Coming into this class, I honestly have never little knowledge of art. As a child I went to many museums, but I have never been to an art gallery/museum before. In my high school we were required to take two art classes but merely touched on the history or analysis of art. In addition, I have not taken art history here at Ball State yet. Therefore, I find this “introduction to art” to be interesting rather than just a review. When reading the history of art in the “Introduction to Art History,” I saw that the oldest cave paintings are said to be over 40,800 years old. It astounds me that there is even knowledge or technology out there that can detect the age of the earliest art forms. I also found it interesting to see how art changes as culture changes such as the display of architecture during the Renaissance time period. Although this may seem elementary to most college students, but I found interest in seeing and describing the art in class. It was evident that the styles and techniques slowly advanced and it was especially neat to look at this with the knowledge of what modern paintings look like. Simply enough, it was neat to look at a few art pieces after reading about “Elements of Art” in “Understanding Formal Analysis.” For example, lines draw your attention to certain important parts of a piece and can even communicate feelings such as rest (horizontal) and energy (curve). It amazes me how something as simple as color can create different moods (value of a color) or convey thoughts of strength (intensity of a color). Lastly, I learned that an artist can use color, line, and shading to imply textures in a piece of art without changing the physical feeling. So overall, I have been enjoying the introduction to art as I have very little background in the subject!
Response: Week Two (8/30/13)
This week we shifted from an art focus to more of theological/philosophical focus. At first, I didn’t see much of a connection besides the time period of the artists and the authors. However, Christianity and the portrayal of religious faith is the common theme. Just as the depiction of Christ was popular in the artwork we viewed in class, the Christian faith was also popular in writing during the same time period. However, this commonality is not just a coincidence. According to the text, “Christians demonstrate their faith by engaging in good (charitable) works.” They believed that art and writing were charitable works to Christ because it was a witness of their faith. Both St. Augustine’s The Confessions and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy contained several similar aspects. I thought the most important observation, however, was the transformation each man went through. Both men had an obvious change in attitude from the beginning to the end, which I believe may have been inspiration for many readers in that time period. One aspect that wasn’t discussed in class was the significance of St. Augustine’s “16th year.” He repetitively referred to it in Adolescence. Although that age is often when a man feels like he becomes a man (and is the age often referred to as the age of an adolescent), was it really that much of a magical year? Augustine mentions that his 16th year is when he starts recognizing all of his faults and sins. Did he think that he wasn’t responsible for his faults before then as he would have just been “a child.” I just found it interesting that he only mentioned his 16th year when severely downgrading himself. I also think that from the perspective of the 21st century, 16 is actually a young age to own up to your sins and faults of your life. Unless your family raises you to be responsible for your mistakes, it seems that most people currently take much longer to seek Christ or straighten up their life.
Response: Week Four (9/13/13)
To be honest, I have heard of Dante’s Inferno before, but I never knew what it was about. I was surprised to read about Dante’s interpretation of hell. Personally, I do not agree with Dante’s division of hell. Honestly, I didn’t even know that old Catholicism, or any religion for that matter, believed that there are levels of sin which created sanctions in hell. As a Lutheran, I believe that a sin is a sin and simply being unrepentant of any sin results in eternal death in a hell. For in Romans 6:23 it is written “for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Therefore, a person who tells a white lie and someone who commits murder will both go to the same place (hell) if they are unrepentant.I also found it interesting that the sins and the punishments were so fitting with each other. The lustful are stuck in a whirlwind in which they can’t control themselves, the gluttonous have to lie under a constant rain of sewage, and the ones who are violent against others have to sit in a pool of boiling blood. Some I actually found to be amusing, which might have been Dante’s intention. The one I found to be most amusing was the flatterers punishment. The flatterers are “full of poop” so they have to sit in poop for the rest of eternity. I am curious to see what the rest of “hell” consists of as the sins are said to get worse.
