we need a worldview comprised of notions of God, self, purpose, etc, is itself a modernist one.)

Deconstructive postmodern thought is seen by some as nihilistic, (i.e. the view that all values are baseless, that nothing is knowable or can be communicated, and that life itself is meaningless).

Constructive postmodernism does not reject Modernism, but seeks to revise its premises and traditional concepts. Like deconstructive postmodernism, it attempts to erase all boundaries, to undermine legitimacy, and to dislodge the logic of the modernist state. Constructive postmodernism claims to offer a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions. It rejects not science as such, but only that scientific approach in which only the data of the modern natural sciences are allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview.

Constructive postmodernism desires a return to premodern notions of divinely wrought reality, of cosmic meaning, and an enchanted nature. It also wishes to include an acceptance of nonsensory perception.

Constructive postmodernism seeks to recover truths and values from various forms of premodern thought and practice. Constructive postmodernism wants to replace modernism and modernity, which it sees as threatening the very survival of life on the planet.

Aspects of constructive postmodernism will appear similar to what is also called "New Age" thinking. The possibility that mankind is standing on the threshold of a new age informs much postmodernist thought.

The postmodern is deliberately elusive as a concept, avoiding as much as possible the modernist desire to classify and thereby delimit, bound, and confine. Postmodernism partakes of uncertainty, insecurity, doubt, and accepts ambiguity. Whereas Modernism seeks closure in form and is concerned with conclusions, postmodernism is open, unbounded, and concerned with process and "becoming."

The post-modern artist is "reflexive" in that he/she is self-aware and consciously involved in a process of thinking about him/herself and society in a deconstructive manner, "demasking" pretensions, becoming aware of his/her cultural self in history, and accelerating the process of self-consciousness.

This sort of sensitivity to cultural, ethnic, and human conditions and experiences has been ridiculed by conservatives in recent years as "political correctness."

What about art? It could be argued that several forms of art have been "post-modern" since the First World War. If the mass slaughter of the Great War, achieved through the advances made in science and technology, was the result of the modernist commitment to "progress," then one might begin question the value of the modernist enterprise.

Nonetheless, between the wars, progressive modernism managed to sustain a vision of a better future. It continued to see tradition and the past as stifling the expression of freedom. The Surrealists before the war still clung to the modernist belief that their art could influence human destiny, that they could change the world.

After the Second World War, however, such optimism in the future was difficult to sustain. And to make things worse, with the advent of the Cold War and the constant threat of nuclear destruction, any sort of future looked doubtful.

Having rejected the past many years ago, and now with the future no longer the goal of artistic effort, many artists turned with visible distress to the present and focused their attention on contemporary popular culture.

Popular culture, however, was undergoing a tumultuous upheaval during the sixties: the Civil Rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam war, the emergence of a widespread women's movement, and the transformation of hitherto largely passive and conservative students into the cutting-edge of opposition.

Pop artist could still appear progressive under these circumstances, contributing a critique of bourgeois ideals and the American dream (for example, Richard Hamilton).

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The comment made by the military officer in Vietnam that his platoon had to destroy a Vietnamese village in order to save it (i.e. from Communism), seems to have been applied to art; it became necessary to destroy art, or at least the modernist understanding of it, in order to save it. With it the whole modernist enterprise began to collapse.

In June 1970, the French writer Jean Clay observed: "It is clear that we are witnessing the death throes of the cultural system maintained by the bourgeoisie in its galleries and its museums."

In recent years, progressive modernism has seemed bent not on defining a future but in destroying the values of the present, especially as they pertained to art. It has remained largely hostile to prevailing authority-systems, though this position is no longer at all clear. In the late 60s and early 70s, conceptual art emerged as another affront to established to established values (Carl Andre, for example

Hostility to it was intense, beyond any question of mere aesthetics. Victor Burgin states that conceptualism was a revolt against modernism. This may not seem apparent, because, true to form, orthodox art history has managed to assimilate it into the seamless tapestry of "art history" while stifling its radicalism.

However, conceptualism deliberately was an art that no aesthetic formalism could hope to embrace. It was an attempt to place art beyond all limitations and definitions, to break the stranglehold of bourgeois formalist art history and criticism. Attention was turned towards "making" and the manipulation of materials. The process of making was given importance, with the result, the final object, became secondary, often temporary (Christo, for example).

