Baroque Period through the Romantic Age Essay Example for Free

Baroque Period through the Romantic Age Essay Social, political, or economic conditions can significantly alter the nature and meaning of art. As power shifted from the wealthy to the common man, art in Europe changed dramatically to reflect that change. During the Rococco period, art was detailed and overblown. Interior decorations- primarily furniture- were full of curving lines and organic inspiration, and paintings, â€Å"with their playful eroticism, soft colours and elegant forms† (Malyon, 1999, para. 1) were well suited to balance these rooms. Such frivolousness could only be associated with a powerful upper-class. The common man, of course, could not afford such luxurious surroundings when the main concern was putting food on the table. That this style was the style of the day clearly illustrates how the aristocracy’s desires for excess affected artists’ and craftsmen’s work. Rubens’ work during the Baroque period, with its focusing on robust, curvaceous women, seems to be bursting with life and hope. In â€Å"Portrait of Isabella Brant,† for example, Isabella has a slight smile on her face, as though she has a secret that might be a little bit funny. It’s as though she knows how important the shift of power, from the few, rich aristocrats, to the many struggling working class citizens, will be. She doesn’t appear to be a peasant, but neither is she a princess. Isabella, perhaps, had more to be laugh about than most- with the aristocracy soon becoming a target for violence, and the impoverished still limited by a lack or resources, the middle class would become the best social class to belong to! Because Rubens was a well respected citizen, (Eisler, 1996) his skillful portrayal of the working class drew attention to people, who, for the first time, had some hope of being empowered. At the same time, portraits of the aristocrats were subdued and sad-looking, as though they know their reign is nearly over. In El Greco’s â€Å"Saint Louis, King of France, and a Page,† for example, â€Å"He holds†¦ attributes of royal power in his hands†¦ but intensely gazes at the viewer with a grave, melancoly (sic) expression on his face. † (de Vergnette, n. d. ) When the lower classes finally did revolt, the Neoclassic style emerged and drew heavily on ancient Greek and Roman influences. Bust of Voltaire Without His Wig, by Jean-Antoine Houdon, and Cupid and Psyche, by Antonio Canova, are two notable examples. The human body is portrayed without garments or other adornment- rich and poor are equal without clothes on. These ancient civilizations’ famously successful (for a time) democracies must have been quite inspirational to people who had been subjugated for hundreds of years. Their standards were therefore emulated not only in the political and social world, but also in the art world. References de Vergnette, Francoise. (n. d. ) â€Å"Saint Louis, Kind of France, and a Page. † Paintings: Spanish Painting. Retrieved March 16, 2008 from http://www.louvre. fr/llv/oeuvres/detail_notice. jsp? CONTENTcnt_id=10134198673226326CURRENT_LLV_NOTICEcnt_id=10134198673226326FOLDERfolder_id=9852723696500811fromDept=truebaseIndex=162bmUID=1189640373517bmLocale=en Eisler, Colin. (1996). Masterworks in Berlin: A City’s Paintings Reunited: Painting in the Western World, 1300-1914. Retrieved March 16, 2008 from http://www. artchive. com/artchive/R/rubens. html Malyon, John. (1999). â€Å"Rococco. † Mark Harden’s Artchive. Retrieved March 16, 2008 from http://www. artchive. com/artchive/rococo. html

Cloning Essay -- essays research papers fc

Cloning   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Cloning is an unethical action that should not be tampered with physically in any animal form regardless of what it is. This is a genetically engineered process by humans, in which, perfectly generated genes from someone or something is copied into its own life form to be an exact replica. In the article â€Å"Calves cloned to produce drugs† there are two cows involved with cloning. People should not be tampering with this, but letting God create people and animals the way he has it planned out to be. Not to mention, no two or more life forms should ever be exactly alike with the exact same genes (except for plants who are that way anyhow). With this happening to animals now and evolving toward humans, it could cause some huge problems with our world. It is acceptable for scientists and doctors to study genetic engineering and cloning, but not perform it physically in any kind of life forms.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The news article, â€Å"Calves cloned to produce drugs† in USA Today, is about two genetically engineered and cloned cows that are formed to produce new drugs. This cloning is from two sheep cloned for drugs and evolved into trying it on cows to produce a milk that will sustain blood pressure. As a result, doctors are constantly progressing toward other animals to produce clones for different drugs in order to help our human race. The entire article is geared toward humans and their future with drugs as they live on the earth. &... Cloning Essay -- essays research papers fc Cloning   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Cloning is an unethical action that should not be tampered with physically in any animal form regardless of what it is. This is a genetically engineered process by humans, in which, perfectly generated genes from someone or something is copied into its own life form to be an exact replica. In the article â€Å"Calves cloned to produce drugs† there are two cows involved with cloning. People should not be tampering with this, but letting God create people and animals the way he has it planned out to be. Not to mention, no two or more life forms should ever be exactly alike with the exact same genes (except for plants who are that way anyhow). With this happening to animals now and evolving toward humans, it could cause some huge problems with our world. It is acceptable for scientists and doctors to study genetic engineering and cloning, but not perform it physically in any kind of life forms.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The news article, â€Å"Calves cloned to produce drugs† in USA Today, is about two genetically engineered and cloned cows that are formed to produce new drugs. This cloning is from two sheep cloned for drugs and evolved into trying it on cows to produce a milk that will sustain blood pressure. As a result, doctors are constantly progressing toward other animals to produce clones for different drugs in order to help our human race. The entire article is geared toward humans and their future with drugs as they live on the earth. &...