Response: Week Five (9/20/13)
Overall, I found Dante’s Inferno to be a unique read. With my background of Christianity, I did not agree with Dante’s levels of sin and levels in hell. However, I am reading this so many years after it was written. It makes you wonder what the reaction of the people was who read it when Dante published it. Especially, with all the famous people Dante met in hell. Obviously, these names weren’t made up because Dante specifically explains what each one did to get into that level of hell. The readers of the Inferno might have a changed perspective on these famous people or might have lost respect for some of them because of the light that Dante shed on their sins. I can even see people coming after Dante angry.
In the 9th circle, the lowest level of hell, I was surprised at a few of Dante’s illustrations. First of all, I was surprised that all of the sinners were punished with ice. Especially for it being the deepest part of hell, I normally think of there being fire. I have just always heard the expression: “burning in the fiery depths of hell,” therefore, I would have never thought of ice being a punishment. However, the explanation that heat and cold are parallel to love and hate makes sense. Because the 9th circle of hell is the farthest away from God (a place of hate), it should be the coldest. Secondly, the description of Satan was not what I was expecting. Him having three heads and arms bigger than all of the giants combined was surprising. Satan seemed to even be a part of the punishment as he was frozen up to his torso. Although, he still had control of the 9th circle by creating the wind with the beating of his wings. Without the icy wind, the 9th circle sinners couldn’t be punished.
Response: Week Six (9/27/13)
I actually think that the Canterbury Tales is a good idea for a story. I think with the rules that each traveler has to come up with a story, many interesting tales will create a full entertaining account. When first reading the descriptions of the travelers, I was surprised by the bunch of people. Because it seemed like the journey was a religious pilgrimage, I found it odd that about only two travelers were found to be “good.” Out of all the travelers, the miller, the friar, and the wife of bath were the most interesting. The red-haired miller loves crude, bawdy jokes and drinking. He steals from customers but interestingly enough he is better than more than most other millers. The friar lives entirely by begging, but yet the donations he extracts allows him to dress richly and live quite merrily.
I found the wife of bath to be the most interesting character, although, maybe just because we went into so much detail with her. In her prologue, she went into such great detail with her life and her five husbands that I didn’t know what her story could be about. But honestly, her story was actually pretty insightful on her image of the role of the wife. Mainly, through the story we learned that the wife of bath thinks women should be in control of the relationship. She even prays that Jesus send all women husbands who are young, meek, and who can outlive their husbands. Overall, though I think the wife of bath is a very contradictory person. She does not believe that marriage is a necessary evil because she believes that having sex outside of marriage is not a major sin. She thinks that she is contributing to the creation of more virgins. However, she never says that she even has any children. Therefore, her points of argument weren’t very accurate.
Response: Week Seven (10/4/13)
So far, I have found interest in most of the pieces of work we have read in this class. I thought the reading of Utopia was very interesting this week. I have heard of the word Utopia before and I know it was mentioned in one of my high school English classes. I knew that it was an Island that was supposed to address most of the problems in England and Europe.
When reading, I found several points to be very interesting, yet completely fake. Along with the impossibility of several points, several rules of the island are actually contradictory. All 54 cities are supposed to be all the same with 40 workers and some slaves. Supposedly there is always a surplus of food, which seems impossible unless everyone has specific portions every day. No one is better than another, but yet they send three of their best citizens to the capital every year. For their occupations they only work six hours a day, but they can change jobs if they don’t like the one they are doing currently. No one is supposedly lazy at work because they care most about learning and self- improvement. However, Moore hasn’t mentioned anything about emotions through his entire explanation of Utopia. Probably the most unemotional part of his explanation is of the families. All the families are to be the same size. If the families are too big, some members of the family move to another. The city is the same way. If there are too many people then they make a colony outside of Utopia. Somehow, even though this is considered a “perfect world”, all of this would create major conflict. Even though everything and everyone is equal it just all seems so fake. There seems to be so many ways for the entire island and city collapse.
