CU Week 4 Literary Movement Victorian movement Paper
Choose one of the literary movements that you read about this week and at least one work from that movement. Movements, authors, and famous works are discussed in the lesson as well. You do not have to choose authors or works discussed in the lesson, but you may. For your initial post, address one of the following:
- Option 1: Examine the movement and specific work in relation to historical and political influences of the movement. Include a one paragraph summary of the plot before moving on to the examination of the work in relation to the movement.
- Option 2: Examine a specific artwork influenced by a literary work and how the artist captured the subject or story. Here are a few examples, but you are not restricted to this list:
Asher B. Durand’s Thanatopsis (influenced by William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”)
John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott (influenced by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”)
Sir John Everett Millais’s Ophelia (influenced by Shakespeare’s Ophelia from Hamlet)
Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne or The Rape of Prosperina (influenced by ancient myths)
Ancient Greek vase painting (influenced by various ancient myths)
I also need one replay to two of my classmates discussions post please, here are their responses
1-sharon- I have always loved Greek mythology. It has always fascinated me with its charm, fantasy and satire of lessons learned. For this week’s discussion I chose to write about Apollo’s unrequited love for Daphne. It was a tale of lust and rejection with a tragic ending for Apollo. It was a very popular myth that had several different versions if the story that were told by notable poets and artists. “Greek mythology were works of art and the reader had to be able to perceive it, be aware of what is happening now, remember what happened before, and anticipate what is to come” (Martin, 2018). Not so easily done in the Greek literary writings. There always seemed to be a surprise ending, which is what happened in the story of Apollo and Daphne.
The story is about Apollo who fell madly in love with Daphne, and pursued her to no avail. In the story he slaid a python with many arrows. He saw Cupid and proceeded to make fun of him. Cupid was upset by this so he shot him with an arrow meant to fill him with love and lust for the beautiful Daphne. Cupid also shot her with another arrow which was to fill her with contempt for Apollo. Apollo chased Daphne and eventually after being exhausted she asked her father to help her. She asked him to help her to destroy her beauty so that Apollo would not chase her any longer. Once Apollo had embraced her, Daphne’s father turned her into a tree. He turned her into a laurel tree. “In Greek a laurel tree means a daphne tree, and had significant meaning in Greece, because the winner of the Greek games would be given a garnish of laurel to place on their head (Apolloduros, 1997).
Gian Lorenzo Bernini depicted a beautiful sculpture that encapsulated the tale of this story, as shown below. “He was an amazing Italian painter, sculptor and architect as well as a playwright, and was born in 1598 and passed in 1680” (Pierguidi, 2011). Below is one of his beautiful sculptors that was influenced by the story of Apollo and Daphne. You can see that Apollo is chasing after Daphne and has his one hand around her waist, signifying that he finally caught her. She has a look of fear on her face, from being caught and has her mouth open, which may indicate that she is asking her father to change her. You can not that her hands are raised upwards and it appears that branches and leaves are starting to form at the tips of her fingers and in her hair, inevitably transforming her eventually into the shape of a tree. It is a beautiful sculpture depicting love and loss, and remains displayed in a museum in Rome to this day. “It is shown that there is a correlation between language and the arts, meaning there is visual exchange, and elements that convey meaning that can be interpreted” (Piro, 2020). I think the example of the sculpture created by Gian Bernini does just that. It vividly shows the outcome of the story and what it represents through the unrequited lust between Apollo and Daphne.
- 2- Khadiatuau: Mr. Asher B. Durand (1796–1886) began his long career in the Hudson River School under the guidance of his mentor, Thomas Cole (1801–1848). Influenced by the death of Cole in 1848 and other factors, Durand turned to the William Cullen Bryant poem, “Thanatopsis.” Bryant’s Thanatopsis deals with the lofty subject of the interconnectedness of all things, illustrating it as highly Romantic. The poem pleads for a higher sense of meaning beyond individual experience, thus also focusing on the Romantic motif of individuality merged with a higher power. Bryant poses the daunting question, “What happens after we die?” but softens it through speaking of the power of nature. Bryant attempts to soothe the worry over death by telling the reader to listen to the voice of nature that tells us that when we die, we are not alone, for we will mix back into the Earth; we will not be alone after death. Durand’s Landscape—Scene from ‘Thanatopsis,’ an expansive allegory with a farmer and a funeral in the foreground illuminated by a sunrise, offers reassurance with its vision of nature’s paradisiacal beauty. The Christianized sublimity of this allegorical Durand painting reveals a hopeful vision for a heavenly paradise. This essay explores the significance of Durand’s 1850 painting in conjunction with Bryant’s “Thanatopsis,” a study Durand composed, Classical Landscape, his 1855 Letters on Landscape Painting, as well as Durand’s 1862 repainting of the canvas (Beebe, 2018).
According to Dearinger (1988), Mr. Durand briefly resumed painting large philosophical landscapes after the death of Thomas Cole, using his works as models. The presence of a funeral, of a farmer’s daily work, and of the ruins of man in ancient nature reflects the poem’s emphasis on the permanence of the earth and the creation and reversion of man from and to its soils. Through detailing natural elements that emphasize the life cycle, Durand creates literary art that pays tribute to William Cullen Bryant’s Thanatopsis and to the American Romanticism movement. Asher B. Durand lived a highly successful six-decade career that “spanned the rise, dominance and eclipse” of landscape painting as a national enterprise