Silas Marner Major Themes

Major Themes Class Silas Marner centers around two households, Marner's cottage by the stone-pits and the Cass manor, the Red House. These two settings represent class extremes, and the people of Raveloe know it. The cottage is the ramshackle abode of the lowliest member of Raveloe society; the manor is a sprawling home filled with gentry and a location for dances. Rather than set an impermeable boundary between these two worlds, Eliot stages many intersections between the two households. Dunstan Cass, who is a member of the moneyed class, enters Marner's home looking for money. Silas Marner, lowly and miserable, raises aSquire's granddaughter as his own child. Godfrey Cass, though he owns Marner's cottage at the end of the novel, is actually in the weaver's debt. These are just a few instances of the permeability of class boundaries in the novel. In Raveloe, strict boundaries of class do not necessarily lead to greater happiness among the higher classes. Indeed, those with money-or those who are supposed to have money-tend to be the most harried and corrupt characters, such as Dunstan, Godfrey, and even Silas before Eppie. The person most oppressed by circumstances in Silas Marner is perhaps Godfrey Cass, who finds himself at the ercy of a lower-class wife, who fails to have children of his own, and who ends up envying the bond of a lowly weaver and his daughter. Silas Marner and Eppie, on the other hand, though they do not have status or wealth, have power over the Casses and seem to enjoy unmitigated happiness. The Rainbow tavern and the church in Raveloe also serve as places where class differences are evident. The Rainbow becomes quite a different place when the â€Å"gentles† are having a dance; during these times (in Chapter Six, for instance), the lesser villagers, like Mr. Macey, reign over the Rainbow, telling stories all the while about the anded members of society. At the church, the important members of society sit in assigned seats at the f ront of the church while the rest of the villagers sit behind them and watch. In both these places, although everyone recognizes the status difference between the common villagers and the gentry, this difference does not seem to be a problem in Raveloe. The lower classes have not been fed the broth of revolt; they seem quite content. Meanwhile, the upper classes are not oppressive or cruel slave drivers like their factory- owning counterparts. In fact, the gentry rely upon the villagers to sincerely appreciate their mportance and value in the town. It is Mr. Macey, not Mr. Lammeter, who celebrates the history of the Warrens. And without the respectful, watching eyes of the villagers, the front-row seats in church would have less dignity. Thus, Silas Marner tends to represent class differences with historical accuracy. Eliot seems drawn to this pre-industrial era, when there was an easygoing class hierarchy in country towns. Compare the relatively class- indifferent respect that is s hown in Raveloe to the horrible factory in the manufacturing town that Marner and Eppie visit in Chapter Twenty-One. The industrial world treats the lower classes as inhuman ogs in the factory wheels. In Raveloe's trade-based society, meanwhile, each villager can play an important role in the success of the society. That is, the weaver is respected to some degree by the Squire if he weaves his linens well. Even so, one might reasonably argue that Eliot's idyllic depiction of happy peasants romanticizes the difficulties of the class differences in nineteenth-century England. Myth and Folklore Many critics of the novel fault its unrealistic situations and conclusions. They point out that Marner's conversion from a miserable old misanthrope to a loving father happens too quickly, and they argue that the end of the ovel has too much poetic justice, with every character getting a just reward. These critics hold the novel to a standard of realism that others see as inappropriate to Eliot' s goals in Silas Marner . Defenders of the novel argue that is is more like a fable, operating through the moral logic of a fairy tale in