Response: Week Eight (10/12/13)Brittni, this is a great idea for comparison. Once you establish how different the two works are, you need to go a step further and think about why this matters. Can you think about why the two works are so different? Do they have different goals? Do they reflect different ways of thinking? Do they have different ideas about human nature? -MH For my first paper, I am going to be doing a comparison between Utopia and Dante’s Inferno. For my introduction, I am going to briefly describe Utopia and Inferno. For instance, I am going to explain how Utopia and the levels of hell are completely different. Utopia is basically an island that wants to run as “the perfect society,” so it shows how they are basically trying to rid the society of most of the sin that most of the people commit. Therefore, it is talking about the good of people and how peaceful the land is. In contrast, theInferno focuses on the horrible sins that the people have commited. In my paper I will go into a few more points to support my point that the two works are completely opposite. This is the general paragraph. Next, I am going to get into the specifics. Basically I am going to explain how if the people lived in Utopia there wouldn’t be the need for as many rings of hell. The two will contradict each other. One of the example’s I am going to use is gluttony. Gluttony is too much stimuli or in specific over-eating. The people of Utopia don’t have to overeat and everyone has enough to eat. Therefore, this sin would not exist. Another example I will use in my paper is lust. The people in Utopia are less likely to be lustful because they can see their “intended spouse” naked once before they marry them. I will explain one more example that I will use: violence. Utopians do not believe in violence and they rarely have any conflicts (because of all the rules to avoid it). To conclude my paper, I will recap my examples and explain once more how different the two pieces of work are.
Response: Week Nine (10/25/2013)This being a short week, we still covered some interesting material. First of all, the newscasts were all surprisingly funny. They took several different viewpoints, all from the outside looking in. For example, our newscast was from the viewpoint of the natives as Columbus was landing. As we were pretending to be the natives, we broadcasted how different the English men looked from us. We described their odd boats as canoes with wings, their skin as shiny porcelain, and their guns as shiny wooden spears. Because we were so intrigued by why they are here and why they look so differently from us, we decided to interview the chief of our village. We tried to get at how the natives believed they were there to invade. However, the natives acted peaceful and actually traded with them. I personally haven’t studied Columbus and his travels since the beginning of high school. Looking at it now, I find it interesting how accepting and peaceful the natives were. Even though they didn’t want harm, later explorers over took the natives, often killing them off. Since we didn’t have a reflection due last week, I wanted to say a few things about the movie we watched in class. Overall, it was actually an educational film that was beneficial to watch. I didn’t realize how violent both parties were. Additionally, I was shocked at how soon the monk was to kill the natives that didn’t understand Christianity. Their goal and mission was to witness to the people, but they kill them off faster than I thought. Most of the story line made since except for the end, he was talking to a bunch of monkeys because all of his crew was killed off. I think the goal here might have been to show that he believed he was still in power.
Response: Week Ten (11/1/13)This week we read Tartuffe, a play written by Molière. Honestly, this was one of my favorite pieces of work we have read in this class so far. I enjoy mystery type literature or literature with suspense so I enjoyed the plot twist in Tartuffe. I especially found the last two acts to be the most interesting. Tartuffe’s character definitely developed and it was easy to see the villain side of him. First of all, with the scene with Elmire displayed Tartuffe’s true personality. At first this scene confused me, I wasn’t sure who exactly was enticing or seducing the other. But then it clicked that it was all set up. However, the fact that Tartuffee even considered getting with her when she is a married woman (not to mention the fact that he knew that Orgon was even at home). Suspense adds up as the audience knows that Orgon is under the table and is waiting to reveal Tartuffe. When Orgon does come out from under the table he tells Tartuffe to hit the road, but before leaving yells, “This house belongs to me, I’ll have you know!” Therefore, he is ultimately saying he has all power over Orgon. Secondly, the plot twist at the end concluded the play with an unexpected finale. Elmire proposed that they let everybody know how much of a liar and cheat Tartuffe is. However, something more interesting happens. Tartuffe comes to the house with the police. So instead of Orgon leaving the country, he is going to have Orgon sent to prison. Everyone insults Tartuffe and plot twist: the officer turns around and arrests Tartuffe! This isn’t the first time Tartuffe has tried to swindle someone and he has finally been caught for it. I was totally not expecting this plot twist which made it great.
