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The Humanities Through the Arts 8th Edition Chapters 7, 8, 9, & 10

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1 The Humanities Through the Arts 8th Edition Chapters 7, 8, 9, & 10
BY F. David Martin & Lee A. Jacobus Lecture by Dr. Anthonia Adadevoh

2 Chapter 7 Literature Spoken Language and Literature
Today we are told to read without moving our lips or making a sound, but that may not be the best way to read literature. We invite you to read aloud all samples of literature that follow. Literature- like music, dance, film, and drama- is a serial art. In order to perceive it, we must be aware of what is happening now, remember what happened before, and anticipate what is to come.

3 There is no way to perceive the all–at-onceness of a literary work as we sometimes perceive a painting, although cummings’ poem come close. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” by Dylan Thomas, is an example of harnessing deep emotion in the confines of a rigid form. Thomas wrote the poem while his father was dying. Read it first; then we will consider the issues that go into making it a powerful poem.

4 Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end and know dark is right Because their words had forked no lighting they Do bot gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

5 Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless. Me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

6 Theme (Main idea)

7 Analysis This poem is an address to the poet’s father, telling him not to die without a struggle to hold onto life. The poet uses sounds to underscore his emotional pain, especially the use of one g sound in “gentle” another in “good” and yet another g sound in “age” and “rage”. As you examine the opening stanza, you can see the careful use of o sounds in “Do”, “go”, “good”, and “old”, which eventually give way to the a sounds in “rage”. These are careful poetic devices called consonance in the case of g and assonance in the cases of the o and a sounds balance of such sounds

8 Type of Poem– The villanelle
Form of a Villanelle poem First, there must be five three-line stanzas and one final four-line stanza. Line one must repeat in its entirety at lines six, twelve, and eighteen. Line three must repeat at lines nine, fifteen, and nineteen. There can be only two rhyme sounds. The first and third lines of each stanza rhyme with “light” and the second line rhymes with “day”. The miracle in this poem is that the burden of form does not weigh the poem down.

9 Subject Matter, Content and Structure(Artistic Form)
We can talk easily about the subject matter of the poem. It is the complaint of the poet regarding his father’s imminent death. But the content of the poem goes beyond that into the experience of the apprehending both silently and audibly the poem itself. Before you move on, read the poem aloud to a friend and talk about what the poem means to you both. The theme ( main idea) of a literary work usually involves a structural decision, comparable to an architecture.

10 It is helpful to think of literature as works composed of elements that can be discussed individually in order to gain a more thorough perception of them. And it is equally important to realize that the discussion of these individual elements leads to a fuller understanding of the whole structure. Details are organized into parts, and these, in turn, are organized into structure.

11 Literary Structures The Narrative and the Narrator
The narrative is a story told to an audience by a teller controlling the order of events and the emphasis those events receive. Most narratives concentrate upon the events. But some narratives have little action: they reveal a character in the fiction; sometimes the narrator pretends an awareness of an audience other than the reader. However, the author controls the narrator; and the narrator controls the reader.

12 Piano by D. H. Lawrence Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

13 Piano by D. H. Lawrence In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

14 Piano by D. H. Lawrence So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

15 Theme (Main idea)

16 Three Types of Narratives
Episodic Narrative- a story composed of separate incidents (or episodes) tied loosely together Organic Narrative – A story composed of separable incidents that relate to one another in tightly coherent ways, usually causally or chronologically. The Quest Narrative – In literature, a story that revolves around the search by the hero for an object, prize, or person who is hidden or removed. This typically involves considerable travel and wandering on the part of the hero

17 Literary Details (5) Image- An image in language asks us to imagine or “picture” what is referred to or being described Metaphor – Helps writers intensify language. Metaphor is a comparison designed to heighten our perception of things compared Symbol- Something perception stands for something more abstract Irony – A literary device that says one thing but means another. 5. Diction- Choice of words

18 Langston Hughes Langston Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He was the only son of James Nathaniel Hughes and Carrie Mercer Langston. His parents divorced when he was young and his father moved to Mexico. Because his mother traveled a lot to find work and was often absent, his grandmother raised Hughes until he was 12. His childhood was lonely and he often occupied himself with books. It was Hughes's grandmother, a great storyteller, who transferred to him her love of literature and the importance of becoming educated.