Conceptualism became an umbrella term (in an attempt to define and contain) under which were lumped a whole range of difficult-to-classify art such as Performance and Earth Art.

Conceptual artists deliberately produced work that was difficult if not impossible to classify according to the old system. Some deliberately produced work that could not be placed in a museum or gallery (Robert Smithson, for example).

Art in the latter half of the 20th century deliberately placed itself beyond the limits of control. Today, art historians and critics -- we might call them the art police -- throw up their hands in dismay in the face of contemporary art. They have reached their limit - they can no longer absorb contemporary art into the system, patterns of order can no longer be applied. The critical apparatus of control has broken down; traditional art theory and traditional art history have failed along with modernism.

[Asalbanoo]

Romanticism is an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in 18th century ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) Western Europe ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). In part a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment period ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and a reaction against the rationalization of nature, in art and literature it stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) of nature. It elevated folk art ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), nature and custom, as well as arguing for an epistemology ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) based on nature, which included human activity conditioned by nature in the form of language, custom and usage. It was influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment and elevated medievalism ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and elements of art and narrative perceived to be from the medieval period. The name "romantic" itself comes from the term "romance ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])" which is a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in medieval literature and romantic literature.
The ideologies and events of the French Revolution ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) are thought to have influenced the movement. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability in the representation of its ideas

[Asalbanoo]

In a general sense, that refers to several groups of artists ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), poets ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), writers ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), and musicians ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) as well as political ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), philosophical ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and social thinkers and trends of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Europe ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). But a precise characterization and a specific description of Romanticism have been objects of intellectual history ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and literary history ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) for all of the twentieth century ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) without any great measure of consensus emerging. Arthur Lovejoy ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of this problem in his seminal article "On The Discrimination of Romanticisms" in his Essays in the History of Ideas ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) (1948); some scholars see romanticism as completely continuous with the present, some see it as the inaugural moment of modernity ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), some see it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the Enlightenment, and still others date it firmly in the direct aftermath of the French Revolution. Another definition comes from Charles Baudelaire ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]): "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling."
Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key moment in the Counter-Enlightenment ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of deductive ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) reason ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), Romanticism emphasized intuition ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), imagination ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), and feeling ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), to a point that has led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]).

[Asalbanoo]