Response: Week Eleven (11/8/13)As I have never heard of Candide or Voltaire before, I didn’t know what to expect when reading the assignment for this week. I was surprised to see how much satire and irony Voltaire used in Candide. Irony means the difference between what you say and what you mean; many examples of this appear in the work. One example of satire and irony that stands out to me is Pangloss’s explanation of syphilis. Pangloss explains that he has syphilis which he contracted from Paquette. However, he believes that the syphilis is necessary because it all orginated from a man who traveled to the New World with Columbus. Therefore, he rationales that if Columbus had not traveled to the New World and brought back syphilis with him to Europe, then chocolate wouldn’t exist in Europe. Thus, Pangloss is saying that syphilis is “necessary” for chocolate. Although, this rationale doesn’t make any sense to the reader, we can try to add logic to Voltaire’s satire. One explanation may be that Voltaire is making fun of religion. Maybe he is making fun of people’s thought of blind faith. In explanation, we as humans go through immense trial and tribulation and live in a world with much sin (demonstrated as syphilis) but yet we believe it is all for the glory of God that we are here on this earth. All the trials and tribulations are worth it for eternal life (demonstrated as the chocolate). Therefore, Voltaire is demonstrating how absurd he thinks having blind faith is. Secondly, the satirical part of Candide that talks about the earthquakes is particularly memorable. People are sacrificed/burned to death in order to prevent earthquakes of other natural disasters. The readers can infer that this satire may be poking fun at the New World Indians who make human sacrifices to solve natural disasters. Another explanation of the satire is that the people are trying to avoid total ruin by totally ruining people.
Response: Week Twelve (11/15/13)Evan, Daniel, Benjamin, and I are creating a video on the The Nine Circles of Hell: College Edition. It will be a contemporary twist to the levels of hell described in Dante's Inferno.We are going to have Daniel play Dante and the rest of us are going to be sinners who will be receiving punishment. We are going to introduce each scene by including type on the bottom of the screen (so the viewers know what level of hell we are on and what the original punishment in to the book was). Throughout the film we have chosen music that will go with each scene. For example, we are starting the film out by introducing the characters while "Give You Hell" (All-American Rejects) is playing. We will be going about campus to cast each scene. For example, our first scene portrays limbo and we will be at the scramble light. SPOILER ALERT: I typed out an outline of what we are going to do and what music we are going to use if you want to see what all we will be doing.
Sounds great. Thanks for the outline. We can have a viewing in class on Monday. In addition, to the video, each of you should individually write an introduction/reflection about your video. Explain what you were trying to do and how well you think it worked. - MH Response: Week Fifteen (12/6/13) This week we have looked at music in a different perspective than I ever have before. Honestly, I’ve never looked at the dynamics of classical music. Through these last few classes, I have paid closer attention to how music is made. I have also realized that I think music is a lot like art. Therefore, I now see the only MAJOR difference is that art is visual and music is an auditory perception. In a way, I even think that music is a form of art, just for the ear instead of the eye. First of all, both visual art and music have parts that can be identified and analyzed. Form was one of the ways we discussed in class to analyze both music and visual art. In music we called form “the repeating, variation.” We first analyzed Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer. This song was divided into four parts: A, A, B, A. The first A’s are exposition, the B is development, and the last A is recapitulation. A coda can then follow this. All music can be analyzed in this way. Most music has repeating parts and follows a pattern even if the listener can’t realize it at first. Secondly, everyone interprets music different, just as visual art has many interpretations. The people who write the music and the listeners sometimes invent stories for their work. For example, the first symphony we listened to had intense and faster paced sections that kind of sounded like something was being chased. Even though, Mozart didn’t have the intention to have his listeners think this, it still received the nickname: “The Hunt.” Also to me, the symphony we listened to today sounded like two people were having a fight or were in a conflict. I heard one shy or timid person approaching the bigger person and the situation just exploded on him (hence the increase in intensity and pace).