19 Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare. “Obstacles”

20 But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light.

21 So, boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps
So, boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps. 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now— For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

22 Mother to Son Stairs that needs repair Crystal Stairs

23 Activity Analyze this poem based on what was discussed

24 Summary Literature is the wedding of sound and sense. Literature is not passive. We have been e3specially interested in two aspects of literature: its structure and its details.

25 Chapter 8 Drama Drama is a collaborative art the represents events and situations, either realistic and/or symbolic, that we witness happening through the actions of actors in a play on a stage in front of a live audience.

26 Elements of Drama by Aristotle
Plot: a series of event leading to disaster for the main characters who undergo reversals in fortune and understanding but usually ending with a form of enlightenment sometimes of the characters, sometimes of the audience, and sometimes of both. Character: the presentation of a person or persons whose actions and the reason for them are more or less revealed to the audience. Diction: the language of the dram, which should be appropriate to the action.

27 Elements of Drama by Aristotle
Thought: the ideas that underlie the plot of the drama, expressed in terms of dialogue and soliloquy.  Spectacle: the places of the action, the costumes, set designs, and visual elements in the play. Music: in Greek drama, the dialogue was sometimes sung or chanted by a chorus, and often this music was of considerable emotional importance. In the modern drama, music is rarely used in serious plays, but it is of first importance in the modern musical.

28 Plot Plot involves rising action, climax, falling action, denouement. For Artisotle, the tragic hero quests for truth. The moment of truth the climax is called recognition. When the fortune of the protagonist turns from good to bad, the reversal follows. The strongest effect of tragedy occurs when recognition and reversal happen at the same time

29 Protagonist (Main Character)
The protagonist or leading character in the most powerful tragedies fails not only because of fate, which is a powerful force in Greek thought, but because of a flaw in character ( hamartia), a disregard of human limitations. The protagonist in the best tragedies ironically brings his misfortune upon himself. Tragedy, Aristotle tells us, arouses pity and fear and by doing so produces in a catharsis, a purging of those feelings, wiping out some of the horror. The drama helps us understand the complexities of human nature and the power of inescapable destinies.

30 Dialogue and Soliloquy
The primary dramatic interchanges are achieved by dialogue, the exchange of conversation among the characters. In order plays, the individual speech of a character might be relatively long, and then it is answered by another character in the same way. In more modern plays, the dialogue is often extremely short. Sometimes a few minutes of dialogue will contain a succession of speeches only five or six words in length.

31 The soliloquy, on the other hand, is designed to give us insight into the character who speaks the lines. Usually the character is totally alone onstage and speaking apparently to himself. In the best of soliloquies, we are given to understand that the character is not speaking to the audience the term’ aside’ is used to describe such speeches. The character is alone, and therefore we can trust to the sincerity of the speech and the truths that it reveals.

32 Hamlet by Shakespeare A Soliloquy
To be, or not be, that is the question: Whether’ tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep No more and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks The flesh is heir to [ ]

33 Summary of Hamlet Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s death, but, because he is contemplative and thoughtful by nature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness. Claudius and Gertrude worry about the prince’s erratic behavior and attempt to discover its cause. They employ a pair of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompous Lord Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad with love for his daughter, Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet in conversation with the girl. But though Hamlet certainly seems mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that he wishes to ban marriages.

34 Archetypal Patterns Certain structural principles tend to govern the shape of dramatic narrative, just as they do the narrative of fiction. The discussion of episodic and organic structures in the previous chapter has relevance for drama as well. However, drama originated from ancient rituals and sometimes maintains a reference to those rites. For example, the ritual of sacrifice which implies that the individual must be sacrificed for the commonweal of society seems to find its way into a great many dramas, both old and new.

