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

What is Theater?

Theater is not only literature; it is a mixture of several arts that are conjugated: literary text, design (scenery, costumes, makeup), music, dance, and more.

Understanding Scenification

Scenification refers to the elements relative to the staging of a theatrical, musical, or dramatic work.

Defining Dramaturgy

Dramaturgy is the literary part of a story that is represented on stage.

The Importance of Theater

Theater is important for humanity because it allows one to express emotions, fears, and sensations through the interpretation of real or fictitious stories. Through these, it appeals to an audience that feels more or less close to these realities and can identify with them.

Basic Elements of Theater

• Playwright: A writer of dramas;

What Is Kant’s Criterion for Recognizing Art?

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement is the most important contribution to aesthetics. Kant creates a criterion for recognizing and assessing art, which remains influential to this day.

Kant describes four stages in the aesthetic judgement of beauty:

• Disinterestedness: There should be no feelings of the object or strong emotions aroused.
• Universality: The object should be beautiful to all who behold it.
• Purposiveness: Judgements of the beautiful have no end or purpose.
• Necessity: Judgements of beauty have an element of necessity.

The link between the object and the subject is one of a particular form of pleasure felt by the subject for the object in itself.

Art as a Representation and Its Problems

The...

Curbing the One-Eyed Monster

By Fiona C. Jenkins

Media Control and Misinformation

Television stations are owned by very rich people. They do not tell us the truth. Their main purpose is to hand us over to advertisers for as long as possible. Ordinary people are tired of protesting against them. The easiest way to make our home TV-free is to put our television set on the curb. We may miss very useful programs and become outsiders, but we can use the spare time to do something truly valuable. We can live a real life. We can make ourselves familiar with the highest quality in art, music, and literature.

However, TV presents us with the lower quality of all these, and reality in fragments, thus misguiding us. We do not know what reality is; we simply...

The Modern Meaning of the Titanic

June 2012

Historical Context and Lessons

• The lesson to learn: False. "The great lesson of the disaster is that no matter how smart we think we are, how skilled and how technologically advanced, we remain at the mercy of events beyond our control."
• Before the Titanic sank: True. "For 100 years the Western world had been at peace, technology had steadily improved and the benefits of peace and industry seemed to be filtering satisfactorily through society."
• The Great War and tragedy: False. "Two years later came the Great War, and the tragedy of Versailles, and the rise of Hitler, and the splitting of the atom, and so on."

Vocabulary and Synonyms

• Bright: Smart
• Imperfect: Flawed
• Transcendental: Landmark
• Free from change:

Narrative Texts

Narrative texts use a transmitter to tell real or fictional events. They are usually accompanied by dialogue and description. The structure typically includes:

• Initial situation
• Conflict
• Resolution or denouement

In a narrative text, we must analyze:

• Prevalence of the referential function
• Use of past tense or present, according to the narrator's point of view
• Use of verbs introduced in the dialogues
• Use of simple, compound, and juxtaposed sentences
• Use of adverbs or adverbial phrases

Classification of Adverbs

• Of place: here, there, far, inside, outside, close, behind, ahead, around
• Of time: today, yesterday, tomorrow, now, last night, yet, soon, after, then, still
• Of manner: well, badly, good, better, fairly, fast, slowly, and those ending

Neoclassicism and Rationalistic Art

For Neoclassicism, beauty is captured by what, according to Kant, is selfless, communicative, and claims universality. In Neoclassical art, all reasonable rules of good taste are followed, establishing the aesthetic canon.

Romantic Art: Passion and Sublimity

Modern art subjectivized beauty through the experience of taste. However, taste was previously dictated by the canon of reason. Romanticism adds passion to this equation, leading to the discovery of a new dimension of beauty: the sublime.

• The sublime spirit invades so violently that it produces an overwhelming annihilation, leaving the individual captivated by its beauty.
• The sublime is self-justifying, without being subject to rules or measures. In a way,

Caravaggio: The Calling of Saint Matthew Painting

Done in oil on canvas, this work—together with two others in the same chapel—has been commented to form a series on the life and death of Saint Matthew. Caravaggio represents the moment when the future apostle and saint is accompanied by other men, counting the coins they have collected. The action is interrupted by the entrance of Christ together with Saint Peter. Christ extends his arm, pointing to Matthew, who immediately perceives the meaning of Christ's call; not so his dinner companions, among whom a surprised look is directed toward the two men entering, without understanding the meaning of the gesture, while two others remain locked in the tax-collection activity, outside the action...

The Theater of Federico García Lorca

Dramatic World: Key Issues

• The main element of his world is frustration.
• There is a constant conflict between reality and desire.
• Tragic destinies are brought to the stage.
• In several works, this is embodied in women.
• It is the tragedy of any person sentenced to a life of frustration.
• This occurs on two levels:
  • Metaphysical: A struggle with Time and Death.
  • Social: Conventions and prejudices.
• The two levels often intersect.
• He revitalizes tragic myths through many formal channels.

Fullness and Grassroots Outreach

• These are the years of La Barraca, which represents work for the people.
• Lorca achieves the fullness of his art and massive success.
• Women occupy a central place; Lorca shows great sensitivity to the status of

Federico García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba is rich with profound themes that resonate throughout the play. This analysis delves into the core issues presented, from social critique to the intricate use of poetic language.

Hatred and Envy

The play vividly demonstrates instances of hatred and envy, manifesting in various forms: through insults, insinuations, and both veiled and direct expressions. Women in this wild and inhospitable environment yearn for love and freedom, but their inability to achieve it leads to bitter clashes among the daughters.

Social Injustice

Social injustice dominates the first act, where Lorca powerfully complains about societal inequality. The play exposes class consciousness, pride, and the cruelty inherent in...

Elements of Human Knowledge: Impressions and Ideas

The explanation of the limits of human knowledge requires investigating the understanding to define its structure, elements, functions, and scope. David Hume applied to the mind the feat accomplished by Isaac Newton in physics. Hume posits that the contents of the mind are perceptions, which fall into two classes: Impressions and Ideas.

Distinguishing Impressions and Ideas

The primary difference between these two lies in the degree of vitality, strength, or intensity with which they are presented to consciousness:

• Impressions: These are more vivid and represent all our sensations, passions, and emotions as they make their first appearance in the soul.
• Ideas: These are weaker, serving as copies of