The print “Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre” by Jacques Callot is a telling historical piece, which both takes the viewer on a journey through France in the 1630’s and makes a bold controversial stance against the Thirty Years’ war.
“Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre” illustrates an army of French soldiers named the Cardinal Richelieu hanging civilians in the town of Lorraine before overtaking it and annexing it to the French. In the print, the soldiers loot a farmhouse and torture regular common people. This print shows the French soldiers as aggressors causing harm to the innocent civilians, which plays in part with Callot’s anti-war sentiment for the casual viewer. In addition, Callot makes an effort to represent the diverse individuals that
…show more content…
This caption is intriguing not only for its’ uniqueness, but also because it is written by famous print-collector Michel de Marolles. Marolles, who clearly shares Callot’s anti-war sentiment, includes six-line rhyming couplets that both summarize the print and provide analysis on the background and events of the print. In “Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre,” the caption translation reads, “Finally these infamous and abandoned thieves, hanging from this tree like wretched fruit, show that crime (horrible and black species) is itself the instrument of shame and vengeance, and that it is the fate of corrupt men to experience the justice of heaven sooner or later.” Marolles uses sarcasm and detailed description in this caption to color the Thirty Years’ War as an act of evil. It is evident that Marolles and Callot share similar thoughts on the atrocities of …show more content…
Callot lived from 1952 until 1635, during which he lived a successful career creating thematic works of art. In fact, Callot was appointed to the Lorraine court under the patronage of Duke Henri II. As a result, Callot received contracts from religious hierarchy and created art with religious figures in mind. In addition to receiving contracts from religious hierarchy, Callot also sold prints to the general public, which gave him more exposure and opened up his work for criticism from the masses. Interestingly, Callot was born into a family of nobility, which is unexpected given Callot’s strong anti-government sentiment. Callot’s hometown of Nancy, France included many prominent individuals who dabbled in the arts, theater, music, as well as many more of the finer things in life. With this in mind, it is especially intriguing that Callot was so critical of the government and the army of France in the 1630’s who, for the most part, made decisions with the wealthy and elite classes in
The Return of Martin Guerre, written by Natalie Zemon Davis, is the tale of a court case that takes place in sixteenth century France. Martin Guerre is a peasant who deserted his wife and family for many years. While Martin Guerre is gone, a man named Arnaud du Tilh arrives at Martin’s village and claims to be Martin Guerre. Bertrande, who is Guerre’s wife, Guerre’s sisters, and many of the villagers, accepts the imposter. After almost three years of being happily married, Bertrande takes the fraud to court under pressure of Pierre Guerre, her stepfather and Guerre’s brother. Arnaud du Tilh is almost declared innocent, but the real Martin Guerre appears in the courthouse. Throughout this tale, many factors of the peasant life are highlighted. The author gives a very effective and detailed insight to a peasant’s life during the time of Martin Guerre. Davis does a successful job of portraying the peasant lifestyle in sixteenth century France by accentuating the social, cultural, and judicial factors of everyday peasant life.
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
The Wife of Martin Guerre is a novel that takes us through the life of Bertrande de Rols, wife of Martin Guerre and her story of the life she lived with and without Martin in sixteenth century France. This novel shares many reason for why she pursued the alleged impostor that was within her home impersonating her husband; such as, women not having a voice within the household, her religious values and beliefs, her choice to live a life of truth and honour over happiness and comfort, through the doubts of her family that she had to push against and trusting her better judgment. Bertrande proved to herself and the audience of readers of this novel why even within their time period then it was still right for her to do so in pursing the impostor.
The movie The Return of Martin Guerre provides many insights into the life of people during the sixteenth century. The movie is about a man who steals the identity of another peasant. The story discuses themes of self-identity, a new idea at the time the movie takes place. The people in the movie are portrayed as stereotypical medieval peasants, who seem to know nothing. Sixteenth century France is depicted as a stereotypical medial world that is experiencing the new ideas of that time period.
The Young People of Today, a series of opinion polls conducted among young educated Frenchmen by Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde find romantic sentiments for war much like von Treitschke. The two authors interviewed a professor who tried to explain that there were in fact unjust wars, however, according to the professor, “the class obviously did not follow me; they rejected that distinction” (Massis and de Tarde 224). Massis and de Tarde go on to write about the many young men who left their high studies to pursue lives as soldiers because for them “it is not enough, for them to learn history: they are making it” (Massis and de Tarde 224).