35 Archetypal Patterns Such a pattern is archetypal a basic psychological pattern that people apparently react to on a more or less subconscious level. These patterns, archetypes, are deep in myths that have permeated history. For instance, one’s search for personal identity, for self-evaluation, since it seems to be a pattern repeated in all ages, can serve as a primary archetypal structure for drama. The quest narrative (Chapter 7) is an example of an archetypal structure, one that recurs in dram frequently. For instance, Hamlet is seeking the truth about his father’s death (Aristotle’s recognition), but in doing so, he is also trying to discover his own identity as it relates to his mother.

36 Genres of Drama Tragedy – Drama that portrays a serious subject matter and ends unhappily. Comedy-A form of drama that is usually light in subject matter and ends happily but that is not necessarily void of seriousness. Tragicomedy-Drama that includes more or less equally, characteristics of both tragedy and comedy.

37 Tragic Stage

38 Modern Drama  Modern drama tends to avoid traditional tragic structures because modern concepts of morality, sin, guilt, fate, and death have been greatly altered.

39 Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois She was a playwright known for A Raisin in the Sun. She was married to Robert Nemiroff. She died on January 12, 1965 in New York City

40 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
A Raisin in the Sun portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, an African-American family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. When the play opens, the Youngers are about to receive an insurance check for $10,000. This money comes from the deceased Mr. Younger’s life insurance policy. Each of the adult members of the family has an idea as to what he or she would like to do with this money. The matriarch of the family, Mama, wants to buy a house to fulfill a dream she shared with her husband. Mama’s son, Walter Lee, would rather use the money to invest in a liquor store with his friends. Walter’s wife, Ruth, agrees with Mama, however, and hopes that she and Walter can provide more space and opportunity for their son, Travis. Finally, Beneatha, Walter’s sister and Mama’s daughter, wants to use the money for her medical school tuition.

41 Summary The subject matter of drama is the human condition as represented by action. By emphasizing plot and character as the most important elements of drama, Aristotle helps us understand the priorities of all drama, especially with reference to its formal elements and their structuring. Aristotle’s theory of tragedy focuses on the fatal flaw of the protagonist.

42 Chapter 9 Music Music is one of the most powerful of the arts partly because sounds more than any other sensory stimulus create in us involuntary reactions, pleasant or unpleasant. Music can be experienced in two basic ways: “hearing” or “listening.”

43 Hearers of Music Hearers do not attempt to perceive accurately either the structure or the details of the form. Most hearers prefer richly melodic music. They are concentrating on the associations evoked by the music rather than on the details and structure of the music. Powerful repetitive rhythms and blasting sounds trigger visceral responses so strong that dancing or motion often wild becomes imperative.

44 Listeners of Music The listeners conversely, concentrate their attention upon the form, details as well as structure. They could answer questions about the structure of a given music. And a listener, unlike a hearer, would be aware of the details and structure of works. Listeners focus upon the form that informs, that creates content. Listeners do not just listen: They listen for something –the content.

45 The Elements of Music Tone Consonance Dissonance Rhythm Tempo
Melodic Material: Melody, Theme, and Motive Counterpoint Harmony Dynamics Contrast

46 The Subject Matter of Music (2)
1. Feelings ( emotions, passions, and mood) Feelings are composed of sensations, emotions, passions and moods. Any stimulus from any art produces a sensation. Emotions are strong sensations felt as related to a specific stimulus. Passions are emotions elevated to great intensity. Moods sometimes arise from no apparent stimulus, as when we feel melancholy for no apparent reason. In our experience, all these feelings mix together and can be evoked by music. No art reaches into our life of feeling more deeply than music.

47 Sound Apart from feelings, sound might also be thought of as one of the subject matters of music, because in some music it may be that the form gives us insight into sounds.