Response: Week One (8/23/13)
Coming into this class, I honestly have never little knowledge of art. As a child I went to many museums, but I have never been to an art gallery/museum before. In my high school we were required to take two art classes but merely touched on the history or analysis of art. In addition, I have not taken art history here at Ball State yet. Therefore, I find this “introduction to art” to be interesting rather than just a review.When reading the history of art in the “Introduction to Art History,” I saw that the oldest cave paintings are said to be over 40,800 years old. It astounds me that there is even knowledge or technology out there that can detect the age of the earliest art forms. I also found it interesting to see how art changes as culture changes such as the display of architecture during the Renaissance time period.
Although this may seem elementary to most college students, but I found interest in seeing and describing the art in class. It was evident that the styles and techniques slowly advanced and it was especially neat to look at this with the knowledge of what modern paintings look like. Simply enough, it was neat to look at a few art pieces after reading about “Elements of Art” in “Understanding Formal Analysis.” For example, lines draw your attention to certain important parts of a piece and can even communicate feelings such as rest (horizontal) and energy (curve). It amazes me how something as simple as color can create different moods (value of a color) or convey thoughts of strength (intensity of a color). Lastly, I learned that an artist can use color, line, and shading to imply textures in a piece of art without changing the physical feeling. So overall, I have been enjoying the introduction to art as I have very little background in the subject!
Response: Week Two (8/30/13)
This week we shifted from an art focus to more of theological/philosophical focus. At first, I didn’t see much of a connection besides the time period of the artists and the authors. However, Christianity and the portrayal of religious faith is the common theme. Just as the depiction of Christ was popular in the artwork we viewed in class, the Christian faith was also popular in writing during the same time period. However, this commonality is not just a coincidence. According to the text, “Christians demonstrate their faith by engaging in good (charitable) works.” They believed that art and writing were charitable works to Christ because it was a witness of their faith.Both St. Augustine’s The Confessions and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy contained several similar aspects. I thought the most important observation, however, was the transformation each man went through. Both men had an obvious change in attitude from the beginning to the end, which I believe may have been inspiration for many readers in that time period.
One aspect that wasn’t discussed in class was the significance of St. Augustine’s “16th year.” He repetitively referred to it in Adolescence. Although that age is often when a man feels like he becomes a man (and is the age often referred to as the age of an adolescent), was it really that much of a magical year? Augustine mentions that his 16th year is when he starts recognizing all of his faults and sins. Did he think that he wasn’t responsible for his faults before then as he would have just been “a child.” I just found it interesting that he only mentioned his 16th year when severely downgrading himself. I also think that from the perspective of the 21st century, 16 is actually a young age to own up to your sins and faults of your life. Unless your family raises you to be responsible for your mistakes, it seems that most people currently take much longer to seek Christ or straighten up their life.
Response: Week Four (9/13/13)
To be honest, I have heard of Dante’s Inferno before, but I never knew what it was about. I was surprised to read about Dante’s interpretation of hell. Personally, I do not agree with Dante’s division of hell. Honestly, I didn’t even know that old Catholicism, or any religion for that matter, believed that there are levels of sin which created sanctions in hell. As a Lutheran, I believe that a sin is a sin and simply being unrepentant of any sin results in eternal death in a hell. For in Romans 6:23 it is written “for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Therefore, a person who tells a white lie and someone who commits murder will both go to the same place (hell) if they are unrepentant.I also found it interesting that the sins and the punishments were so fitting with each other. The lustful are stuck in a whirlwind in which they can’t control themselves, the gluttonous have to lie under a constant rain of sewage, and the ones who are violent against others have to sit in a pool of boiling blood. Some I actually found to be amusing, which might have been Dante’s intention. The one I found to be most amusing was the flatterers punishment. The flatterers are “full of poop” so they have to sit in poop for the rest of eternity. I am curious to see what the rest of “hell” consists of as the sins are said to get worse.Response: Week Five (9/20/13)
Overall, I found Dante’s Inferno to be a unique read. With my background of Christianity, I did not agree with Dante’s levels of sin and levels in hell. However, I am reading this so many years after it was written. It makes you wonder what the reaction of the people was who read it when Dante published it. Especially, with all the famous people Dante met in hell. Obviously, these names weren’t made up because Dante specifically explains what each one did to get into that level of hell. The readers of the Inferno might have a changed perspective on these famous people or might have lost respect for some of them because of the light that Dante shed on their sins. I can even see people coming after Dante angry.In the 9th circle, the lowest level of hell, I was surprised at a few of Dante’s illustrations. First of all, I was surprised that all of the sinners were punished with ice. Especially for it being the deepest part of hell, I normally think of there being fire. I have just always heard the expression: “burning in the fiery depths of hell,” therefore, I would have never thought of ice being a punishment. However, the explanation that heat and cold are parallel to love and hate makes sense. Because the 9th circle of hell is the farthest away from God (a place of hate), it should be the coldest. Secondly, the description of Satan was not what I was expecting. Him having three heads and arms bigger than all of the giants combined was surprising. Satan seemed to even be a part of the punishment as he was frozen up to his torso. Although, he still had control of the 9th circle by creating the wind with the beating of his wings. Without the icy wind, the 9th circle sinners couldn’t be punished.
