humanities 14 Flashcards
In Plato’s utopian political philosophy, the relation between the human soul and the ideal republic is
microcosm to macrocosm.
Plato thought his ideal republic should mirror the human soul in its structure, and so the state is a macrocosm of the microcosmic soul.
James Joyce (1882–1941) used “stream of consciousness” technique in his expressionistic writing. A composer who used similar techniques in music is
Claude Debussy was an expressionistic composer attempting to paint pictures with music
In which novel by Charles Dickens does a convict become the benefactor of an orphan boy?
Great Expectations, the hero, Pip, has been orphaned. In fact, the story begins in a scene at his parents’ gravestones. Ironically, Magwitch, the escaped convict who attacks Pip in the graveyard, eventually becomes his mysterious benefactor.
Dickens often wrote about the poor and the criminal class because
his father had been put in a debtor’s prison. Though Dickens’ father, John, had been a moderately successful businessman, he fell into debt and bankruptcy, the punishment for which was debtor’s prison. John’s circumstances later improved due to the surprise receipt of a legacy. Dickens was forced to go to work in a boot-blacking factory at the age of nine to help support his family. This left a lasting mark on Dickens the man and on his literature. Thus, in Great Expectations, Pip receives support from a mysterious source, and honest, hard-working people like Pip’s Uncle Joe Gargery remain poor throughout their lives.
movement that sprang up in Europe around the time of the First World War. In response to what they saw as an absurd, unspeakable event (the war)
Dada Dadaists sought to ridicule the values of bourgeois society, the same society which supported the war. The pseudo-scientific, comic rantings of poet and artist Tristan Tzara exemplify the satire of the seriousness and self-important “rationality” of middle-class life in Europe. The Dadaists believed that the only way to combat absurdity was with absurdity.
Which of the following is an American naturalistic novel well known for its depiction of immorality and spiritual decay?
Dreiser’s Sister Carrie
Dreiser’s famous work fits well into the pattern of American Naturalism in its stark depiction of human suffering and moral decline. Set in Chicago and New York at the beginning of the century, the novel traces the decline of the erstwhile salesman Hurstwood and his ill treatment of Carrie over many years.
Undulating arch and contraction walk are terms in
beledi (abdominal dance).
According to Aristotle, all of the following are important elements in the structure of a play EXCEPT
stage directions (A) plot, (B) beginning, (C) middle, and (D) end are important structural elements in a play.
The development of the modern English novel is deeply indebted to
the Italian novella. The Italian novella of the 1300s is generally recognized as the direct predecessor in form and intent of the modern novel. Typified by Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1348), they were stories of scandal in love, dishonest priests, fashionable nobles, and tough peasantry. By the sixteenth century, similar narratives were being written in England (e.g., Arcadia, ca. 1570).
Some of the most popular medieval tales in England were carried to the American colonies and still survive in Appalachia. They are known as
Jack tales
Every time parents tell their children the story “Jack and the Beanstalk,” they are relating a “Jack tale” which had been told in its many variations in England since the Middle Ages. There are scores of Jack tales, and they are mainly told now in the Southern Appalachians where oral tradition remains strong and where most of the population are descended from English, Scottish, and Irish settlers.
Oral and musical traditions from the Scottish and English border region that were transmitted to the American colonies are known as
ballads.
Known today as “border ballads,” songs such as “Barbara Allen,” “Mary Hamilton,” and “Lord Lovett” still are sung in the Southern Appalachians of the United States. Originally from the border region of Scotland, these ballads were first catalogued by Child in the early years of the twentieth century, and sometimes go by the name of “Child ballads.” They may involve folk tales (B), but these are put to music. Again, they may be lullabies (C), but that would be only a subclass. Most were passed down orally, but in the eighteenth century other ballads were printed as “broadsides” (E) and distributed—again a subclass.
Society is often revealed through the arts. Many artists, writers, and composers felt the stress of society and used these feelings for their themes. What style did they employ?
Expressionism
used words or tone colors to portray events or scenes
impressionism
explored the techniques of imitative polyphony
renaissance
The expression of rhythm through sound using footwork refers to
tap dance
The assumption that no two material things can occupy the same place at the same time plays a central role in which branch of philosophy?
metaphysics
If two material objects are qualitatively identical, then since we say there are two of them, they must occupy different places at the same time. This is a basic principle of metaphysics.
principle concerns the existence of things in space and time, not our knowledge of them.
epistemology
One of the longest-running murder mysteries on the London stage was
Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.
Christie’s Mousetrap was seen on the London stage for almost 50 years. In this play she perfects her formula of the classic “Whodunnit”—a dwindling number of suspects in an increasing number of murders—all isolated in one place.
The style of the Houses of Parliament in London can best be described as
gothic revival
a style common in the nineteenth-century Romantic period of architecture, in which earlier architectural styles, such as classical Greek and Roman, as well as medieval, were imitated. The spires and towers on the roof of the Houses of Parliament are derived from those of Gothic churches; the low, horizontal profile of the building itself is typical of English Gothic churches.
