Approaching plays
Do you want to get more out of drama? This free course, Approaching plays, is designed to develop the analytical skills you need for a more in-depth study of literary plays. You will learn about dialogue, stage directions, blank verse, dramatic structure and conventions and aspects of performance.
First published on Fri, 05 Feb 20
Introduction What influenced Goya? Did Napoleon's invasion of Spain alter the course of Goya's career? This course will guide you through the works of Goya and the influences of the times in which he lived. Anyone with a desire to look for the influences behind the work of art will benefit from studying this course. This OpenLearn course provides a sample of Level 2 study in Author(s):
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4.2 Moral grounds for thinking we are immortal The moral reason (as Hume calls it) for thinking that there is an afterlife has already been touched on. God, being just, would surely see to it that we are punished or rewarded for our aberrant or commendable actions; this punishment or reward doesn't take place in this life, so it must take place after our body's demise. Here is a simple statement of the reasoning: The moral argument for supposing there is an 2.3 Fall of the Bastille, 14 July 1789 In a similar mood of aggrieved self-righteousness and revolutionary exultation came the fall of the Bastille, the medieval fortress and prison of Paris, on 14 July 1789. A catastrophic harvest in 1788 had provoked food riots in Paris and elsewhere. Louis XVI, alarmed both by this unrest and by the unexpected belligerence of the Third Estate, called troops into Paris to maintain order. It was feared that he also aimed to suppress the National Assembly, which rallied its supporters. The Parisia 2.2.1 Sample analysis and discussion of ‘What is the Third Estate?’ Let us take a closer look at part of this document before attempting the exercise below. This preamble should help you to relate to similar exercises in this course. The document is quite long, by far the longest one associated with this course; but you should not find it difficult to read it through fairly quickly and to extract its main points, to grasp Sieyès's ‘message’, and to note how he conveyed it. After you have read it through once, re-read it from the beginning up to †2.2 The Third Estate as the voice of the nation
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836) trained as a priest and became assistant to a bishop. He had no religious vocation, however, and his fame arose as the author of a highly influential pamphlet, What is the Third Estate?, published in January 1789, on the strength of which Sieyes was elected a deputy to the Estates-General. Four editions or 30,000 copies of the book came out within months of its appearance, at a time of heightened consciousness that great changes were afoot. What i 2.1 The bankrupt monarchy The immediate cause of the Revolution was that the French monarchy faced imminent bankruptcy. (This was partly because of the enormous sums it had spent assisting the American Revolution between 1778 and 1781 in order to discomfort the traditional enemy, Britain.) Neither nobility nor clergy paid direct tax. Without the consent of the established orders of society to a reorganization of the tax burden so as to restore its finances, the government could no longer function. Successive ministers Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to c 1.12 Conclusion It is clear that there are tensions in the use of the site, in that it attracts quite different audiences. There are also tensions relating to the number of visitors it is logistically possible to accommodate, and the economics of maintaining a viable revenue income. The debate goes on about how best to develop and maintain the site in line with the Trust's stated aims and objectives. There is no definitive answer, and the site will inevitably evolve over time. It is now an attrac 2.4 The intentional fallacy In the final sentence of the Gombrich quotation in Section 2.3, he claims there is only one reason why what the artist meant could matter to us and that is the artist's meaning or intention is ‘the real, the true meaning’. Questions about interpretation of works of art by resorting to the 2.3 Biography and psychobiography A significant, inescapable identifying feature of the twentieth century was the birth and development of psychoanalysis. Combined with romantic notions of the artist-genius and the attractiveness of the artist's ‘Life’ as evidence for writing the history of Renaissance art, psychoanalysis further ensured the continued success of the monographic construction of art history. A good example of this overlap between the increasingly redundant/discredited ‘Life’ of an artist and the more re References Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to 2.5 The problematic status of the imagination Let us review the position we have reached. Stevenson's twelve conceptions of imagination suggest that ‘imagining’ might be defined as ‘thinking of something that is not present to the senses’. This definition succeeds in distinguishing imagining from perceiving, but is too general in including such things as remembering. Gaut defines ‘imagining’, in its core sense, as ‘thinking of something without commitment to its truth or falsity, existence or non-existence’. This succeeds 2.3 A first attempt at defining ‘imagining’ So far I have made some preliminary remarks on the meanings of ‘imagination’ and related terms, and considered one attempt at distinguishing different conceptions of imagination. In a broad sense, ‘imagining’ means thinking in some way of what is not present to the senses. Imagining may involve, but is not the same as, imaging. In a derogatory sense, ‘imagining’ may mean ‘fantasising’, as suggested by their etymological roots in Latin and Greek, and our use of the term ‘imag 4.3 Voice and accompaniment One thing that is clear from the Lieder we have already considered is that Schubert's writing for the piano is a crucial element of his skill as a songwriter. Sometimes, and throughout his career, he wrote very simple accompaniments, as in ‘Heidenröslein’ – the approach favoured by Goethe and many other writers of the time, who considered that the German Lied should not overload the poem with too much elaboration. Schubert's later version of the ‘Harper's Song’ is more complex, wit 2 Conclusion We have now looked specifically at two considerable monuments created at about the same time to commemorate the First World War. You have been using your eyes, and looking closely to respond to visual clues. We hope you found that, in doing so, you developed your understanding of them as memorials and also as ‘made objects’; and that in the process of asking questions about them you have reached some kind of explanation as to why they are as they are. 1.3 The Royal Artillery Memorial Now I want to take another text. It is similar to the paintings in the Sandham Memorial Chapel in that it asks for a visual response first and foremost. We can, therefore, ask the same kinds of question – how the text came into being, the context in which it was produced, what form it takes, and how it communicates meaning. The text is the Royal Artillery Memorial. The architect was Lionel Pearson, the architect responsible for Sandham Memorial Chapel; the sculptor was Charles Sargean 1.2 The Sandham Memorial Chapel So let us turn first of all to the visual arts, and see how one artist, Stanley Spencer, created a memorial to those who died in the First World War. Spencer was profoundly affected by his experience of the war, and decorated the walls of a chapel especially designed to display his work. First of all, it will help to have a few biographical details. This is not because you could not understand his painting without knowing about him: you could certainly pick up a lot of information about
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