Unit 3: The Baroque and the Enlightenment
Jean-Baptiste Pater, Dancers in a Pavilion (1720's)
Hey! How about reading up on the crazy history of Porcelain! Google "Johann Friederich Bottger," for starters...
I've always thought that someone should make a movie version of the Baroque masterpiece Paradise Lost. It's author John Milton -- though (or perhaps because) he was nearly blind when he wrote it, possessed an amazingly visual imagination. He wanted you to see that war raging in heaven.
Well, no one has yet made such a movie, but Gustave Dore, famous 19th century engraver, did the next best thing. Check out the amazing image above, of Lucifer plunging into the abyss. Click on it if you'd like to see the whole portfolio of illustrations! |
Some Enlightened Enthusiasms
or, possible culture journal assignments Would you like to take a look at some of the first genuine "graphic novels?" Check out William Hogarth's excellent two part series, The Rake's Progress and The Harlot's Progress. They're amazing, and I bet a description plus comments on either of these would make an excellent journal assignment!
The Eighteenth Century's Favorite Drink?
Gin versus Coffee! (Or: The Enlightenment. Brought to you by...Coffee!) Really, somebody should do some extra credit assignments on 18th century fashions. Women's or Men's -- perhaps for the last time before the Industrial age, both are equally elaborate.
During the Enlightenment, man began to measure the world in a systematic fashion: globes became available, time pieces --watches and clocks -- also became available; the first encyclopediae and dictionaries are commissioned by the Academy of Science in France (though in England, Samuel Johnson boasts he can do in 3 years what it took several hundred french scholars to do in 40 years -- namely, write a dictionary. He was wrong: it took him 9 years to write his English Dictionary).
Extra Credit assignment? Read up on one of these Enlightenment efforts to measure the world, and offer your impressions (perhaps even reading some of Johnson's original and interesting definitions here). |