Question 20: British Culture (Romanticism – Post-Modernism)

Plan:

Romanticism (beg. of 19^th cent.)

Some public ppl disapproved of the Enlightenment trends, some writers in their work paid attention to mystery.

Industrial revolution (Luddite’s crisis) & The French Bourgeois revolution in 1789

Ppl dissatisfied with the current situation called upon ppl to struggle for better future.

George Gordon Byron

I: the world is not solid, but split into two

A character – a person who realizes the imperfection of the real world and his helplessness to improve it, so he leaves this one and becomes a hermit or escapes to some fantastic world.

Romanticists idealized historic past.

Walter Scott, P.B. Shelly. Jane Austin

Realism (19^th cent.)

I: criticism of capitalist society and exposure of social contradictions.

True reflection of life. Realists sympathized with working ppl

The leading genre - novel

Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte

Character – a little man in the harsh world

Tomas Hardy, George Eliot paid attention to deep psychological analysis and observation of inner world.

Some realists who couldn’t cope with the reality tried to escape to the world of dreams and beauty. This trend resulted in decadence (decline) trend  artists forgot about the reality and began to produce are for art’s sake  pure art  current of aesthetism.

NB: art shouldn’t reflect the reality but only give pleasure. The beautiful form is far more important than contents. Art can’t teach.

Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll

Modernist (20^th cent.)

The traditions of realism were continued

Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, Herbert Wells

I: to reveal the truth of life. They criticized narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy, stupidity.

The leading genre – novel.

Toward 20-30s ppl began to question basic political and religious beliefs.

The Crisis of bourgeois relations  great pessimism.

“Stream of consciousness”, they described everything that happened in human’s mind.

James Joyce “Ulysses”

Straggle between realists and decadent writers.

Virginia Woolf, Thomas Eliot, Agatha Christie, J.RR. Tolkien

Post-modernist (21^st cent.)

WWII had a great influence on intellectual life.

In the theatre appeared 2 trends: Absurd (shows the meaninglessness of life) & Social drama

Dominating genre is still a novel esp. philosophical, satirical.

George Orwell “The Animal Farm”, William Golding

Question 21: British School of Painting

Plan:

Middle Ages (stained glass, manuscript decoration and manuscript illumination).

The key plot – king, virgin Mary

The characteristic features – attention to the beauty of line, rich colours and fine craftsmanship

XV century pictorial art was dominated by the Continental influences. As all leading artists were foreigners.

The Age of Reason - empirical approach to experience

Portraits Van Dyck,

He was the first to introduce the tradition of representing a sitter against a landscape background. This feature distinguishes the English portrait from the Continental one.

E.g. the portrait of Charles I

The Age of Classicism

the English love of clarity, elegance and restraint.

no psychological depth in the portraits of this period.

Reynolds and Hogarth  to create a character

The Age of Romanticism

brought the passion for sentiment and Nature.

Landscape and seascape

The attitude toward the nature at once more exact vs an imaginative (Gainsborough)

I: painting should be understood but not only viewed.

But nature is not depicted in all the details, as it was considered to change.

The National Museums in London

Landscapes & Seascapes

Sir Joshua Reynolds

specializing in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style"

He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy.

William Hogarth

was a major English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist.

He was a moralizing artist.

His work ranged from excellent realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called “modern moral subjects”.

Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme,

Thomas Gainsborough

Royal Family's favorite painter.

Painted more from his observations of nature (and human nature) than from any application of formal academic rules.

Portrait of Mrs. Graham; Mary and Margaret: The Painter's Daughters; William Hallett and His Wife Elizabeth, nee Stephen, known as The Morning Walk; and Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher, display the unique individuality of his subjects.

Joseph Mallord William Turner

his style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism.

he elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting.

"The painter of light".

The fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up

Variety of colours, broad touches

He found plots in shipwrecks, fires, sunlight, storm, rain, and fog.

He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea.

He opposed grandeur of nature and weakness of humans

In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour

Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway

John Constable

Dedham Vale

The Hay Wain

Rebelled against the artistic culture that taught artists to use their imagination to compose their pictures rather than nature itself.

Question 22: Mass Media of the UK

Plan:

The Press

• National Daily and Sunday Papers

• Functions: information, discussion and representation.

• London is the first largest press centre. Almost all daily newspapers are published there. The second – Manchester, Glasgow in Scotland.

Quality papers The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Financial Times, The Observer, The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph

Popular papers. News of the World, The Sun, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express.

Tabloids

The Times (1785) is called the paper of the Establishment.

-it is independent, but ...Conservative Party.

-Caution, symbol of solidity in Britain.

- reliability and completeness and especially in foreign affairs.

-Its reputation for reflecting or even anticipating government policy

The Guardian (until 1959-The Manchester Guardian).

-In quality, style and reporting it is nearly equal with The Times.

-In politics it is described as “radical”. Liberal Party  Labour

The Daily Telegraph (1855)

-is the quality paper with the largest

The Daily Mirror

-It was also a pioneer with strip cartoons.

Radio and Television

the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

the Independent Television Commission (ITC)

the Radio Authority

BBC

Ruling board is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Government.

The BBC has a strong regional structure.

The BBC has five national radio channels for listeners in the United Kingdom.

the World Service of the BBC.

BBC Television

• The BBC has a powerful television service. It owns two channels: BBC1 and BBC2.

• The BBC does not give publicity to any firm or company except when it is necessary to provide effective and informative programmes.

• It must not broadcast any commercial advertisement or any sponsored programme. Advertisements are broadcasted only on independent television

• Advertising is usually limited to seven minutes in any one hour of broadcasting time.

• The Government has no privileged access to radio or television,

• The domestic services of the BBC are financed principally from the sale of television licences.