order to accomplish goals beyond merely representing reality. In fables, ballads, myths and fairy tales, sudden transformations, inexplicable coincidences and other such unrealistic plot devices are part of the magic. Novels need not read like documentaries. Silas Marner is a work of fantasy as much as it represents a deeper eality. While the plot reflects the novel's mythic character, there is also explicit reference to myth and legend throughout the novel. Weaving itself is a classic emblem of myths across cultures (see the Mythology and Weaving web site). Certainly Eliot was well aware of this emblem when she chose her protagonist and the activity of weaving. The story also has a strong Biblical undercurrent, recalling especially the stories of Job, King David, the expulsion from Eden, and Cain and Abel. And the author of Silas Marner expects r eaders to understand its many references to ancient mythology including the Fates and Arachne (a weaver ransformed into a spider–note the profusion of insect imagery describing Marner). The hearth, where Eppie is suddenly found, is an especially powerful image in Roman myth. Myth and superstition are active patterns in the village. Mr. Macey tells ghost stories about the Warrens and predicts the future. The villagers look with curiosity on wanderers such as Marner, perceiving that such persons belong to a separate, magical race with powers to heal or harm. These patterns contribute to the folkloric character of the work. Even while Silas Marner satirizes the superstitions of the villagers and offers a fairly realistic explanation or every â€Å"miracle† in it, the novel engages the mysteries of fate and love that characterize legendary literature. Memory George Eliot and William Wordsworth have a special affinity. In Silas Marner , more perhaps than in any of her other works, this affinity provides the root of the novel. Eliot even facetiously wrote, in a letter to her publisher, that she â€Å"should not have believed that any one would have been interested in [the novel] but myself (since William Wordsworth is dead). † Eliot uses poetry from Wordsworth as her epigraph, she quotes and echoes his language throughout the work, and she centers the redemption of her rotagonist on one of Wordsworth's favorite themes: memory. For Eliot and for Wordsworth, memory is not simply about â€Å"remembering† in the everyday sense; it is about the profound experience of owning one's own history, of embodying one's past. For example, in Silas Marner's redemption after finding Eppie, the first thing he thinks about is his long-lost baby sister, someone he has not thought about for at least fifteen years. In fact, Eppie's name was also his mother's name and his sister's name. Eppie does not merely allow Marner to move forward out of the meaningless cycle of weaving and mourning in which he is trapped at the time of er arrival, but she also allows Marner to recover elements of his own past. Many other motives are connected with memory. Marner's herb gathering, for instance, is something he learned from his mother, which he had forgotten until Eppie arrived. His healing process requires backward reaches into the positive, meaningful elements of his past. In the presence of Eppie, Marner's memory propels him to a richer future. George Eliot's own memory contributed to key elements of the novel. In a letter, Eliot writes that the novel unfolded â€Å"from the merest millet-seed of thought. † This little seed was her recollection f a stooped, old weaver walking along in the Midlands whom she happened to see one day long before she began the work. Eliot's enrichment of this scrap of her memory is much like the process of remembering in the novel. From a remembered gesture-such as gathering herbs with one's mother- one can unf old an entire horizon of value pertinent to the present. Memory, for both Eliot and her characters, is active and creative, more than a passive â€Å"storehouse† of knowledge and experience. In remembering we deepen our present life. One way to create the new is to refashion and reinterpret what we have recovered from old times and old meanings.

