Parisians were startled by berlioz's fantastic symphony because of its

Humanities 3

SEVENTH EDITION

The Humanistic Tradition Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

LK055_P0001EDBook5_i-xii_AG.indd i 02/12/2014 15:48

LK055_P0001EDBook5_i-xii_AG.indd ii 02/12/2014 15:48

Gloria K. Fiero

5 Book SEVENTH EDITION

The Humanistic Tradition Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

Boston Burr Ridge, IL Dubuque, IA New York San Francisco St. Louis Bangkok Bogotá Caracas Kuala Lumpur Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City

Milan Montreal New Delhi Santiago Seoul Singapore Sydney Taipei Toronto

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Front cover Richard James Lane, Marie Taglioni in the Ballet Flore et Zephyre (detail), 1831. After a drawing by Alfred Edward Chalon. Hand- coloured engraving, 143∕4 × 101∕2 in.

Frontispiece and page x Thomas Phillips, Lord Byron Sixth Baron in Albanian Costume (detail), 1813. Oil on canvas, 50 × 40 in.

THE HUMANISTIC TRADITION, BOOK 5 ROMANTICISM, REALISM, AND THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY WORLD SEVENTH EDITION

Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Previous edition © 2011, 2006, 2002, 1998, 1995, 1992. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent of McGraw-Hill Education, including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning.

Some ancillaries, including electronic and print components, may not be available to customers outside the United States.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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ISBN 978-1-259-35540-0 MHID 1-259-35540-3

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Permissions Acknowledgments appear on page 351, and on this page by reference.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fiero, Gloria K. The humanistic tradition / Gloria K. Fiero. -- Seventh edition. volumes cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: BOOK 1. The First Civilizations and the Classical Legacy -- BOOK 2. Medieval Europe and the World Beyond -- BOOK 3. The European Renaissance, the Reformation, and Global Encounter -- BOOK 4. Faith, Reason, and Power in the Early Modern World -- BOOK 5. Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World -- BOOK 6. Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Global Perspective -- VOLUME I. Prehistory to the Early Modern World -- VOLUME II. The Early Modern World to the Present.

ISBN 978-1-259-36066-4 (volume 1 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 1-259-36066-0 (volume 1 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35168-6 (volume 2 : acid-free paper)) -- ISBN 1-259-35168-8 (volume 2 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-0-07-337666-0 (looseleaf : book 1 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 0-07-337666-3 (looseleaf : book 1 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35209-6 (looseleaf : book 2 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 1-259-35209-9 (looseleaf : book 2 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35210-2 (looseleaf : book 3 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 1-259-35210-2 (looseleaf : book 3 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35539-4 (looseleaf : book 4 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 1-259-35539-X (looseleaf : book 4 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35540-0 (looseleaf : book 5 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 1-259-35540-3 (looseleaf : book 5 : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-259-35211-9 (looseleaf : book 6 : acid-free paper)

1. Civilization, Western--History--Textbooks. 2. Humanism--History--Textbooks. I. Title. CB245.F47 2015 909’.09821--dc23

2014037553

The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion of a website does not indicate an endorsement by the author or McGraw-Hill Education, and McGraw-Hill Education does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented at these sites

www.mhhe.com

This book was designed and produced by Laurence King Publishing Ltd., London www.laurenceking.com

Commissioning Editor: Kara Hattersley-Smith Production: Simon Walsh Designer: Ian Hunt Picture Researcher: Louise Thomas Text Permissions: Rachel Thorne Copy-editor: Rosanna Lewis

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vSERIES CONTENTS

BOOK 1

The First Civilizations and the Classical Legacy Introduction: Prehistory and the Birth of Civilization 1 Mesopotamia: Gods, Rulers, and the Social Order 2 Africa: Gods, Rulers, and the Social Order 3 India, China, and the Americas 4 Greece: Humanism and the Speculative Leap 5 The Classical Style 6 Rome: The Rise to Empire 7 China: The Rise to Empire

BOOK 2

Medieval Europe and the World Beyond 8 A Flowering of Faith: Christianity and Buddhism 9 The Language of Faith: Symbolism and the Arts 10 The Islamic World: Religion and Culture 11 Patterns of Medieval Life 12 Christianity and the Medieval Mind 13 The Medieval Synthesis in the Arts 14 The World Beyond the West: India, China,

and Japan

BOOK 3

The European Renaissance, the Reformation, and Global Encounter 15 Adversity and Challenge:

