NATIONALISM

1. NATIONALISM • Most popular and dynamic ideological force in Europe • Nationalism is not inevitable • People are not born with feelings of national self-consciousness • Desire to be part of a community is natural but the object of this feeling has varied from age to age • The nation was not a fundamental and unique component of human society in accordance to divine or natural law. It was simply a form of social organization that people attached themselves to at this particular point in time

2. DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALISM • Nationalism is generally restricted to a minority of educated and politically aware people in its early stages of development • Majority of people are only gradually affected over a long period of time • Nationalism nourished by resentment of foreign repression and/or exploitation in countries subject to foreign rule • But it also developed in countries not controlled by a foreign power. Why?

3. WHY? • Tremendous social and economic transformation of period played role • Migration from country to city meant cutting old ties, a break with familiar norms, and a loss of emotional security • Displaced people looked for new ties and securities, a new sense of identity—and may have found it with nationalism • National governments also resorted to deliberate and intensive programs of indoctrination through education, military service, the press, etc to break down old regional and local loyalties

4. HISTORY, FOLKLORE, AND MUSIC Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm • Theories were formulated proving that members of a national sprang from the same racial background and shared same cultural and historical traditions • Illustrated by increase in the study of history (with emphasis on national origins) • Illustrated by new interest in national folklore, myths, and music • Grimm brothers • Richard Wagner Richard Wagner

5. DANGEROUS EVOLUTION OF NATIONALISM • Cultural nationalism was popular in early 19th century • People have unique folk spirit worthy of preservation • Gave way to political nationalism • To maintain national values, each nationality must establish itself as a sovereign state • Liberal nationalism (nation state was means to achieve constitutional representative government) gave way to arrogant and bigoted nationalism (belief in the superiority of one nationality over another)

6. RELIGIOUS QUALITY OF NATIONALISM • Many also believe that their superior nation or race was chosen by God or fate to fulfill a unique and exalted mission • Met the human need to feel part of a cause greater and more noble than oneself • A cause worthy of sacrifice, dedication, and commitment • Best know spokesman of this view was Guiseppe Mazzini

7. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE • Tragic life • Not well-known in lifetime • Suffered complete nervous breakdown in 1889 • Died in 1900 completely insane • Sister Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche falsified his unpublished manuscripts after his death to make him appear as a champion of German nationalism and racism

8. NIETZSCHE’S THOUGHT (1) • Denounced German nationalism and feelings of racial superiority as “a scabies of the heart” • Predicted that Germans would become obsessed with power under Second Reich and ultimately surrender what was left of their culture to prophets of national glory • Predicted Hitler, Nazism, and World War II

9. NIETZSCHE’S THOUGHT (2) • Did not believe contemporary intellectuals were concerned with the really important questions concerning the importance of their work and their own values • Believed that the search for values should be the fundamental concern of all thoughtful human beings because values cannot be permanently defined and must be subjected to re-evaluation

10. “SUPERMAN” AND “THE WILL TO POWER” • Supreme value: culture and the creation of culture • “Superman” –the creative spirit whose genius lifts him above the common level of mankind • Men like Michelangelo, Goethe, Beethoven, Julius Caesar • “Will to Power” is primal drive of human beings • Basic ingredient in human creativity • Strongest in the “Superman” • Evidence of the possession of power is the ability to control it, to direct it into creative channels • Did not believe in contemporary ideas of progress. For him, history was not a progression but rather a timeless allegory with the great problems of mankind as its unchanging themes

11. POPULAR ART (1) • Mass production of art created a mass market for art • This art catered to mass taste • Mass taste formed by mass producers and the merchandise they popularized through advertising • Mass producers did not have well developed aesthetic judgment • Took lead from styles endorsed by government schools and art academies and from shops patronized by the aristocracy • Popular taste corresponded with “official taste”

12. POPULAR ART (2) • Mass produced art, household decorations, furniture, and clothes were cheap and vulgar imitations of similar items available in elite high fashion shops • Official taste was traditional and safe • Governments and wealthy patrons demanded art that could be recognized as “good art” and which showed skilled execution and polished technique. • Generally ignored, ridiculed and sometimes persecuted artists whose work did not correspond to these standards

13. POPULAR TASTE • Desire for opulence and ostentation among the affluent • Taste in painting influenced by theory of John Ruskin that art should be both decorative and morally uplifting. • Result: • Generous displays of female nudity justified as contributing to “spiritual education” of audience • Patriotic paintings • Painting that told a story with a moral lesson

