In modern society, both the abstract and concrete representations of children are intertwined with the themes associated with happiness, innocence, ignorance, gullibility, and the allure of youth. But, if I may for a moment mimic Caroline Vout’s presentation of her arguments by asking, how does today’s current view of children differ from the non-linguistic representations of children in ancient times? If one was to rewind time while focusing solely on the exemplification of children in ancient Greek and Rome, they would discover that presumably there is a degradation of the importance of the child in society. The previously mentioned Caroline Vout supplies the fact that the great philosopher Aristotle believed that “[children were] virtually denied human status on the grounds of their diminished faculty of deliberation.” This thought process is obviously contradictory to the widely accepted opinion of children in today’s modern society. With the assistance of multiple sculptures, frescos, and drawings, Vout utilizes rhetorical questions to engage the reader in her arguments concerning the portrayal of children during the Hellenistic period. It is understandable that Vout took on a discursive tone when attempting to explain her point of view regarding the depictions of the youths in the Hellenistic age. The subject’s content is far too broad to be encompassed within a small range of thinking. This observation is evident in Vout’s temporary straying from the main points to wider subjects; however, she always brings her tangents back to the principal objectives. The primary ideas that she focuses on concern the rendering of children in art forms during Hellenistic times. This idea is then divided into differen... ... middle of paper ... ...sts within me a sense of gratitude. I feel that I have received a better understanding of how we evolved to conceive the current belief of what it means to be a child. The essay brought to my attention the difficulty that is associated with trying to conjure up an image of minuteness and powerlessness in a society that is bent on creating divine representations. It was also made clearer to me that the Greek culture found little value in people or objects that could not contribute to their culture as a whole. There is a sense of reverence toward items that depict the Greek culture as formidable, dominant, and divinely favored. Works Cited Caroline Vout. "Laocoon's Children and the Limits of Representation - Vout - 2010 - Art History." Wiley Online Library. Web. 26 Oct. 2011. .
For the Greeks, Homer's Odyssey was much more than just an entertaining tale of gods, monsters, and men, it served as cultural paradigm from which every important role and relationship could be defined. This book, much more so than its counter part The Iliad, gives an eclectic view of the Achean's peacetime civilization. Through Odyssey, we gain an understanding of what is proper or improper in relationships between father and son, god and mortal, servant and master, guest and host, and--importantly--man and woman. Women play a vital role in the movement of this narrative. Unlike in The Iliad, where they are chiefly prizes to be won, bereft of identity, the women of Odyssey are unique in their personality, intentions, and relationship towards men. Yet, despite the fact that no two women in this epic are alike, each--through her vices or virtues-- helps to delineate the role of the ideal woman. Below, we will show the importance of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, Clytaemestra, and Penelope in terms of the movement of the narrative and in defining social roles for the Ancient Greeks.
This paper will discuss and compare A Faun Teased by Children sculpture, of the Italian Baroque style, and the Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer of the French impressionist style. These two sculptures give us a clear insight and allows us to peer in on the moment that is taking place. The active movement, strong diagonals and dramatic facial expressions of the figures in A Faun Teased by Children tells the on looker a vivid detailed story of the actions that are taking place and what role each figure is taking on, in a mythical scene, while the stagnant and serene pose of the Fourteen Year Old Girl resonates calmness and a moment that has not taken place just yet.
Aeschylus’ tragic trilogy, the only play to survive from Ancient Greece, repeatedly calls our attention upon a central concept of justice: justice as revenge. This is a relatively simple concept, with a powerful emotional appeal, linking vengeance to the family and their feelings for each other and for their collective honor. However, one must look past this superficial theme in order to fully appreciate and understand the depth and beauty of Aeschylus’ work, and regard it as a philosophical investigation into the concepts of justice rather than a great artistic fiction or a poetic exploration. The former approach is unfortunate because the Oresteia is not a rational argument. It is, on the other hand, an artistic exploration of abstract and theoretical issues. What matters in this case is the complexity of the feeling that emerges from the characters, the imagery, the actions, and the ideas in the story. In other words, the writer is dealing with a case of how human bei...
Children are common group of people who are generally mislabeled by society. In the short story “Charles’’ by Shirley Jackson and ‘’The Open Window” by Saki showed examples of the labeling of children. In “Charles” the concept of parents labeling their children as being pure and sincere was shown. As in “The Open Window” by Saki “used the notion that girls were the most truthful sex and gives her a name that suggests truthfulness to make her tale less suspect.”(Wilson 178). According to Welsh “Because the fantasy is so bizarre and inventive and totally unexpected from a fifteen-year-old girl, the reader is momentarily duped.”(03). This showed that even we as the readers were a victim of misleading labels of society.