The Fourteenth-Century Transition 16 Classical Humanism in the Age of the Renaissance 17 Renaissance Artists: Disciples of Nature,

Masters of Invention 18 Cross-Cultural Encounters: Asia, Africa,

and the Americas 19 Protest and Reform: The Waning of the Old Order

Series Contents

BOOK 4

Faith, Reason, and Power in the Early Modern World 20 The Catholic Reformation and the Baroque Style 21 Absolute Power and the Aristocratic Style 22 The Baroque in the Protestant North 23 The Scientific Revolution and the New Learning 24 The Enlightenment: The Promise of Reason 25 The Limits of Reason 26 Eighteenth-Century Art, Music, and Society

BOOK 5

Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World 27 The Romantic View of Nature 28 The Romantic Hero 29 The Romantic Style in Art and Music 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style 31 The Move Toward Modernism

BOOK 6

Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Global Perspective 32 The Modernist Assault 33 The Freudian Revolution 34 Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Arts 35 The Quest for Meaning 36 Liberation and Equality 37 The Information Age 38 Globalism: The Contemporary World

VOLUME I

Prehistory to the Early Modern World Chapters 1–19

VOLUME II

The Early Modern World to the Present Chapters 19–38

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vi CONTENTS

Book 5 Contents

Letter from the Author ix

Preface x

27 The Romantic View of Nature (ca. 1780–1880) 209

LOOKING AHEAD 210

The Progress of Industrialization 210

Early Nineteenth-Century Thought 210

Hegel and the Hegelian Dialectic 211

Darwin and the Theory of Evolution 211

EXPLORING ISSUES Creationism versus

Evolution 213

Nature and the Natural in European Literature 213

Wordsworth and the Poetry of Nature 213

READING 27.1 From Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a

Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” 215

The Poetry of Shelley 216

READING 27.2 Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” 216

The Poetry of Keats 217

READING 27.3 Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 218

Blake: Romantic Mystic 219

READING 27.4 Blake’s “The Tiger” 219

Nature and the Natural in Asian Literature 219

READING 27.5 From Shen Fu’s Six Chapters from a

Floating Life 220

Romantic Landscape Painting 221

MAKING CONNECTIONS 221

Constable and Turner 222

Landscape Painting in France 225

American Romanticism 225

Transcendentalism 225

LOOKING INTO Emerson’s “Brahma” 226

READING 27.6 From Thoreau’s Walden 227

Walt Whitman’s Romantic Individualism 228

READING 27.7 From Whitman’s “Song of Myself” 228

American Landscape Painting 229

America and Native Americans 231

American Folk Art 233

LOOKING BACK 236

Glossary 236

28 The Romantic Hero (ca. 1780–1880) 237

LOOKING AHEAD 238

Nationalism and the Hero 238

Napoleon as a Romantic Hero 238

READING 28.1 From Napoleon’s Diary 240

The Promethean Hero 240

The Promethean Myth in Literature 240

READING 28.2 From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

(Chapters 4 and 5) 241

Bryon and the Promethean Myth 242

READING 28.3 Byron’s “Prometheus” 244

Pushkin: The Byron of Russia 244

READING 28.4 From Pushkin’s “Napoleon” 245

The Abolitionists: American Prometheans 245

Frederick Douglass 246

READING 28.5 From Douglass’ My Bondage and

My Freedom 246

Sojourner Truth 247

READING 28.6 From The Narrative of Sojourner Truth 248

Slave Songs and Spirituals 248

Goethe’s Faust: The Quintessential Romantic Hero 248

READING 28.7 From Goethe’s Faust 250

Romantic Love and Romantic Stereotypes 254

READING 28.8 Heine’s “You are Just Like a Flower” 254

The Female Voice 254

LOOKING BACK 256

29 The Romantic Style in Art and Music (ca. 1780–1880) 257

LOOKING AHEAD 258

Heroic Themes in Art 258

Gros and the Glorification of the Hero 258

Popular Heroism in Goya and Géricault 258

Delacroix and Revolutionary Heroism 260

MAKING CONNECTIONS 262

Heroic Themes in Sculpture 263

Trends in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Architecture 266

Neomedievalism in the West 266