48 Musical Structures The most familiar musical structures are based on repetition especially repetition of melody, harmony, rhythm, and dynamics. Even the refusal to repeat any of these may be effective mainly because the listener usually anticipates repetition. Repetition in music is of particular importance because of the serial nature of the medium. The ear cannot retain sound patterns for very long, and thus it needs repetition to help hear the musical relationships.

49 Theme and Variations The theme is sometimes repeated so that we have a full understanding, and then modifications of the theme follow. A” being the original theme, the structure unfolds as A1 -A2 -A3 -A4 -A5… and so on to the end of the variations.

50 Rondo Rondo the first section or refrain of a rondo will include a melody and perhaps a development of that melody.

51 Fugue The fugue, a specialized structure of counterpoint, was developed in the seventeenth centuries and is closely connected with Bach and his Art of Fugue. Most fugues feature a melody called the “statement” which is set forth clearly at the beginning of the composition, usually with the first note the tonic of its key. Thus if the fugue is C major, the first note of the statement is likely to be C.

52 Sonata Form Sonata Form its overall structure basically is A-B-A, with these letters representing the main parts of the composition and not just melodies. The first A is the exposition, with a statement of the main theme in the tonic key.

53 Fantasia The fantasia may be the most helpful of these to examine, since it is to the sonata form what free verse is to the sonnet. The word “ fantasia” implies fancy or imagination, which suggests, in turn, the fanciful and the unexpected. It is not a stable structure, and its sections cannot be described in such conventional terms as A-B-A. The fantasia usually offers some stability by means of a recognizable melody of a singable quality, but then it often shifts to material that is less identifiable, tonally certain, and harmonically secure.

54 Symphony Symphony, the word “symphony” implies a “sounding together”. From its beginnings, through its full and marvelous development in the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, the symphony was particularly noted for its development of harmonic structures.

55 Blues Sometime around 1890, the blues emerged as a distinct African-American art form, rooted in the southern U.S. and drawing on work songs and hollers, folk tradition, black spirituals, and the popular music of the time. Looking back from 1890, one can speculate about the African influence in the musical structure of the blues as it grew from slave culture and the memory of slavery. Looking forward from 1890, a time of transition in America and of dashed hopes for blacks in the resurgent Jim Crow South, one can see the blues as a powerful force both shaping and shaped by the evolution of American popular culture (from the "race records" craze of the 1920s through the blues-fueled rock revolution of the postwar years) and the history of black and white race relations in the century ahead.

56 Full name: William Christopher Handy (W. C
Full name: William Christopher Handy (W.C. Handy) Nick name: The Father of the Blues Born: November 16th, 1873 in Florence, Alabama Died: March 28th, 1958 in New York City Occupation: Blues Musician and Composer Why He’s Famous: Handy is credited with transforming the blues from a relatively unknown regional music into a popular, American music genre.

57 Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated at the beginning of the 20th century, arguably earlier, within the African-American communities of the Southern United States. Its roots lie in the combining by African-Americans of certain European harmony and form elements, with their existing African-based music. Its African musical basis is evident in its use of blues notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swung note. From its early development until the present day, jazz has also incorporated elements from popular music especially, in its early days, from American popular music.

58 Louis Armstrong Louis Armstrong, nicknamed "Satchmo," "Pops" and, later “Ambassador Satch," was born on August , 4, 1901, in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1936, became the first African-American jazz musician to write an autobiography, Swing That Music. Armstrong died at his home in Queens, New York, on July 6, 1971.

59 Summary The content of music is a revelation of feelings and sounds—that music gives us a more sensitive understanding of them. There is some evidence that music gives us insight into our feelings. In addition to classical music, modern popular styles such as blues, jazz, rock and roll, and rap all have capacity to evoke intense participation. They produce feeling states that can be complex and subtle.

