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 identityand 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
NIETZSCHES 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
NIETZSCHES 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
• LAssomoir
• The Earth
• Nana
• Ladies Paradise
• The Human Beast

23
ZOLAS GOALS

• Wanted to show how human conduct was determined
  by biology
• Luckily, he was not consistent in his attitude of
  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
DOSTOEVSKYS 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.