Response: Week Six (9/27/13)
I actually think that the Canterbury Tales is a good idea for a story. I think with the rules that each traveler has to come up with a story, many interesting tales will create a full entertaining account. When first reading the descriptions of the travelers, I was surprised by the bunch of people. Because it seemed like the journey was a religious pilgrimage, I found it odd that about only two travelers were found to be “good.” Out of all the travelers, the miller, the friar, and the wife of bath were the most interesting. The red-haired miller loves crude, bawdy jokes and drinking. He steals from customers but interestingly enough he is better than more than most other millers. The friar lives entirely by begging, but yet the donations he extracts allows him to dress richly and live quite merrily.I found the wife of bath to be the most interesting character, although, maybe just because we went into so much detail with her. In her prologue, she went into such great detail with her life and her five husbands that I didn’t know what her story could be about. But honestly, her story was actually pretty insightful on her image of the role of the wife. Mainly, through the story we learned that the wife of bath thinks women should be in control of the relationship. She even prays that Jesus send all women husbands who are young, meek, and who can outlive their husbands. Overall, though I think the wife of bath is a very contradictory person. She does not believe that marriage is a necessary evil because she believes that having sex outside of marriage is not a major sin. She thinks that she is contributing to the creation of more virgins. However, she never says that she even has any children. Therefore, her points of argument weren’t very accurate.
Response: Week Seven (10/4/13)
So far, I have found interest in most of the pieces of work we have read in this class. I thought the reading of Utopia was very interesting this week. I have heard of the word Utopia before and I know it was mentioned in one of my high school English classes. I knew that it was an Island that was supposed to address most of the problems in England and Europe.When reading, I found several points to be very interesting, yet completely fake. Along with the impossibility of several points, several rules of the island are actually contradictory. All 54 cities are supposed to be all the same with 40 workers and some slaves. Supposedly there is always a surplus of food, which seems impossible unless everyone has specific portions every day. No one is better than another, but yet they send three of their best citizens to the capital every year. For their occupations they only work six hours a day, but they can change jobs if they don’t like the one they are doing currently. No one is supposedly lazy at work because they care most about learning and self- improvement. However, Moore hasn’t mentioned anything about emotions through his entire explanation of Utopia. Probably the most unemotional part of his explanation is of the families. All the families are to be the same size. If the families are too big, some members of the family move to another. The city is the same way. If there are too many people then they make a colony outside of Utopia. Somehow, even though this is considered a “perfect world”, all of this would create major conflict. Even though everything and everyone is equal it just all seems so fake. There seems to be so many ways for the entire island and city collapse.