60 Chapter 10 Dance Dance moving bodies shaping space shares common ground with kinetic sculpture. In abstract dance, the center of interest is upon visual patterns, and thus there is common ground with abstract painting. Dance, however, usually includes a narrative, performed on a stage with scenic effects, and thus has common ground with drama. Dance is rhythmic, unfolding in time, and thus has common ground with music. Most dance is accompanied by music,

61 Subject Matter Of Dance
At its most basic level, the subject matter of dance is abstract motion, but a much more pervasive subject matter of the dance is feeling. Our ability to identify with other human bodies is so strong that the perception of feelings exhibited by the dancer often evokes something of those feelings in ourselves. The choreographer, creator of the dance, interprets those feelings.

62 States of mind are a further dimension that may be the subject matter of dance. Feelings, such as pleasure and pain, are relatively transient, but states of mind involve attitudes, tendencies that engender certain feelings on the appropriate occasions.

63 Form The form of the dance its details and structure gives us insight into the subject matter. But in dance, the form is not as clearly perceptible as it usually is in painting, sculpture, and architecture. The visual arts normally “sit still” long enough for us to reexamine everything. But dance moves on relentlessly, like literature in recitation, drama, and music, preventing us from reexamining its details and organization. We can only hope to hold in memory a detail for compassion with an ensuing detail, and those details as they help create the structure.

64 Types of Dance (6) Ritual dance – The dancers properly costumed form a line and are led by a priest. The ritual character of the dance is clearly observable in the pattern of motion, with dancers beginning by moving toward the north, then turning west, south, east, north, west, south, and ending toward the east. Ex. Rain dance

65 Types of Dances (contd.)
2. Social dance – This dance is not dominated by religious or practical purposes, although it may have secondary purposes such as meeting people or working off excess energy. More importantly, it is a form of recreation and social enjoyment. – Ex. Country dance etc.

66 Types of Dances (contd.)
3. The court dance – Participating in court dances signified high social status. Ex. Volta, German allemande

67 Types of Dances (contd.)
4. Ballet- In the 18th century, the en pointe (on point) technique was developed. Ex. swan lake

68 Types of Dances (contd.)
5. Modern dance - The origins of the modern dance are usually traced to the American dancers Isadore Duncan and Ruth St. Denis. They rebelled against the stylization of ballet. They insisted on more natural movements.

69 Types of Dances (contd.)
6. Popular dance – This changes rapidly from generation to generation. Ex. Charleston, break dancing etc.

70 Alvin Ailey Born in Texas in 1931, Alvin Ailey was a choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in It was a hugely popular, multi-racial modern dance ensemble that popularized modern dance around the world thanks to extensive world tours. His most famous dance is Revelations, a celebratory study of religious spirit. Ailey received the Kennedy Center Honors in A year later, on December 1, 1989, Ailey died of AIDS in New York City.

71 Revelations by Alvin Ailey
Using African-American spirituals, song-sermons, gospel songs and holy blues, Alvin Ailey’s Revelations fervently explores the places of deepest grief and holiest joy in the soul.  More than just a popular dance work, it has become a cultural treasure, beloved by generations of fans.  Seeing Revelations for the first time or the hundredth can be a transcendent experience, with audiences cheering, singing along and dancing in their seats from the opening notes of the plaintive “I Been ’Buked” to the rousing “Wade in the Water” and the triumphant finale, “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham.”

72 Ailey said that one of America’s richest treasures was the African-American cultural heritage —“sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful.” This enduring classic is a tribute to that tradition, born out of the choreographer’s “blood memories” of his childhood in rural Texas and the Baptist Church. But since its premiere in 1960, the ballet has been performed continuously around the globe, transcending barriers of faith and nationality, and appealing to universal emotions, making it the most widely-seen modern dance work in the world.

73 Revelations by Alvin Ailey

74

75 Summary Through the medium of the moving human body, the form of dance can reveal visual pattern or feelings or states of mind or narrative or, more probably, some combination. The first step in learning to participate with the dance is to learn the nature of its movement. The second is to aware of its different kinds of subject matter. The content of dance gives us insights about our inner lives, especially state of mind, that supplement the insights of music.


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