Exoticism in Western Architecture 267

The Romantic Style in Music 267

The Genius of Beethoven 268

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CONTENTS vii

Art Songs 270

The Programmatic Symphonies of Berlioz 270

The Piano Music of Chopin 271

The Romantic Ballet 273

Romantic Opera 275

Verdi and Italian Grand Opera 275

Wagner and the Birth of Music-Drama 275

LOOKING BACK 276

Glossary 277

30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style (ca. 1850–1900) 278

LOOKING AHEAD 279

The Global Dominion of the West 279

Advancing Industrialization 279

Colonialism and the New Imperialism 279

READING 30.1 From Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” 280

China and the West 281

READING 30.2 From Lin Zexu’s Letter of Advice to

Queen Victoria 281

Social and Economic Realities 283

EXPLORING ISSUES Islam and the West 283

Nineteenth-Century Social Theory 284

EXPLORING ISSUES The Limits of Authority 285

The Radical Views of Marx and Engels 285

READING 30.3 From Marx’s and Engels’ Communist

Manifesto 286

Mill and Women’s Rights 288

READING 30.4 From Mill’s The Subjection of Women 288

The New Historicism 289

Realism in Literature 289

The Novels of Dickens and Twain 289

READING 30.5 From Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop 290

READING 30.6 From Twain’s The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn 291

Russian Realism: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy 293

READING 30.7 From Dostoevsky’s Crime

and Punishment 294

The Literary Heroines of Flaubert and Chopin 295

READING 30.8 From Flaubert’s Madame Bovary 296

READING 30.9 Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”

(“The Dream of an Hour”) 296

Zola and the Naturalistic Novel 297

READING 30.10 From Zola’s Germinal 298

Realist Drama: Ibsen 299

READING 30.11 From Ibsen’s A Doll’s House 299

Realism in the Visual Arts 300

The Birth of Photography 300

Courbet and French Realist Painting 302

Daumier’s Social Realism 303

LOOKING INTO Courbet’s Burial at Ornans 304

The Scandalous Realism of Manet 307

Realism in American Painting 310

MAKING CONNECTIONS 311

Late Nineteenth-Century Architecture 314

Realism in Music 316

LOOKING BACK 318

Glossary 318

31 The Move Toward Modernism (ca. 1875–1900) 319

LOOKING AHEAD 320

Late Nineteenth-Century Thought 320

Nietzsche’s New Morality 320

READING 31.1 From the Works of Nietzsche 320

Bergson: Intellect and Intuition 321

Poetry in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Symbolists 322

Mallarmé 322

READING 31.2 From Mallarmé’s “The Afternoon

of a Faun” 322

Music in the Late Nineteenth Century: Debussy 323

Painting in the Late Nineteenth Century 324

Symbolism 324

Impressionism 325

Monet: Pioneer Impressionist 325

Renoir 327

Pissarro 327

Degas 328

Japanese Woodblock Prints and Western Art 329

Cassatt 331

MAKING CONNECTIONS 332

Toulouse-Lautrec 333

Art Nouveau 333

LOOKING INTO Toulouse-Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge 334

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viii CONTENTS

Sculpture in the Late Nineteenth Century 336

Degas and Rodin 336

The Arts of Africa and Oceania 341

Africa 341

Oceania 343

Primitivism 343

Postimpressionism 345

Van Gogh 345

Gauguin 346

Seurat 347

Cézanne 349

LOOKING BACK 350

Glossary 350

Picture Credits 351

Literary Credits 351

Index 352

MAPS 28.1 The Empire of Napoleon at its Greatest Extent,

1812 239

30.1 European Colonies and Independent Nations in 1900 281

31.1 The Kingdoms of Yoruba and Dahomey 341

31.2 The Islands of the South and Central Pacific 343

MUSIC LISTENING SELECTIONS Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, The Eroica,

first movement, excerpt, 1803–1804 268

Schubert, Erlkönig, 1815 270

Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14, “March to the

Scaffold,” fourth movement, excerpt, 1830 271

Chopin, Etude in G-flat Major, Op. 10, No. 5, 1833 272

Debussy, Prélude à “L’après midi d’un faune, 1894 323

ANCILLARY READING SELECTIONS From Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads 213

