Introduction to Humanities

VICTORIANISM,IMPERIALISM &

EARLY MODERNISM

When Seurat first revealed his painting La Grande Jatte, the critics hated his departure from strict Impressionism

1881: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (Tombstone, Arizona) between Wyatt Earp/Earp Brothers/Doc Holliday and outlaw cowboys

FUN FACTS

1871: Foundation of German Empire 1876: Invention of telephone 1879: Invention of electric light 1883-85: Nietzsche writes Thus Spake

Zarathustra 1885: Invention of gasoline automobile 1899: Freud writes The Interpretation of

Dreams 1902: Conrad writes Heart of Darkness 1905: Einstein publishes Theory of

Relativity 1914-1918: World War I 1915: First major motion picture: Birth of

a Nation (racist depiction of Civil War era) 1918 & 1920: Women earn right to vote in

U.K. and U.S., respectively

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Impressionist Art

Fauvism & Cubism

Post-Impressionist Art

Imperialism

Second Industrial Revolution

Capitalism, Communism, and Nationalism

Victorianism vs. Avant-Garde

KEY WORDS/PRINCIPLES

June 1914: Assassination of heir to Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand

August 1914: Germany and Austria vs. Russia, France, and U.K. United States enters in April

1917 Germans sink Lusitania in 1915

(128 Americans aboard) Germans sink several U.S.

commercial liners

Trench warfare

Poison gas

Machine guns

All Quiet on the Western Front, 1979

WORLD WAR I (1914-1918)

Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spake Zarathustra,

1883-85 (Four parts) Overman Will to power

First modernist philosopher (along with Kierkegaard) Precursor to

existentialismPredicted war and

moral decline of 20 th century

“Absolutist” theories of past built on non-exist principles

“God is dead”

PHILOSOPHYCan you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and avenger of your law? Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger of one’s own law. Thus is a star thrown out into the void and into the icy breath of solitude. Today you are still suffering from the many, being one: today your courage and your hopes are still whole. But the time will come when solitude will make you weary, when your pride will double up, and your courage gnash its teeth. And you will cry, I am alone! The time will come when that which seems high to you will no longer be in sight, and that which seems low will be all-too-near; even what seems sublime to you will frighten you like a ghost. And you will cry, All is false!

(…) But the worst enemy you can encounter will always be you, yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caves and woods.

Sigmund FreudIdSuperegoEgo

Psychoanalysis

Carl JungCollective unconsciousDream AnalysisTheories led to

development of Myers-Briggs indicator Extroversion vs.

Introversion Intuitive vs. Sensing Feeling vs. Thinking Judging vs. Perceiving

PSYCHOLOGY

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1902Apocalypse Now, 1979

Kate Chopin, The Awakening, 1899

LITERATURE

“I was within a hair’s-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. . . . He had summed up—he had judged. ‘The horror!’ He was a remarkable man.”

"'Woman, my dear friend, is a very peculiar and delicate organism--a sensitive and highly organized woman, such as I know Mrs. Pontellier to be, is especially peculiar. It would require an inspired psychologist to deal successfully with them. And when ordinary fellows like you and me attempt to cope with their idiosyncrasies the result is bungling. Most women are moody and whimsical. This is some passing whim of your wife, due to some cause or cause which you and I needn't try to fathom.'"

Lewis Carroll Through the Looking-Glass (1871)

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Robert Louis Stevenson Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book (1894)

LITERATURE

PoetsWilliam Butler Yeats

The Second Coming Turning and turning in the

widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;    The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity.

Alfred Lord Tennyson Ulysses Tho' much is taken, much

abides; and thoughWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

LITERATURE

Impressionism Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1906

ART

Pointillism Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La

Grande Jatte, 1884-86

ART

Abstraction Paul Cezanne, Still Life with a Curtain, 1895

ART

Primitivism Paul Gauguin, Tahitian Women on the Beach, 1891

ART

Expressionism Vincent Van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, 1890

ART

Fauvism Henri Matisse, The Joy of Life, 1905

ART

Cubism Pablo Picasso, Three Musicians, 1921

ART

Russian Abstract Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913

ART

Frank Lloyd Wright, Wright House and Studio, 1889

ARCHITECTURE

Claude Debussy

Igor Stravinsky

Rise of Jazz & Blues “Dallas Blues” (Hart Wand) 1912

Ragtime

MUSIC