Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and exercises for Arts and Humanities for Baccalaureate

William Blake's Poetic Insights

Understanding Visionaries

A visionary may be someone who envisions a better future or someone who claims to see people or events in dreams.

Literary Analysis: Symbolism

A symbol is a person, place, object, or action that represents itself and something beyond itself. Symbols can often represent more than one thing.

Reading Skill: Compare and Contrast

• Word Choice: Look for descriptive words and note how they are used to emphasize characteristics of the subject.
• Ideas: Identify common or contrasting ideas expressed in the poems.
• Tone: Notice the author's attitude toward the subject.

Blake's Poems: Interpretations

The Lamb

Consider what God, the lamb, and the speaker have in common.

Symbols: Lamb, God.

Explanation: Represents...

Compare and contrast customer needs, wants, and demands. Describe the need versus the want for the following products: McDonald's, Sony TV, Nestle Water, iPod, Pizza Hut, Nike, and Rolex.

Understanding Needs, Wants, and Demands

1. Needs: The most basic concept underlying marketing is the satisfaction of needs. These include basic physical needs for food, clothing, warmth, and safety; social needs for belonging; and individual needs for knowledge and self-expression. These are states of felt deprivation.
2. Wants: Human needs as they are shaped by culture and individual personality. For example, while everyone needs food, individuals want different dishes to fulfill their hunger. People in India may want spicy rice, while people in Kuwait may want regular

Essential Art History Terms

• Atmospheric perspective: A technique of rendering depth or distance in painting by modifying the tone, hue, and distinctness of objects receding from the picture plane, especially by reducing local colors and contrasts to a uniform light bluish-gray.
• Continuous narrative: A type of narrative that illustrates multiple scenes within a single frame without dividers.
• Attribute: In art, an object or animal associated with a particular personage.
• Memento mori: An object serving as a warning or reminder of death, such as a skull.
• Trompe l'oeil: A visual illusion in art used to trick the eye into perceiving a painted detail as a three-dimensional object.

Technical and Stylistic Concepts

• Quadrature: The process of constructing a

Postmodern Critique of Anthropological Epistemology

The postmodernist critique argues that the anthropologist’s epistemology and view of society is often shown to be Western provincialism—a Western ethnocentric approach applied to the rest of the world. Ethnographies, at best, distort reality and carry significant political implications.

The Crisis of Anthropological Objectivity

Critiques of postmodernism arise when anthropology, which assumed it was an objective scientific truth, is revealed instead to be a product of power.

What is Left of Anthropology?

If all writing is nothing more than interpretations of interpretations, then ethnography risks being viewed as fiction. The conclusion drawn by some is that Anthropology is merely a representational

Understanding Aestheticism: Origins and Core Message

The term "Aestheticism" derives from the Greek word aisthesis, meaning "perception through the senses." This focus on sensory experience was also central to Romantic culture. Indeed, the movement has its roots in Romanticism, but it also signifies a distinct turn. Now, the artist, or more specifically the aesthete, must not only feel sensations but actively live them in their own life. The core message of Aestheticism is often summarized as "Living for beauty!"

The Aesthete and the Poète Maudit: Rebels Against Society

The figure of the aesthete presents some correspondences with the French figure of the "poète maudit" (cursed poet), who rejects all societal values and conventions. The poète...

Branding Definition

A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of these, used to identify the goods and services of a seller and to differentiate them from competitors. Consumers can easily recognize the brand and its values. Branding serves to identify products and distinguish them. A brand personality is a set of human characteristics associated with a brand name.

Functions of Brand Names

• Create an image and identification for a product
• Make it easy to distinguish products
• Help create effective promotion and advertising
• Guarantee a certain level of quality, quantity, and satisfaction

Benefits of Branding

This encourages repeat purchases through brand loyalty. Branding also helps businesses create product differentiation. Businesses...

Spanish-American Literature: Beyond European Realism

Spanish-American literature managed to rise over European Realism. These authors do not only reproduce and criticize harsh reality but interpret that reality in a poetical fashion by:

• Depicting a complex reality.
• Projecting fabulous elements on a real background.
• Using the latest narrative techniques and elaborate language.

The 1940s Generation: Foundations of Magic Realism

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges showed great mastery of artistic creation in poetry. His style includes realistic and fantastic aspects; he makes a philosophical and existential reflection on his own creation. His topics include the separation between reality and fiction, the mystery of consciousness, and difficult reality....

Eastern Philosophy and Shintoism

The first practical approach, led by Confucius, focused on the Five Classics and the maintenance of social responsibility. The second trend was mystical and metaphysical in nature. Before the arrival of Buddhism, the ancient Japanese religion was Shintoism, which taught that the world was ruled by the Sun God.

Medieval Russia: Culture and Art

The Huns were nomadic people originating from the area of Mongolia. The Byzantine influence shaped Russian religion, culture, and art, leading to the development of two major cultural centers: Kiev and Novgorod.

One of the greatest expressions of medieval Russian art was Andrei Rublev (1370–1430), whose masterpiece is The Old Testament Trinity. This era was significantly...

Realism

An artistic movement that sought to represent reality as closely as possible with the highest degree of verisimilitude.

Origin and Evolution

Realism appeared in France in the first half of the nineteenth century. It evolved alongside urban society and industry, supported by an established bourgeoisie.

In Spain, it arrived in 1870 after "The Glorious" revolution and reached its heyday in the 1880s.

Realism and Naturalism

Naturalism was driven by Émile Zola, who proposed applying the scientific method to literature. He achieved this by describing and analyzing the human being as a product of their environment, historical context, and biological heritage.

In Spain, strict naturalism was often rejected, as writers championed free will and humor....

Historical Materialism and Infrastructure

Marxist literary criticism is created from ideas objectified by the likes of Karl Marx, which is currently less prevalent following the fall of socialism. Marxist materialism is based on Platonic concepts, which it analyzes from the standpoint of infrastructure. Every culture and every society has a specific way of producing and distributing goods; therefore, their perception of ideas—including morality, law, and art—will also be different. This perception depends on the infrastructure, which corresponds to the Platonic world of sense. This theory is known as historical materialism.

The Relationship Between Art and Society

The world of Platonic ideas is identified with the ideological superstructure...