14. POPULAR ART Lady Godiva A Boy at Last Till Death Do Us Part

15. POPULAR PRESS • Mass circulation newspapers and magazines had huge influence on popular taste • Mass printing techniques • Elimination of taxes on paper • Compulsory education created mass reading public • Specialized in crime, gossip, and sports • Added drama and excitement to drab daily lives but also reinforced and exploited popular passions and prejudices

16. POPULAR LITERATURE • Most great novels of period serialized in newspapers • Charles Dickens • Most novels were escapist romances and adventure stories • Heroes strong and virile • Heroines weak and chaste • Allegedly morally uplifting • Most popular author of period was G.W.M. Reynolds • The Loves of a Harem • The White Slave of England

17. UPSIDE • Popular art of the late 19th century was executed with a great deal of technical skill and was permeated with an unselfconscious exuberance which reflected the general optimism of the age • Also represents valuable material for establishing contact with another age

18. FUNCTIONAL ART (1) • Definition: Products of human creativity whose primary purpose was functional rather than artistic • Many of the technological innovations of the era reveal such creative imagination and were built with such craftsmanship and sense of design that they must be considered as works of art • Steam and turbine engines, machined tools, optical equipment • Bridges and viaducts were the outstanding architectural achievements of the period

19. FUNCTIONAL ART (2) • Crystal Palace (London, 1851) • Joseph Paxton • Constructed of prefabricated sections of iron and glass • Eiffel Tower (Paris, 1889) • Gustave Eiffel • Built entirely of iron • Tallest structure in world until construction of Empire State Building in 1920s

20. SOME GOOD, MANY BAD • Some popular art of period had universal appeal • Novels of Dickens • Operas of Giuseppe Verdi • Did not represent break with past but carried on best of the past • Many artists who have stood the test of time were outside mainstream of popular culture • Not in revolt against society • Insisted on following their own artistic beliefs • Distinguished by their desire to experiment, discover new techniques, and explore new dimensions of human experience

21. LITERARY REALISM • Many artists were profoundly influenced by science– the “Realists” • Literary Realism • Not really original • Earlier writers (Jane Austen, Stendhal, and Balzac) also realistic in their novels • Only real novelty of this new generation of realistic authors was their scientific emphasis Jane Austin

22. EMILE ZOLA (1840-1902) • Attempted scientific analysis of society in multi-volume A Natural and Social History of a Family Under the Second Empire • Germinal • L’Assomoir • The Earth • Nana • Ladies’ Paradise • The Human Beast

23. ZOLA’S GOALS • Wanted to show how human conduct was determined by biology • Luckily, he was not consistent in his attitudeof scientific detachment • He was a moralist with a highly developed social consciousness • Best writing came when his unscientific passions were aroused • Believed that human nature could be perfected when science discovered biological means to resolve human problems

24. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT (1821-80) • Madame Bovary (1857) • Story of adulterous wife of a small-town doctor who has a dreary love affair and eventually commits suicide • Book created a scandal because Flaubert refused to pass moral judgments on his characters • Believed that the duty of a writer was analyze and distill his observations • Aspired to achieve a writing style “as precise as the language of science”

25. FEDOR DOSTOEVSKY (1821-81) • Reacted against realist obsession with science • Had contempt for optimism of his age, the confidence in reason, and faith in the inherent goodness of man

26. DOSTOEVSKY’S MAIN THEME • Central theme was the man is not good or reasonable but evil and that his inherently evil nature is only kept under control by belief in Christianity and fear of hell. • If man abandons these principles he turns into a monster • Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Possessed • Employed techniques of realism but emphasized the subconscious and irrational in the human personality

27. SYMBOLISM • Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) • Delved into the innermost nature of man and found evil and depravity • Most important for poetic craftsmanship and use of imagery • Flowers of Evil • Man is surrounded by a forest of familiar symbols which can be regarded as multiple symbols of a single reality • Symbols represent not only colors and sounds but also other sensations, emotions, and ideas • Richard Wagner (1813-1883) • Advocated creation of an universal, all-embracing work of art that combined poetry, music, drama, and visual arts

28. STEPHANE MALLARMÉ (1842-1898) • Greatest poet and theoretician of Symbolist Movement • Had deep faith in “beauty and its one perfect expression, poetry” • Distinguished among the various functions of language and argued that narration, description, and instruction were not the proper tasks of poetry • Proper task of poetry was evocation, allusion, and suggestion

29. NEW EXPRESSIONS • Symbolist Poets express themselves through images and symbols • Led to new ways of using words, new rhymes, new rhythms, new forms of punctuation, new positions of words on paper, etc.