Romanticism and music

In general, the term "Romanticism" when applied to music has come to mean the period roughly from the 1820s until 1910. The contemporary application of 'romantic' to music did not coincide with modern categories: in 1810 E.T.A. Hoffmann ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) called Mozart ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), Haydn ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and Beethoven ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) the three "Romantic Composers", and Ludwig Spohr ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) used the term "good Romantic style" to apply to parts of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. By the early 20th century, the sense that there had been a decisive break with the musical past led to the establishment of the 19th century as "The Romantic Era ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])," and as such it is referred to in the standard encyclopedias of music.
The traditional modern discussion of the music of Romanticism includes elements, such as the growing use of folk music ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), which are also directly related to the broader current of Romantic nationalism ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) in the arts (for a detailed discussion of its musical manifestations, see musical nationalism ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])).
Some aspects of Romanticism are already present in eighteenth-century music. The heightened contrasts and emotions of Sturm und Drang ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) [German for "Storm and Stress] seem a precursor of the Gothic ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) in literature, or the sanguinary elements of some of the operas of the period of the French Revolution ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). The libretti of Lorenzo da Ponte ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) for Mozart ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), and the eloquent music the latter wrote for them, convey a new sense of individuality and freedom. In Beethoven, the Romantic generation's ideal of the artist as hero, the concept of the Romantic musician begins to reveal itself— the man who morally challenged the Emperor Napoleon ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) himself by striking him out from the dedication of the [Symphony no. 3 (Beethoven)|Eroica Symphony]]. In Beethoven's Fidelio ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) he creates the apotheosis of the 'rescue operas' which were another feature of French musical culture during the revolutionary period, in order to hymn the freedom which underlay the thinking of all radical artists in the years of hope after the Congress of Vienna ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]).
Of the contemporary music culture, the romantic musician followed a public career, depending on sensitive middle-class audiences rather than on a courtly patron. Public personas characterized a new generation of virtuosi who made their way as soloists, epitomized in the careers of Paganini and Liszt.
Beethoven's use of tonal architecture in such a way as to allow significant expansion of musical forms and structures was immediately recognised as bringing a new dimension to music. The later piano music and string quartets, especially, showed the way to a completely unexplored musical universe. The writer, critic (and composer) Hoffmann was able to write of the supremacy of instrumental music over vocal music in expressiveness, a concept which would previously have been regarded as absurd. Hoffmann himself, as a practitioner both of music and literature, encouraged the notion of music as 'programmatic' or telling a story, an idea which new audiences found attractive, however irritating it was to some composers (e.g. Felix Mendelssohn ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])). New developments in instrumental technology in the early nineteenth century—iron frames for pianos, wound metal strings for string instruments—enabled louder dynamics, more varied tone colours, and the potential for sensational virtuosity. Such developments swelled the length of pieces, introduced programmatic titles, and created new genres such as the free standing overture or tone-poem, the piano fantasy, nocturne ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and rhapsody ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ](music)), and the virtuoso concerto ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), which became central to musical romanticism.
In opera, a new Romantic atmosphere combining supernatural terror and melodramatic plot in a folkloric context was most successfully achieved by Weber ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])'s Der Freischütz (1817 ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), 1821 ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])). Enriched timbre and color marked the early orchestration of Hector Berlioz ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) in France, and the grand operas ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) of Meyerbeer ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). Amongst the radical fringe of what became mockingly characterised (adopting Wagner's own words) as 'artists of the future', Liszt and Wagner each embodied the Romantic cult of the free, inspired, charismatic, perhaps ruthlessly unconventional individual artistic personality. get me :s:s
It is the period of 1815 to 1848 which must be regarded as the true age of Romanticism in music - the age of the last compositions of Beethoven (d. 1827) and Schubert ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) (d. 1828), of the works of Schumann ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) (d. 1856) and Chopin ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]édéric_Chopin) (d.1849), of the early struggles of Berlioz and Richard Wagner ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), of the great virtuosi such as Paganini ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]ò_Paganini) (d. 1840), and the young Liszt ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and Thalberg ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). Now that we are able to listen to the work of Mendelssohn (d. 1847) stripped of the Biedermeier ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) reputation unfairly attached to it, he can also be placed in this more appropriate context. After this period, with Chopin and Paganini dead, Liszt retired from the concert platform at a minor German court, Wagner effectively in exile until he obtained royal patronage in Bavaria, and Berlioz still struggling with the bourgeois liberalism which all but smothered radical artistic endeavour in Europe, Romanticism in music was surely past its prime—giving way, rather, to the period of musical romantics ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]).

[Asalbanoo]

