2.2 Collecting and selecting Writers are always on the alert for potential material. A notebook is an essential tool for any writer and has several functions. These range from the jotting down of observations while you’re out and about to an account of daily events, your rants and raves, ideas for poems, single words, clippings from newspapers, responses to books or poems you’ve read, notes from research, all kinds of ‘gathering’. Your notebook is for you, and it needs to contain whatever helps you or fuels your
2.1 Building a believable world Writing is a perceptual art, one in which images are created via language in order for the reader to make meaning. It is therefore imperative that the writer's powers of perception are alert. Writing is a process of becoming aware, of opening the senses to ways of grasping the world, ways that may previously have been blocked. Often we take the world around us for granted, we are so immersed in habit. All of our lives contain relative degrees of routine. We go to sleep, we eat, we go to work.
4.1 Unit summary ‘Freedom’ can mean many different things; the word can have a powerful emotive force. We're concerned here with political freedom. Isaiah Berlin distinguished between a concept of negative freedom and a concept of positive freedom. Negative freedom is freedom from interference, it is a matter of the opportunities that lie open to you. Positive freedom is the capability of doing what you really want to do. Historically, according to Berlin, the concept of positive freedom has been used to
Acknowledgements This unit was written by Dr Emma Barker
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3.1 The limits of propaganda Although portraits of Napoleon were manufactured on a large scale and distributed widely, they could only act as propaganda for the regime up to a certain point. Given the institutional circumstances sketched out in the introduction to this unit, the most effective way to use art as propaganda was with large-scale history paintings that would attract the attention and excite the interest of a large audience when they were exhibited in the Salon. State patronage for such painting was revived o
2.3 The military leader Let us now consider another relatively early portrait, David's Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, in which the then First Consul is shown at the Great Saint Bernard at the start of the campaign which led to the defeat of the Austrians at Marengo in June 1800 (see Plate 10). In fact, Bonaparte had actually crossed the Alps on a humble
5.7.2 Post-mortems How do Images 73 and 74 differ from the usual studio portraits of children? Make a note of the more obvious differences. 5.6.4 Wedding anniversaries Silver and golden wedding anniversaries were often commemorated with a portrait. Many examples follow the pattern of the studio portraits taken for engagements and weddings, with the couple taken individually and together. 5.6.3 Honeymoons 5.5.2 Skirts and breeching Look carefully at Images 46, 47 and 48. 4.12 Key concepts We can conclude that the ideas relating to idealization, positive characterization and sexual stereotyping had a significant influence on the treatment of all 4 components of the portrait: expression, pose, background accessories and lighting. Victorian family photographs (like most other primary sources) are therefore selective, partial and biased. Early photographers regarded it as part of their proper function to emphasize those aspects that were considered at the time to be good and 4.9.2 Idealisation Early photographers were adept at using natural lighting to idealise the sitter. Manuals of good practice were full of advice on adapting the lighting to soften wrinkles and wreathe blemishes in shadow. For ladies of a certain age, who often give the photographer a deal of trouble, it is advisable to employ a very soft light falling in front, which softens the wrinkles and protuberances of the face, and obliterates 4.9.1 Natural light Can you identify the source of light used to create this portrait? Purpose By now you have sufficient familiarity with early portraits to know that photographers regularly used painted backdrops and accessories to create a sort of stage set within the studio. These backgrounds came into widespread use with the introduction of the carte de visite in c.1860. Until the Second World War, 2 scenarios remained popular: the interior setting with windows, curtains, table and chair; and the parkland setting with trees, balustrade, rustic bench or stile. This choice of backdr 4.4 Groups If we agree that the posing of individuals carried messages for the viewer it makes sense that the posing of family groups can similarly be made to convey suggestions about the family and its character. 4.3 Characterisation and sexual stereotyping The choice of pose was also intended to echo the limited positive characterization of the expression. Distinctions were inevitably drawn between poses regarded as suitable for males and those considered appropriate for females. Men were allowed greater variety of poses than women. The pose of a lady should not have that boldness of action which you would give a man, but be modest and retiring, the arms describing g 3.2 Idealisation There were fundamental principles of painted portraiture that affected every element of the portrait, from expression and pose to background and lighting. The first imperative was the need to idealize the sitter. 2.1.1 Card mounted photographs 1860–c.1914 Glossary 7.2 Asides An aside is a shorter speech, maybe only a few words, spoken sotto voce to the audience. It is presumed that the other characters on stage cannot hear what is being said, unless the aside is between two characters. Unlike the soliloquy, which largely died out with the decline of poetic drama, the aside is a convention that was widely used until the rise of naturalistic drama early in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, it is still employed in those conventional dramatic genres, pantom
Activity 22
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Activity 18
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Amphitheatre
a circular structure with seats rising behind and above each other around a central open space or arena; originating in classical Greece, they are the first known specifically designated theatre spaces.
Apostrophe
a rhetorical convention in which the speaker either addresses a dead or absent person, or a
