Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for Arts and Humanities

Character Conflict: Two Opposing Blocs

The novel presents a confrontation between two distinct character blocs:

• Simple Characters: These primary beings are marked by purity, untainted by the dehumanization of modern civilization. They are governed by positive feelings such as friendship, affection, and respect for nature. Though deprived of fortune, they possess a particular wisdom gained from their contact with the natural world.
• Vain Characters: These are detached characters, defined by their desire to appear, lacking genuine qualities. They are characterized as selfish, petty, arrogant, and dehumanized.

The confrontation between these two blocs is the key conflict in the novel, highlighting the social injustice in which they live.

Time in the

Perspective: Definition and Techniques

Perspective is defined as the art of representing objects in the form and layout that will appear to the eye. It also refers to the set of objects seen from the viewer's viewpoint. Using this technique, artists project the illusion of a three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface. Perspective helps create a sense of depth, making space appear to recede.

Fundamental techniques for achieving perspective include controlling the apparent size variation of subjects or objects, overlapping them, and positioning elements on the ground plane: closer objects appear lower, while more distant ones appear higher.

Perspective, then, is a system for representing three dimensions on a flat, two-dimensional surface.... Continue reading "Mastering Artistic Perspective Techniques" »

The Language

Symbolic Language: Opening a Shared World

Human speech is an interpersonal communication system that carries three functions:

• Representative: Linguistic signs are symbols used to represent states.
• Expressive: Language signs are signs that show the states of the speaker.
• Appeals: Linguistic signs are signals routed to the caller, for which a reaction is expected.

With this triple function, human communication and the creation of a shared world are achieved.

Knowledge and Language

Language has a very close relationship with both the activity known as to its outcome: knowledge.

Regarding knowledge acquired via linguistic knowledge, it is conserved through language and shared with others because we can communicate it.

These three relationships... Continue reading "Human Language: Knowledge and Communication" »

I. Characteristics of Journalistic Genres

The newspaper is a widely used means of communication. Its specific features include the ability to provoke reader reflection, a lack of immediacy compared to other genres, and the use of mixed coding schemes. This involves linguistic codes alongside iconography, color, and typographical and spatial elements.

We can classify journalistic roles based on two criteria:

a) According to the channel used:

• Written Journalism: General newspapers and specialized information journals.
• Electronic Journalism: Presented as images, sounds, or both on screens via television, radio, or the internet.

b) According to intentionality:

• Information Journalism: Facts are told objectively.
• Opinion Journalism: Journalists bring their

The House of Bernarda Alba

The culmination of Lorca's theater comes with The House of Bernarda Alba, written in the spring of 1939 and published in 1945 in Buenos Aires.

The book is subtitled A Drama of Women in the Villages of Spain. The subject of the play is an exaggeration of a rural practice where Bernarda Alba, after the death of her husband, requires her children to undergo a long and strict confinement. It has come to be said that the central theme of the play is the confrontation between authority and freedom, with Bernarda Alba representing authority.

In the play, there are a series of secondary issues such as social inequality and the status of women in society. The action takes place in a confined space (the house), which represents... Continue reading "Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba and Essay Writing" »

Literary Genres

Literary works are grouped according to their specific characteristics, giving rise to the literary genres: narrative, lyric, tragic, essay, and others.

Forms of Expression in Literary Works

• Narration: Refers to how to relate actions and events performed by the characters in a play.
• Descriptions: Points out the salient features of people, animals, places, objects, and events, rich in words and pictures.
• Dialogue: Plays the conversation of the characters, what they feel and what they think.
• Exposition: Presents, explains, and clarifies the content in an organized and understandable manner.

Elements of the Narrative

• The narrator describes what happens in the text and can be a character or a witness.
  • Protagonist: Presents the facts as if

The Scream by Edvard Munch

About the Artist: Edvard Munch

• Born: December 12, 1863, Løten, Norway.
• Childhood: Marked by profound loss (his mother and later his sister Sophie died of tuberculosis), which profoundly influenced his artistic themes of sickness, insanity, and death.
• Early Career: At 17, he decided to become a painter. He enrolled at Christiania Bohemia, where artists and writers sought to challenge societal hypocrisy and narrow moral and ethical principles.
• Paris (1889): During the Impressionist revolution, Munch wrote his manifesto against Naturalism.
• Later Works: From 1902, his paintings were integrated into a "Mural of Life," which included works like The Kiss, Anguish, and The Scream.
• Health: In 1908, Munch's anxiety reached such a

Principles of Visual Representation

1. Multiple Application: A single form can represent various objects or body parts.
2. Baseline: Characters and objects need a base or fulcrum, mirrored by a skyline.
3. Perpendicularity: Objects rest perpendicularly on their base, even on slanted surfaces.
4. Size Importance: The most important elements are larger than secondary ones.
5. Isolation of Parts: In sets, draw similar elements individually to show their properties (e.g., hand and fingers).
6. Territorial Imperative: Each element has inviolable space, avoiding overlaps. Hats are tangential to the head.
7. Exemplary Manner: Choose the representation that best highlights an object's main qualities, favoring orthogonal projections.
8. Depression: Draw vertical elements (people,

The Theater in the 16th and 17th Centuries

The theater in the sixteenth century laid the groundwork for significant developments. This evolution would become the golden age of theater in the seventeenth century, branching into two main directions: the *Baroque theater* of Shakespeare in England and Lope de Vega and Calderón in Spain, and the *Classical theater* of Corneille and Molière in France.

Shakespeare is notable for his profound exploration of the human soul, expressing its innermost passions. He cultivated the three major dramatic subgenres: dramas, comedies, and tragedies. In his human tragedies, characters become symbols of humanity's great problems, such as love (Romeo and Juliet), indecision (Hamlet), and jealousy (Othello).

French