From Melville’s Moby Dick 238

From Byron’s Don Juan 242

From Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 246

Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” 247

Austen’s Pride and Prejudice 255

The Qianlong Emperor of China’s letter to King George III of

Great Britain 281

From Mill’s On Liberty 285

From Dickens’ David Copperfield 290

From Tolstoy’s War and Peace 293

From Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov 293

From Bergson’s Time and Free Will 322

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ixLETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

The Humanistic Tradition originated more than two decades ago. As a long-time humanities instructor, I recognized that the Western-only perspective was no longer adequate to understanding the cultural foundations of our global world. However, none of the existing humanities textbooks served my needs. The challenge was daunting—covering the history of Western literature, philosophy, art, music, and dance was already an ambitious undertaking for a humanities survey; how could I broaden the scope to include Asia, Africa, and the Americas without over-loading the course?

I found the solution in my classroom: Instead of assuming a strictly historical approach to the past, (as I did in my history classes), I would organize my humanities lectures topically, focusing on universal themes, major styles, and significant movements---gods and rulers, classicism, imperialism, the Romantic hero, racial and sexual equality, globalism---as they reflected or shaped the culture of a given time or place. What evolved was The Humanistic Tradition, a thematic, yet global and chronological approach to humanities, one that provokes thought and discussion without burying students under mountains of encyclopedic information.

Now in its seventh edition, The Humanistic Tradition continues to celebrate the creative mind by focusing on how the arts and ideas relate to each other, what they tell us about our own human nature and that of others on our planet. Its mission remains relevant to the present, and essential (I would hope) to enriching the future of each student who reads its pages.

The Seventh Edition of The Humanistic Tradition To the seventh edition of The Humanistic Tradition I have added a new feature: Looking Into is a diagram- matic analysis of key works, such as Neolithic stone circles (including the latest archeological discoveries in Southeast Turkey), the Parthenon, the sonnets of Petrarch and Donne, Shiva: Lord of the Dance, Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Double Portrait, and Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party.

The new edition expands two popular features that promote critical thinking: Exploring Issues,

which focuses on controversial ideas and current debates (such as the battle over the ownership of antiquities, and creationism versus evolution); and Making Connections, which brings attention to con- trasts and continuities between past and present. To Exploring Issues, I have added the debate over the origins of India’s Vedic culture (chapter 3). To Making Connections I offer a novel illustration of the con- temporary affection for Chinese landscape painting (chapter 14).

The chapter-by-chapter integration of literary, visual, and aural primary sources remains a hallmark of The Humanistic Tradition. In an effort to provide the most engaging and accessible literary works, some selected readings in this edition appear in alternate translations. Marginal logos have been added to direct students to additional literary resources that are dis- cussed but not included in the text itself.

Additions to the art program include the Nebra Sky Disk, Hellenistic mosaics, Delacroix’s Women of Algiers, Oceania’s art of tattoo, Japan’s Amida Buddha, Charles Willson Peale’s Portrait of Yarrow Mamout (the earliest known portrait of a Muslim in America), Ai Wei Wei’s Forever Bicycle, Ernesto Neto’s Anthropodino, and Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Center. Chapters 37 and 38, which treat the Information Age and Globalism, have been updated to present a cogent overview of contemporary issues, including terrorism, ecological concerns, ethnic conflict, and the digital arts.

The Humanistic Tradition pioneered a flexible six-book format in recognition of the varying chronological range of humanities courses. Each slim volume was also convenient for students to bring to classes, the library, and other study areas. The seventh edition con- tinues to be available in this six-book format, as well as in a two-volume set for the most common two-term course configuration.

In preparing the seventh edition, I have depended on the excellent editorial and production team led by Donald Dinwiddie at Laurence King Publishing. Special thanks also go to Kara Hattersley-Smith at LKP and Sarah Remington at McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Letter from the Author

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x PREFACE

Each generation leaves a creative legacy, the sum of its ideas and achieve- ments. This legacy represents the response to our effort to ensure our individual and collective survival, our need to establish ways of living in harmony with others, and our desire to understand our place in the universe. Meeting the challenges of survival, communality, and self-knowledge, we have created and transmitted the tools of science and technology, social and political institutions, religious and philosophic systems, and various forms of personal expression—the totality of which we call culture. Handed down from generation to generation, this legacy constitutes the humanistic tradition, the study of which is called humanities.

