Deck 27: The Romantic View of Nature

Question 1

Chronicle the rise of the Romantic landscape in Western art.

Answer 1

Landscape painting originated as an independent genre not in the West,but in the East,in China,Japan,and other parts of East Asia.In Europe,it was not until the Renaissance-among such painters as Leonardo da Vinci,Dürer,and Brueghel- that the natural landscape became a subject in its own right.Rather than realistic depictions of nature,Romantic landscape paintings became a primary vehicle for the expression of an artist's shifting moods and private emotions.Romantic painters would translate their native affection for the countryside into scenes that ranged from the picturesque to the sublime.
English artists,such as John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner,took the lead in the genesis of the Romantic landscape.Turner,especially,invested nature with theatrical fervor.Capturing the Romantic essence,Turner's works portrayed natural disasters and catastrophes that expressed the "sublime" and the terror human beings experience in the face of nature's overpowering forces.French landscape artists offered a bit gentler of an experience.They painted modest landscapes and scenes of rural life;unsentimental views of the local countryside.

Question 2

Detail the intellectual contributions of Hegel and Darwin.

Answer 2

Romantic era thinkers built on the philosophic idealism of Immanuel Kant,who exalted the role of the human mind in constructing an idea of the world.German philosophers,especially the idealists,prized the powers of human instinct and viewed nature in deeply subjective terms.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel held that the world consists of a single divine nature,which he termed "absolute mind" or "spirit." Spirit and matter obey an evolutionary process impelled by spirit seeking to know its own nature.Hegel stated that enlightenment emerges from a dialectic process in which every condition (or "thesis")confronts its opposite condition (or "antithesis"),which then generates a synthesis.The synthesis in turn produces its opposite,and so on,in a continuing evolution that moves toward the ultimate goal of spiritual freedom.Hegel also advances the idea that the essence of spirit is freedom,which finds its ultimate expression in the nation-state.As individual will harmonizes with universal duty,the resulting synthesis manifests itself in the concrete institutions of the state and its laws.Hegel's view of the state (and the European nation-state in particular)as the last stage in the development of spirit and the Hegelian dialectic in general had considerable influence on late nineteenth-century nationalism,as well as on the economic theories of Karl Marx.
Devoting his life to nature and the study of species,Darwin,building on previous efforts to describe evolutionism,substantiated the theory of evolution by explaining the process by which evolution occurs.Observing the tendency of certain organisms to increase rapidly over time while retaining traits favorable to their survival,he concluded that evolution operates by means of natural selection.Although much has been made about the differences between religion and evolutionism,Darwin's thesis did not deny the idea of a divine creator.But his theory did imply that natural selection,not divine will,governed the evolutionary process.As Copernicus and Galileo had displaced earth from the center of the solar system,Darwin's theory robbed human beings of their preeminence on the planet.

Question 3

________ compared the elemental forces of nature with the creative powers of the poet.

A)Wordsworth
B)Shelley
C)Blake
D)Wordsworth,Shelley,and Blake all made this comparison.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Walt Whitman,Thoreau,and Emerson are all considered ________ writers.

A)right-wing
B)industrial
C)transcendentalist
D)novelistic

Question 5

________ argued that by means of natural selection,all living things including human beings evolved from a few simple forms: species either develop into higher forms of life or fail to survive.

A)Jung
B)Freud
C)Darwin
D)Leakey

Question 6

________ rejoiced that nature's fleeting beauty might forever dwell in art.

A)Shelley
B)Blake
C)Keats
D)Leakey

Question 7

In this industrial-based society,goods were increasingly made at factories rather than

A)by machine.
B)in community centers.
C)in sweatshops.
D)in homes.

Question 8

In the art of ________,the native populations and traditions of America are lovingly documented.

A)Constable
B)Catlin
C)Corot
D)Wordsworth

Question 9

In Chinese literature,as reflected in Shen Fu's confessional prose,and in painting,________ becomes a source of inspiration and personal solace.

A)the spirit realm
B)the family
C)the state
D)nature

Question 10

Examine attitudes toward nature in Asian culture and Native American culture.

Question 11

________,the leading nature poet of the nineteenth century,embraced the redemptive power of nature.

A)Wordsworth
B)Shelley
C)Leakey
D)Hegel

Question 12

Exalting the natural landscape as the source of sublime inspiration and moral truth,Wordsworth and his English contemporaries initiated the ________ movement.

A)Romantic
B)baroque
C)Enlightenment
D)Progressive

Question 13

Discuss transcendentalism and other views of nature in nineteenth-century America.

Question 14

American folk art,as typified by the paintings of ________,made use of natural imagery for decorative and symbolic purposes.

A)Hicks
B)Constable
C)Wordsworth
D)Corot

Question 15

While the theory of ________ displaced human beings from their elevated place in the hierarchy of living creatures,it advanced the idea of the unity of nature and humankind.

A)natural selection
B)deism
C)divine creation
D)parallel development

Question 16

Define the European Romantic poets and explain their attitudes towards nature.

Question 17

Increased production of ________ encouraged expansion of industry and commerce in the European West.

A)coal
B)iron
C)steel
D)All these answers are correct.

Question 18

________ proposed a dialectical model according to which all reality,all history,and all ideas progressed toward perfect freedom.

A)Hegel
B)Shelley
C)Blake
D)Wordsworth

Question 19

It was among Western romantics that the ________ became an independent and publicly acclaimed subject in the visual arts.

A)musical comedy
B)still life
C)Native American
D)landscape

Question 20

________'s deeply spiritual poems reflect a visionary and moral perception of nature.

A)Hegel
B)Shelley
C)Blake
D)Wordsworth