Tim O’Brien states in his novel The Things They Carried, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat” (77). This profound statement captures not only his perspective of war from his experience in Vietnam but a collective truth about war across the ages. It is not called the art of combat without reason: this truth transcends time and can be found in the art produced and poetry written during the years of World War I. George Trakl creates beautiful images of the war in his poem “Grodek” but juxtaposes them with the harsh realities of war. Paul Nash, a World War I artist, invokes similar images in his paintings We are Making a New World and The Ypres Salient at Night. Guilaume Apollinaire’s writes about the beautiful atrocity that is war in his poem “Gala.”
Vivid imagery is one way with which writers protest war. Crane uses imagery to glorify, and shortly thereafter demean and undercut war, through the use of imagery, by placing positive and negative images of war close to eachother. “Blazing flag of the regiment,” and “the great battle God,” are placed before “A field where a thousand corpses lie.” (A) These lines’ purposes are to put images into the reader’s head, of how great war may appear, and then displaying that there are too many casualties involved with it. In Dulce Et Decorum Est, a man is described dyin...
Jünger’s opening chapter recalls the enthusiastic first thoughts on entering the war, upon arrival in Champagne, “Grown up in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary. We were enraptured by war .” Though the illusion was soon dispelled, throughout the novel Jünger did not seem to be phased by the reality of his mission. When Jünger described reaching Orainville, he wrote, “We saw only a few, ragged, shy civilians; everywhere eels soldiers in worn tattered tunics, with faces weather-beaten and often with a heavy growth of beard, strolling along at a slow pace, or standing in little clusters in doorways, watching our arrival with ribald remarks .” This is Jünger’s first of a pattern of acc...
In conclusion of this review lengthy of The Great Cat Massacre; I’ve given a rather lengthy insight into the book, Mr. Darnton’s motivation for writing the book, and a different view of the The Great Cat Massacre with the aid of Roger Chartier. In retrospect I enjoyed reading this book very much, however I do not feel that it was the best book for this review. The book itself was looking at history in a different way and it made it extremely difficult to compare or contrast it with another source. Mr. Darnton whose views in my opinion are sound it’s just that are very narrow questions about a very large subject “French Culture” and it was hard to locate different opinions.
World War One was a massive event. It affected millions of people from all walks of life, and inspired countless written pieces. Nevertheless, without being there, it is impossible to truly be able to tell what the war is like. Therefore the use of setting is very important in giving the reader an idea of the circumstance. This is not to say that everyone is in agreement over how the war should be displayed. Quite one the contrary, the two Poems “In Flanders Fields” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” use their settings to create two very contrasting images of human conflict.
With exaggeration, authors craft their writing to have an even greater, more impactful effect on their audiences. This enhanced effect found in Candide serves the purpose of highlighting how humans adopt a type of absolute viciousness and inhumanity in times of war. One example is the instance where Candide - a member of the Bulgar army, at the time - must choose between being “flogged” by the entirety of the military command, or to endure “twelve bullets in his brain” (24). Here, Candide is given a nonsensical, almost ludicrous, ultimatum. Voltaire offers an embellished example that serves to demonstrate the barbaric military practices that come with war. Being a recurring aspect of war, Candide is, essentially, forced to choose between death and death. In fact, along with exaggeration, Voltaire satirizes war even further as the choice of whether it be a gradual or speedy demise is Candide’s own luxury. Voltaire does not just simply antagonize the ramifications of war, but rather, he ridicules all facets of war. Another example within Candide is when the Old Woman reveals the story of her own life as proof of the grim hardship that she too has experienced. In the midst of another battle, “one buttock” was cut off of the live bodies of every woman present in the interest of feeding the starving soldiers (56).
The Three Musketeers (originally published in serial form in the newspaper Le Siècle between March and July 1844) written by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet, examines the first half of the French seventeenth century. For Dumas, it wasn’t a matter of glorifying history, but of popularizing it. Therefore, Dumas institutionalized the past, yet he presented a fictive poetic awakening of the people, who figure in these historical events, such as Louis XIII of France and Cardinal Richelieu.
Nardo, Don. A. The French Revolution. San Diego, California: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1999. Print.
Dowd, David L.. “Art as National Propaganda in the French Revolution”. Public Opinion Quarterly, 1951. Web. 5th May 2013.
It is no secret that our society is fascinated with war: many films which portray various facets of military venture, success and failure make it onto the big screen and are thus successful, both in the box office and with the audiences that view them; Loncraine’s version of Shakespeare’s play is no different—the setting mimics Nazi Germany both with its iconography, especially after Richard comes to power (see scene in which Richard gives a speech before a thunderous crowd), and with its clever use of the straight-laced look of Nazi soldiers’ uniforms. And while his approach clearly errs from the way in which more traditional directors of Shakespeare’s Richard III create the setting of t...