Response: Week Eight (10/12/13)Brittni, this is a great idea for comparison. Once you establish how different the two works are, you need to go a step further and think about why this matters. Can you think about why the two works are so different? Do they have different goals? Do they reflect different ways of thinking? Do they have different ideas about human nature? -MH
For my first paper, I am going to be doing a comparison between Utopia and Dante’s Inferno. For my introduction, I am going to briefly describe Utopia and Inferno. For instance, I am going to explain how Utopia and the levels of hell are completely different. Utopia is basically an island that wants to run as “the perfect society,” so it shows how they are basically trying to rid the society of most of the sin that most of the people commit. Therefore, it is talking about the good of people and how peaceful the land is. In contrast, theInferno focuses on the horrible sins that the people have commited. In my paper I will go into a few more points to support my point that the two works are completely opposite. This is the general paragraph.
Next, I am going to get into the specifics. Basically I am going to explain how if the people lived in Utopia there wouldn’t be the need for as many rings of hell. The two will contradict each other. One of the example’s I am going to use is gluttony. Gluttony is too much stimuli or in specific over-eating. The people of Utopia don’t have to overeat and everyone has enough to eat. Therefore, this sin would not exist. Another example I will use in my paper is lust. The people in Utopia are less likely to be lustful because they can see their “intended spouse” naked once before they marry them. I will explain one more example that I will use: violence. Utopians do not believe in violence and they rarely have any conflicts (because of all the rules to avoid it).
To conclude my paper, I will recap my examples and explain once more how different the two pieces of work are.
Response: Week Nine (10/25/2013)This being a short week, we still covered some interesting material. First of all, the newscasts were all surprisingly funny. They took several different viewpoints, all from the outside looking in. For example, our newscast was from the viewpoint of the natives as Columbus was landing. As we were pretending to be the natives, we broadcasted how different the English men looked from us. We described their odd boats as canoes with wings, their skin as shiny porcelain, and their guns as shiny wooden spears. Because we were so intrigued by why they are here and why they look so differently from us, we decided to interview the chief of our village. We tried to get at how the natives believed they were there to invade. However, the natives acted peaceful and actually traded with them. I personally haven’t studied Columbus and his travels since the beginning of high school. Looking at it now, I find it interesting how accepting and peaceful the natives were. Even though they didn’t want harm, later explorers over took the natives, often killing them off.
Since we didn’t have a reflection due last week, I wanted to say a few things about the movie we watched in class. Overall, it was actually an educational film that was beneficial to watch. I didn’t realize how violent both parties were. Additionally, I was shocked at how soon the monk was to kill the natives that didn’t understand Christianity. Their goal and mission was to witness to the people, but they kill them off faster than I thought. Most of the story line made since except for the end, he was talking to a bunch of monkeys because all of his crew was killed off. I think the goal here might have been to show that he believed he was still in power.
Response: Week Ten (11/1/13)This week we read Tartuffe, a play written by Molière. Honestly, this was one of my favorite pieces of work we have read in this class so far. I enjoy mystery type literature or literature with suspense so I enjoyed the plot twist in Tartuffe. I especially found the last two acts to be the most interesting. Tartuffe’s character definitely developed and it was easy to see the villain side of him.
First of all, with the scene with Elmire displayed Tartuffe’s true personality. At first this scene confused me, I wasn’t sure who exactly was enticing or seducing the other. But then it clicked that it was all set up. However, the fact that Tartuffee even considered getting with her when she is a married woman (not to mention the fact that he knew that Orgon was even at home). Suspense adds up as the audience knows that Orgon is under the table and is waiting to reveal Tartuffe. When Orgon does come out from under the table he tells Tartuffe to hit the road, but before leaving yells, “This house belongs to me, I’ll have you know!” Therefore, he is ultimately saying he has all power over Orgon.
Secondly, the plot twist at the end concluded the play with an unexpected finale. Elmire proposed that they let everybody know how much of a liar and cheat Tartuffe is. However, something more interesting happens. Tartuffe comes to the house with the police. So instead of Orgon leaving the country, he is going to have Orgon sent to prison. Everyone insults Tartuffe and plot twist: the officer turns around and arrests Tartuffe! This isn’t the first time Tartuffe has tried to swindle someone and he has finally been caught for it. I was totally not expecting this plot twist which made it great.