In visual art and literature, "Romanticism" typically refers to the late 18th century and the 19th Century. Recurring themes found in Romantic literature are the criticism of the past, emphasis on women and children, and respect for nature. Furthermore, several romantic authors, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), based their writings off of the supernatural ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])/occult ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and human psychology ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), which they were fascinated with.
The Scottish poet James Macpherson ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) influenced the early development of Romanticism with the international success of his Ossian ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) cycle of poems published in 1762 ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), inspiring both Goethe and the young Walter Scott ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]).
An early German ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) influence came from Johann Wolfgang Goethe ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) whose 1774 ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) novel The Sorrows of Young Werther ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) had young men throughout Europe ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) emulating its protagonist, a young artist with a very sensitive and passionate temperament. At that time Germany was a multitude of small separate states, and Goethe's works would have a seminal influence in developing a unifying sense of nationalism ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). Important writers of early German romanticism were Ludwig Tieck ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), Novalis ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) (Heinrich von Ofterdingen ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), 1799) and Friedrich Hoelderlin ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). Heidelberg later became a center of German romanticism, where writers and poets such as Clemens Brentano ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), Achim von Arnim ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and Joseph von Eichendorff ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) met regularly in literary circles. Romanticists often focused on emotions and dreams in their works. Other important motifs in German Romanticism are travelling, nature and ancient myths. The late German Romanticism (of, for example, E.T.A. Hoffmann ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])'s Der Sandmann - The Sandman, 1817, and Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild - The Marble Statue, 1819) was somewhat darker in its motifs and has some gothic ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) elements.
Romanticism in British literature developed in a different form slightly later, mostly associated with the poets William Wordsworth ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), whose co-authored book "Lyrical Ballads ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])" (1798 ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])) sought to reject Augustan poetry ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) in favour of more direct speech derived from folk traditions. Both poets were also involved in Utopian ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) social thought in the wake of the French Revolution ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). The poet and painter William Blake ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) is the most extreme example of the Romantic sensibility in Britain, epitomised by his claim “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's”. Blake's artistic work is also strongly influenced by Medieval illuminated books. The painters J.M.W. Turner ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and John Constable ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) are also generally associated with Romanticism. Lord Byron ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), Percy Bysshe Shelley ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), Mary Shelley ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and John Keats ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) constitute another phase of Romanticism in Britain. The historian Thomas Carlyle ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) represent the last phase of transformation into Victorian ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) culture. William Butler Yeats ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), born in 1865 ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), referred to his generation as "the last romantics."
In predominantly Roman Catholic ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) countries Romanticism was less pronounced than in Germany and Britain, and tended to develop later, after the rise of Napoleon ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). François-René de Chateaubriand ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]çois-René_de_Chateaubriand) is often called the "Father of French Romanticism". In France, the movement is associated with the 19th century, particularly in the paintings of Théodore Géricault ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]éodore_Géricault) and Eugène Delacroix ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]ène_Delacroix), the plays, poems and novels of Victor Hugo ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) (such as Les Misérables ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]érables) and Ninety-Three ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])), and the novels of Stendhal ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). The composer Hector Berlioz ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) is also important.
Inside Russia, the principal exponent of Romanticism is Alexander Pushkin ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). Mikhail Lermontov ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) attempted to analyse and bring to light the deepest reasons for the Romantic idea of metaphysical discontent with society and self, and was much influenced by Lord Byron ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). The poet Fyodor Tyutchev ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) was also an important figure of the movement in Russia, and was heavily influenced by the German Romantics.
Romanticism played an essential role in the national awakening of many Central European peoples lacking their own national states, particularly in Poland ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), which had recently lost its independence to Russia ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) when its army crushed the Polish Rebellion under the reactionary Nicholas I. Revival of ancient myths, customs and traditions by Romanticist poets and painters helped to distinguish their indigenous cultures from those of the dominant nations (Russians, Germans, Austrians, Turks, etc.). Patriotism, nationalism, revolution and armed struggle for independence also became popular themes in the arts of this period. Arguably, the most distinguished Romanticist poet of this part of Europe was Adam Mickiewicz ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), who developed an idea that Poland was the Messiah of Nations, predestined to suffer just as Jesus ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) had suffered to save all the people.

In the United States ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), the romantic gothic makes an early appearance with Washington Irving ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])'s Legend of Sleepy Hollow ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) (1819), followed from 1823 onwards by the fresh Leatherstocking ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) tales of James Fenimore Cooper ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]), with their emphasis on heroic simplicity and their fervent landscape descriptions of an already-exotic mythicized frontier peopled by "noble savages ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])", similar to the philosophical theory of Rousseau, like Uncas, "The Last of the Mohicans ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])". There are picturesque elements in Washington Irving's essays and travel books. Edgar Allan Poe ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])'s tales of the macabre and his balladic poetry were more influential in France than at home, but the romantic American novel is fully developed in Nathaniel Hawthorne ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])'s atmosphere and melodrama. Later Transcendentalist ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) writers such as Henry David Thoreau ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) and Ralph Waldo Emerson ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) still show elements of its influence, as does the romantic realism of Walt Whitman ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). But by the 1880s, psychological and social realism ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) was competing with romanticism. The poetry which Americans wrote and read was all romantic until the 1920s: Poe and Hawthorne, as well as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]). The poetry of Emily Dickinson ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) – nearly unread in her own time – and Herman Melville ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])'s novel Moby-Dick ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]) can be taken as the epitomes of American Romantic literature, or as successors to it. As elsewhere (England, Germany, France), literary Romanticism had its counterpart in the visual arts, most especially in the exaltation of untamed America found in the paintings of the Hudson River School ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]).