A Unique Culture Saudi Arabia - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 3 Words: 955 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2017/09/18 Category Demography Essay Type Argumentative essay Tags: Egypt Essay Saudi Arabia Essay Did you like this example? Saudi Arabia: A Unique Culture Saudi Arabia: A Unique Culture The birthplace of Islam, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is home to some 12,300,000 citizens and an additional four and half million resident foreigners. These non-citizens from predominantly Arab-speakingArab-speaking nations such as Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, comprise almost two thirds of the Saudi Arabian workforce. That being said, Saudi Arabia’s economic engine runs on the fuel of foreign indentured servitude and the sense of entitlement that Saudi Arabian citizens maintain and has become a way of life; a culture all to its own. This culture has evolved over time from the discovery and exploitation of rich fossil oil deposits; oil that has created one of the richest countries in the world. All about the Oil In 1932, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became a unified country under King Abd Al-Aziz Al Saud (Lippman, Myers, 2004). Prior to this date, the country was divided into three tribal regions of Najd, Hijaz, and Asir and their dependencies. Development of the oil industry in the eastern Saudi Arabia spurred a fragmented cultural change that, with the aid of Americans, eventually â€Å"mechanized, computerized, electrified, paved, air-conditioned† (Lippman, Myers, 2004), and revolutionized the country. It wasn’t until the discovery of rich oil fields and the subsequent exploitation of those riches that the citizens of Saudi Arabia became a nation of wealth. From nomadic Bedouins whose country was a mere strategic ally in World War II sprang a people who fully embraced the modern and lavish lifestyles of American oil workers. The Saudis had gone from an impoverished culture to a super-rich one just as if it had received a dead relative’s large inheritance and it went to their heads. Cultural Clash The House of Saud’s (the founders of the Kingdom) direct descendants are the rulers of Saudi Ara bia, however they have no legitimate claim to the country despite their historic battle prowess of the early 1900s. Sharia (Islamic law) is the law in Saudi Arabia; â€Å"the state exists to promote, protect and promulgate Islam† (Cole, 2010). The fact that the monarchies of Saudi Arabia have always upheld Sharia law has kept them in power. The king, â€Å"whose title is Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques† (Cole, 2010) faces no greater challenge than upholding these religious credentials. Religious conservatives control the elementary education agenda, religious education, and university curricula. The national culture of Saudi Arabia revolves around Wahhabi Islam, a particularly virulent, extremely traditional, and intolerant form of religious thinking (Metz, 1992). The epicenter for Islam containing the two largest religious iconic cities in the Arab world, Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia has since the early inceptive years of western lifestyles, started to rejec t those same ideals. This in turn has allowed for the Saudi Arabia to be considered the model religious-political environment to the entire Arab world. Family Ideals Most cultures have a basis of identity and status within society. For Saudis family is the most important societal foundation, more pointedly, families of formed alignments with other families who share common interests, ideals, and alliances are the keystone to survival. These familial circles are better understood as tribal lineages that are traced through paternal lines and where nepotism runs deep especially for the males of the tribes. As seen in their naming conventions, Saudis are very cognizant of their heritage, their tribe, and their extended families, as well as their nuclear families. A family business is open to participation by sons, uncles, male cousins, and function as the social welfare safety net for all members of the family. Women under Islamic law do not take their husband’s name. Inste ad, they maintain their father’s name showing they belong to his family for their entire life and also maintain control over their personal property, as an indication of their independence from a husband’s control. A woman is incorporated into a household when married, but not the husband’s family. Segregation found throughout the Muslim world between men and women is a mechanism to ensure modesty and avoid fitna (sexual temptation) (Metz, 1992). Children are held in the utmost important aspects of family and marriage, especially sons. A lineage and propagation of the familial and tribal name ensures the utmost happiness in life in accordance with Islamic teachings. Therefore, men are in line with the law when they take a second, third, or even fourth wife. Polygyny is not uncommon in the more conservative areas of Saudi Arabia. Muslim views, many times, are counter-intuitive to the way of the Western-minded individual and as of late (past thirty years) has c reated a high level of tension within the political-religious stability of the Kingdom and the Muslim nation. Conclusion With the discovery and development of rich fossil fuel deposits in Saudi Arabia, a tribal people were hastened through a revolution; from Bedouin lifestyle to 21st Century within less than a pentacost. As this conservative Muslim country fell in love with the lifestyles of the American workers in their country, many felt that Shuria law was undermined. Today a mixed culture in Saudi Arabian society is almost Jekyll-and-Hyde-like. Saudis have attempted to integrate western thinking into the Muslim world, but extreme opposition has created quite a rift in an otherwise peaceful people. The unique culture found on the Arabian continent is the result of American attempts to assimilate. References Cole, D. (2010). Countries and their culture: Saudi Arabia. Retrieved from https://www. everyculture. com/Sa-Th/Saudi-Arabia. html Lippman, T, Myers, J. (2004). Inside the mirage: America’s fragile partnership with Saudi Arabia. Oxford: Westview Press. Metz, H. (1992). Saudi Arabia: a country study. [Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress]. (Adobe Digital Version), Retrieved from https://countrystudies. us/saudi-arabia/ Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "A Unique Culture Saudi Arabia" essay for you Create order