Response: Week Eleven (11/8/13)As I have never heard of Candide or Voltaire before, I didn’t know what to expect when reading the assignment for this week. I was surprised to see how much satire and irony Voltaire used in Candide. Irony means the difference between what you say and what you mean; many examples of this appear in the work.
One example of satire and irony that stands out to me is Pangloss’s explanation of syphilis. Pangloss explains that he has syphilis which he contracted from Paquette. However, he believes that the syphilis is necessary because it all orginated from a man who traveled to the New World with Columbus. Therefore, he rationales that if Columbus had not traveled to the New World and brought back syphilis with him to Europe, then chocolate wouldn’t exist in Europe. Thus, Pangloss is saying that syphilis is “necessary” for chocolate. Although, this rationale doesn’t make any sense to the reader, we can try to add logic to Voltaire’s satire. One explanation may be that Voltaire is making fun of religion. Maybe he is making fun of people’s thought of blind faith. In explanation, we as humans go through immense trial and tribulation and live in a world with much sin (demonstrated as syphilis) but yet we believe it is all for the glory of God that we are here on this earth. All the trials and tribulations are worth it for eternal life (demonstrated as the chocolate). Therefore, Voltaire is demonstrating how absurd he thinks having blind faith is.
Secondly, the satirical part of Candide that talks about the earthquakes is particularly memorable. People are sacrificed/burned to death in order to prevent earthquakes of other natural disasters. The readers can infer that this satire may be poking fun at the New World Indians who make human sacrifices to solve natural disasters. Another explanation of the satire is that the people are trying to avoid total ruin by totally ruining people.
Response: Week Twelve (11/15/13)Evan, Daniel, Benjamin, and I are creating a video on the The Nine Circles of Hell: College Edition. It will be a contemporary twist to the levels of hell described in Dante's Inferno.We are going to have Daniel play Dante and the rest of us are going to be sinners who will be receiving punishment. We are going to introduce each scene by including type on the bottom of the screen (so the viewers know what level of hell we are on and what the original punishment in to the book was). Throughout the film we have chosen music that will go with each scene. For example, we are starting the film out by introducing the characters while "Give You Hell" (All-American Rejects) is playing. We will be going about campus to cast each scene. For example, our first scene portrays limbo and we will be at the scramble light. SPOILER ALERT: I typed out an outline of what we are going to do and what music we are going to use if you want to see what all we will be doing.
Contemporary Inferno.docx
Sounds great. Thanks for the outline. We can have a viewing in class on Monday. In addition, to the video, each of you should individually write an introduction/reflection about your video. Explain what you were trying to do and how well you think it worked. - MH
Response: Week Fifteen (12/6/13)
This week we have looked at music in a different perspective than I ever have before. Honestly, I’ve never looked at the dynamics of classical music. Through these last few classes, I have paid closer attention to how music is made.
I have also realized that I think music is a lot like art. Therefore, I now see the only MAJOR difference is that art is visual and music is an auditory perception. In a way, I even think that music is a form of art, just for the ear instead of the eye.
First of all, both visual art and music have parts that can be identified and analyzed. Form was one of the ways we discussed in class to analyze both music and visual art. In music we called form “the repeating, variation.” We first analyzed Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer. This song was divided into four parts: A, A, B, A. The first A’s are exposition, the B is development, and the last A is recapitulation. A coda can then follow this. All music can be analyzed in this way. Most music has repeating parts and follows a pattern even if the listener can’t realize it at first.
Secondly, everyone interprets music different, just as visual art has many interpretations. The people who write the music and the listeners sometimes invent stories for their work. For example, the first symphony we listened to had intense and faster paced sections that kind of sounded like something was being chased. Even though, Mozart didn’t have the intention to have his listeners think this, it still received the nickname: “The Hunt.” Also to me, the symphony we listened to today sounded like two people were having a fight or were in a conflict. I heard one shy or timid person approaching the bigger person and the situation just exploded on him (hence the increase in intensity and pace).