Understanding that a global humanities course is taught in varying ways, Gloria Fiero redefines the discipline for greater flexibility via a variety of innovative digital tools. Enhanced by McGraw-Hill Education’s LearnSmart and SmartBook, Fiero delivers a learning experience tailored to the needs of each institution, instructor, and student. With the ability to incorporate new extended readings, streaming music, and artwork, The Humanistic Tradition renews the understanding of the relationship between world cultures and humankind’s creative legacy.

Personalized Learning Experience

In Connect Humanities, you can access all of the art and music from The Humanistic Tradition on your computer or mobile device. Music logos (right) that appear in the margins of the text refer to listening selections available for streaming.

As part of McGraw-Hill Education’s Connect Humanities, LearnSmart is an adaptive learning program designed to personalize the learning experience. LearnSmart helps students learn faster, study smarter, and retain more knowledge for greater success. Distinguishing what students know from what they don’t, and touching on concepts they are most likely to forget, LearnSmart continuously adapts to each students’ needs by building a personalized learning path. LearnSmart is proven to strength- en memory recall, keep students in class, and boost grades. By helping students master core concepts ahead of time, LearnSmart enables instruc- tors to spend more meaningful time in the classroom.

Enhanced by LearnSmart, SmartBook is the first and only adaptive reading experience currently available.

• Making It Effective SmartBook creates a personalized reading expe- rience by highlighting the most impactful concepts a student needs to learn at that moment in time. This ensures that every minute spent with SmartBook is returned to the student as the most valuable minute possible.

• Make It Informed Real-time reports quickly identify the concepts that require more attention from individual students—or the entire class.

The Humanistic Tradition—a personalized learning

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xiPREFACE

Personalized Teaching Experience Personalize and tailor your teaching experience to the needs of your humanities course with Create, Insight, and instructor resources.

Create What You’ve Only Imagined No two humanities courses are the same. That is why Gloria Fiero has personally hand-picked additional readings that can be added easily to a customized edition of The Humanistic Tradition. Marginal icons (right) that appear throughout this new edition indicate additional readings, a list of which is found at the end of the Table of Contents.

To customize your book using McGraw-Hill Create™, follow these steps: 1. Go to http://create.mheducation.com and sign in or register for an

instructor account. 2. Click Collections (top, right) and select the “Traditions: Humanities

Readings Through the Ages” Collection to preview and select readings. You can also make use of McGraw-Hill’s comprehensive, cross-disciplinary content as well as other third-party resources.

3. Choose the readings that are most relevant to your students, your curriculum, and your own areas of interest.

4. Arrange the content in a way that makes the most sense for your course. 5. Personalize your book with your course information and choose the

best format for your students—color, black-and-white, or ebook. When you are done, you will receive a free PDF review copy in just minutes.

Or contact your McGraw-Hill Education representative, who can help you build your unique version of The Humanisitic Tradition.

Powerful Reporting on the Go The first and only analytics tool of its kind, Connect Insight is a series of visual data displays—each framed by an intuitive question—that provide at-a-glance information regarding how your class is doing. • Intuitive You receive an instant, at-a-glance view of student performance

matched with student activity. • Dynamic Connect Insight puts real-time analytics in your hands so you

can take action early and keep struggling students from falling behind. • Mobile Connect Insight travels from office to classroom, available on

demand wherever and whenever it’s needed.

Instructor Resources Connect Image Bank is an instructor database of images from select McGraw-Hill Education art and humanities titles, including The Humanistic Tradition. It includes all images for which McGraw-Hill has secured electronic permissions. With Connect Image Bank, instructors can access a text’s images by browsing its chapters, style/period, medium, and culture, or by searching with key terms. Images can be easily downloaded for use in presentations and in PowerPoints. The download includes a text file with image captions and information. You can access Connect Image Bank on the library tab in Connect Humanities (http://connect.mheducation.com).

Various instructor resources are available for The Humanistic Tradition. These include an instructor’s manual with discussion suggestions and study questions, music listening guides, lecture PowerPoints, and a test bank. Contact your McGraw-Hill sales representative for access to these materials.

and teaching experience in global humanities

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Text The text of a primary source refers to its medium (that is, what it is made of), its form (its outward shape), and its content (the subject it describes).

