2.5 Is the author dead? When Roland Barthes (1915–80) wrote ‘The Death of the Author’ (first published 1968, reprinted in Barthes 1977), he did not mean that, like Wimsatt and Beardsley, the author had been, or should always have been, absent in the interpretation of art works. Instead his position is a historicised one: while once it might have been acceptable to refer to the author in the interpretation of an art work, now, in a post-modern world, it is not. Michel Foucault (1926–84) responded to Barthes (
2.1 ‘Every painter paints himself’? Art history methods of biography or ‘Life’ writing attempt to link an artist to his art. Why do we need to know about an artist's life to know about his art in the first place? Why might Helen Langdon want to explain Caravaggio the man and not just his world or his art? Behind this questions lies a problem central to art history. Do we need to know about artists to know about their art? Martin Kemp gives the link between an artist and his art a historical comple
1.3 Artists' ‘Lives’ Helen Langdon's subtitle ‘A Life’ points to a very particular combination of literary and artistic sources in her biography. Catherine M. Soussloff suggests that the literary genre of artists' ‘Lives’ has led to the artist and his work being ‘inextricably entwined’ in a way that does not happen in the ‘Lives’ of poets or prose writers (Soussloff, 1990, p. 154). Although she overstates the case, as recent biographies of novelists, musicians, etc. demonstrate, artworks ca
1.2 The myth of the artist Consider Howard Hibbard's analysis of Caravaggio's The Martyrdom of St Matthew in the Contarelli chapel (Langdon Plate 19 – see the Web Gallery of Art at http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/c/caravagg/04/index.html) from his monograph, Caravaggio (1983). Hibbard identifies the figure at the rear to the left of the semi-naked executioner as the artist's self-portrait: ‘a bearded, saturnine villain who is none other than Caravaggio himself’. Discography Details of the recordings of Schubert's lieder provided in this unit are as follows: 'Heidenrölein' Irmgard Seefreid, Hermann von Nordberg (rec 1947), TESTAMENT SBT 1026 'Wanderers Nachtlied' Hans Hotter, Gerald Moore (rec 1949), EMI CDH5 65196-2 'Gretchen am Spinnrade' 1 Schubert: introduction This unit focuses on a selection of short poems in German that were set to music by Franz Schubert (1797–1828) for a single voice with piano, a genre known as ‘Lieder’ (the German for ‘songs’). These are miniatures, but in Schubert's hands they become miniatures of an exceptionally concentrated kind. Their characteristic distillation of the emotional essence of a poem illustrates Romanticism at its most intimate. Schubert's Lieder, once they became widely known, influenced succeedin 3.5 New light on compatibilist versus incompatibilist debate Strawson has attempted to throw new light on the compatibilist versus incompatibilist debate by showing that there are certain ‘reactive attitudes’ that are a necessary part of the framework of anything that is recognizably the life of a person. His argument has centred on the claim that is it ‘useless’ to question these attitudes. He argues this by showing the role they have in our lives, and arguing that they are part of the ‘framework’ of life. We could put the point as follows 3.4 Strawson: Section VI There is only one more section left in the paper. Here, as we would expect, Strawson returns to the way in which he set out the problem (in II:4) and makes good his promise to ‘[give] the optimist something more to say’. Introduction This unit asks what it is to be a person. You will see that there are several philosophical questions around the nature of personhood. Here we explore what it is that defines the concept. As you work through the unit, you will notice that this area of enquiry has developed its own semi-technical vocabulary. The plural of ‘person’ is, in this area of enquiry, ‘persons’ rather than ‘people’. It is easy to see the reason for this. The question ‘What are people?’ is potentially c Acknowledgements This unit was written by Dr Inga Mantle
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce 4.2.2 Pronouns Pronouns are used to avoid repeating nouns and to supply the subjects for verbs. I, me, we and us are known as the first person pronouns, you is the second person pronoun, and he, him, she, her, it, they and them are third person pronouns in English. In Latin, pronouns are used only when really necessary for the sense of a sentence, or sometimes for emphasis. Often, a pronoun subject, such as I, you or she, can be understoo 4.2.1 Nouns Nouns are used to name people, places, things or concepts, for example Cicero, Italy, tree, happiness. Most nouns can be singular or plural, for example tree, trees. They each belong to a certain gender, masculine, feminine or neuter (from Latin neuter, neither). In English, nouns have natural gender; for example, boatsman is masculine, woman is feminine, student is of common gender (either masculine or feminine), and university and b 4.2 Parts of speech In describing the grammar of written Latin, the best method is to use the traditional classical grammar, as worked out by the Greeks and Romans themselves. As a preliminary, it may be useful to learn the ‘parts of speech’ in English. A very brief explanation follows, and then a much fuller discussion. Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should have: an awareness of the links between English and Latin; an understanding of basic English grammar in order to recognise and describe the way languages work; an awareness of the fundamentals of pronunciation in Latin. 2.3 After the recording It follows that sorting MacLean's poems out by ‘themes’ entails the risk of disguising the tight interlocking of ‘Politics’, ‘Love’, ‘Landscape’, ‘War’ and ‘History’ in all his poetry down to 1945. Nevertheless, for convenience's sake, I will do this. 2.1.2 The poems Your reading in this unit has already prepared you to some extent, but please read the following poems (both the English and Gaelic versions are given) which are discussed in the recordings, and then listen to the recordings. A company of mountains, an upthrust of mountains a great garth of growing mountains a concourse of summits, of knolls, of hills References 2.3 The pervasive influence of Enlightenment You will find in this unit in one form or another the pervasive influence of the Enlightenment. Sometimes this influence is buried in deeply ambiguous texts such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's (1756–91) opera Don Giovanni (1787), which includes a famous toast to ‘liberty’. The opera is seen by some as an attempt to subject to critical scrutiny the behaviour of at least one member of a corrupt eighteenth-century aristocracy and the social or class structure that facilitated h 7 Other rhyming techniques
Near- or half rhymes are words or combinations of words that achieve only a partial rhyme. Half rhymes can be between words with just one syllable, or between parts of words, for example where the accented syllables rhyme with each other, but other syllables in the word don't rhyme. For instance: cover–shovel; wily–piling, calling–fallen; wildebeest–building.
Assonant rhyme refers to echoing vowel sounds, eith 3 What is poetry? We can possibly best define what poetry is by saying what it isn't. For one thing, poetry, unlike prose, cannot be paraphrased. If you could sum it up succinctly in any other fashion you wouldn't write the poem. One can talk about the theme of a poem, for instance, but it's the poem itself which conveys the ultimate effect. A poem is the best possible expression of what the poet wants to say. Some might say that the form and content of art, in this case poetry, is untranslatable. Let's
Activity
Part of speech
Explanation
Kinloch Ainort