Winckelmann like Vasari dealt greatly with the artistic problems concerning representation and imitation of nature including the need for the human beauty in a figure. However he also was interested in art criticism based in historical timelines and causes for the change and evolution of modern art. This greatly seen in this article not only in his thesis that great contemporary art is based in antiquity but also in his explanation for why the Greek art was so well done and why it has risen back into the hands of modern art. First, Greek work came back to contemporary society greatly by the monarch led by Titus who brought authentic work from Greek masters for his artists to learn from and imitate. He also discusses the correlation between the bodies, like that of the Theseus model, with the Greek lifestyle they lived based heavily on training for the Olympic games and the resemblance of youth’s bodies to godlike figures. Great masters of contemporary work use these same bodily model and ideal of beauty in their work. Winckelmann states that their present good taste is due to the fact that they, “partook of good taste at its source.” Overall the Greeks set up rules of art that could be imitated to capture nature and its ideal form of beauty, an idea that many sought to accomplish.
The reality is that children simply are not the same but vary greatly in the psychological equipment they bring to the world. In the reading I propose, Coriolanus's own lawful nature made his childhood far more challenging and difficult for Volumnia than her callous declarations would have us believe.
The works of art from the Archaic Period, Classical Period, and Hellenic Period developed physically and mentally, and the study of their aesthetic differences from period to period allow for a decided contrast and comparability. This interpretation has had a profound effect on the art world and that continues even in today’s world. The importance of Greek sculptures is evident in the storytelling of the gods, the people, and the culture. We use these sculptures as a tool to go back into the past of the Greek people, letting us admire how far mankind has truly come, whether it is in art or intelligence. Generation after generation has been and will continue to be able to see for themselves the society, culture and uniqueness of these periods through the wonderful sculptures that came out of ancient
The rise of the Greeks was a revolutionary step away from this system. Although Greek society was also greatly influenced by their polytheistic religion, they took an intellectual approach to the study of the man-nature relationship. Instead of acce...
The various essays comprising Children in Colonial America look at different characteristics of childhood in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Children coming to the American colonies came from many different nations and through these essays, authors analyze children from every range of social class, race, and ability in order to present a broad picture of childhood in these times. While each essay deals with an individual topic pertaining to childhood, they all combine to provide a strong argument that children were extremely valued in society, were not tiny adults, and were active participants in society.
The dictionary definition of a child is a young human being, an immature person and offspring (Oxford, 1976). This idea is reflected in Mead’s statement ‘that children to adults are representative of something weak and helpless in need of protection, supervision, training, models, skills, beliefs and ‘character’’ (Montgomery et al, 2003, p vii). The emphasis is on the concept of the child by adults rather than the size or mentality raising the notion that a child, and therefore childhood, is not just a biological concept but also an ideological one (Falconer, 2009). This ideology makes an oxymoron of Children’s Literature according to Rose (Hunt, 2009a) as adults write, publish and purchase books with each set of adults having their own ideas about childh...
In conclusion, although Mycerinus and Kha-merer-nebty II and Augustus of Primaporta, do appear very different, come from entirely different geographic regions and were separated by thousands of years, they do have many things in common. When we consider subject, style, and function; perhaps other works of art have more in common than they appear to have.
...r. "Ancient Greece." Gardner's art through the ages the western perspective. 13th ed., Backpack ed. Boston, Mass.: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010. 101, 123,129. Print.
Somewhere around the beginning of the seventeenth century, the perception of the nature of childhood -- its duration, its perceived purpose, its requirements, its quality -- changed rather significantly in the Eurocentric world, a period Valerie Suransky identifies as a watershed for the modern notion of childhood (1982, p. 6). Actually, two things seemed to have happened: first, the idea of childhood as a separate developmental stage began to arise; second, the idea of who was deserving of childhood also began to broaden. The pattern was similar in Europe and America, with some minor variations which resulted from geography, religion, etc., but the differences are inconsequential. Generally speaking, the factors which influenced this change are the view of the nature of humankind, the development of industry, urbanization, parents themselves, and the women's movement.
Childhood is one of the first biological life cycles we encounter. The experience that we go through shape what we will become. Here in America, as we began to industrialize, we began to have a different view of what childhood should be than in other parts of the world. In Taiwan and in Indonesia athletic shoes are made by children who work in factories instead of going to school. About 215 million of the world’s children work typical long hours for low wages. People in America might find this disturbing because we think of childhood as the first 12 years of life a carefree time of learning and play. But according to historian Philippe Aries (1965) explains, the whole idea of childhood is fairly new. During the middle ages, children of 4 and
Honour, Hugh, and John Fleming. "Hellenistic and Roman Art." A World History of Art. London: Laurence King, 1999. 179-213. Print.