Literature: Literary form varies according to the manner in which words are arranged. So, poetry, which shares rhythmic organization with music and dance, is distinguished from prose, which normally lacks regular rhythmic patterns. Poetry, by its freedom from conven- tional grammar, provides unique opportunities for the expression of intense emotions. Prose usually functions to convey information, to narrate, and to describe.

Philosophy (the search for truth through reasoned analy- sis) and history (the record of the past) make use of prose to analyze and communicate ideas and information.

In literature, as in most forms of expression, content and form are usually interrelated. The subject matter or form of a literary work determines its genre. For instance, a long narrative poem recounting the adventures of a hero constitutes an epic, while a formal, dignified speech in praise of a person or thing constitutes a eulogy.

The Visual Arts: The visual arts employ a wide variety of media, ranging from the traditional colored pigments used in painting, to wood, clay, marble, and (more recently) plastic and neon used in sculpture, to a wide variety of digital media, including photography and film. The form or outward shape of a work of art depends on the manner in which the artist manipulates the elements of color, line, texture, and space. Unlike words, these formal elements lack denotative meaning.

The visual arts are dominantly spatial, that is, they operate and are apprehended in space. Artists manipu- late form to describe or interpret the visible world (as in the genres of portraiture and landscape), or to create worlds of fantasy and imagination. They may also fabri- cate texts that are nonrepresentational, that is, without identifiable subject matter.

Music and Dance: The medium of music is sound. Like literature, music is durational: it unfolds over the period of time in which it occurs. The major elements of music are melody, rhythm, harmony, and tone color—formal elements that also characterize the oral life of litera- ture. However, while literary and visual texts are usually descriptive, music is almost always nonrepresentational: it rarely has meaning beyond sound itself. For that reason, music is the most difficult of the arts to describe in words.

Dance, the artform that makes the human body itself the medium of expression, resembles music in that it is temporal and performance-oriented. Like music, dance

exploits rhythm as a formal tool, and like painting and sculpture, it unfolds in space as well as in time.

Studying the text, we discover the ways in which the artist manipulates medium and form to achieve a charac- teristic manner of execution or expression that we call style. Comparing the styles of various texts from a single era, we discover that they usually share certain defining features and characteristics. Similarities between, for instance, ancient Greek temples and Greek tragedies, or between Chinese lyric poems and landscape paintings, reveal the unifying moral and aesthetic values of their respective cultures.

Context The context describes the historical and cultural environ- ment of a text. Understanding the relationship between text and context is one of the principal concerns of any inquiry into the humanistic tradition. To determine the context, we ask: In what time and place did our primary source originate? How did it function within the society in which it was created? Was it primarily decorative, didactic, magical, or propagandistic? Did it serve the religious or political needs of the community? Sometimes our answers to these questions are mere guesses. For instance, the paintings on the walls of Paleolithic caves were probably not “artworks” in the modern sense of the term, but, rather, magical signs associated with religious rituals per- formed in the interest of communal survival.

Determining the function of the text often serves to clarify the nature of its form, and vice-versa. For instance, in that the Hebrew Bible, the Song of Roland, and many other early literary works were spoken or sung, rather than read, such literature tends to feature repetition and rhyme, devices that facilitate memorization and oral delivery.

Subtext The subtext of a primary source refers to its secondary or implied meanings. The subtext discloses conceptual messages embedded in or implied by the text. The epic poems of the ancient Greeks, for instance, which glorify prowess and physical courage, suggest an exclusively male perception of virtue. The state portraits of the seventeenth-century French king Louis XIV bear the subtext of unassailable and absolute power. In our own time, Andy Warhol’s serial adaptations of Coca-Cola bottles offer wry commentary on the commercial mental- ity of American society. Examining the implicit message of the text helps us determine the values of the age in which it was produced, and offers insights into our own.

BEFORE WE BEGIN

Studying humanities engages us in a dialogue with primary sources: works original to the age in which they were produced. Whether literary, visual, or aural, a primary source is a text; the time, place, and circumstances in which it was created constitute

the context; and its various underlying meanings provide the subtext. Studying humanities from the perspective of text, context, and subtext helps us understand our cultural legacy and our place in the larger world.