The modern world is highly intricate and complex. Advanced technologies bring changes to the way we live and observe the reality around us. But why in this age of innovation and science, is art still regarded as an important part of humanity's development? Well, while science shows us the way ...Read More
The modern world is highly intricate and complex. Advanced technologies bring changes to the way we live and observe the reality around us. But why in this age of innovation and science, is art still regarded as an important part of humanity's development? Well, while science shows us the way to investigate how the universe functions, art is a way to show how we perceive the universe as a human species. Art mirrors the world we live in today, and it is an important part of our development as conscious and social beings. If you want to write works on art and culture essay topics, it is a good idea to study relevant academic papers and essays on the same topic. Examine some samples on art and culture essay topics and develop a clear outline, with an introduction, comprehensive body, and satisfying conclusion.
In Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, standard hierarchical structures are abandoned in a setting of postmodern cultural chaos. The use of fragmented pop culture contributes to many aspects of the book, namely the sense of combined freedom in the search for meaning. Moreover,...
A recurring theme that can be found in Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 is the conception that chaos has a tremendous effect on society. Pynchon engages in a dualistic method of literary technique to engender the realization of the effect that chaos...
Postmodernism
Short Story
The Crying of Lot 49
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America used to be known as the land of opportunity. That was before the wars and the advent of technology. For post-modern authors, modernity and prosperity has turned America into a disappointment. Barthelme’s Snow White and Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 share similar ideas...
Postmodernism
Short Story
Snow White
The Crying of Lot 49
Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, said, “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” Defining one’s personal identity may coincide with this ancient Stoic principle, but what is not mentioned is the human transformation that must take...
Despite the fact that The Crying of Lot 49 is chock-full of the use of methods of communication, the only time when anything is actually communicated is when a few songs are sung by The Paranoids. Any letters mentioned in the novel are void of...
Just before the morning rush hour, she got out of a jitney whose ancient driver ended each day in the red, downtown on Howard Street, began to walk toward the Embarcadero. She knew she looked terrible – knuckles black with eye-liner and mascara from where...
During the modernist era, artists gradually moved away from realism towards themes of illusion, consciousness, and imagination. In the visual arts, realism evolved into cubism and expressionism. This movement is paralleled in literature, as illusions and a feeling of flux replaced the realist themes of...
“There are still the poor, the defeated, the criminal, the desperate, all hanging in there with what must seem a terrible vitality.” Thomas Pynchon, “A Journey into the Mind of Watts” The challenge posed to any reader of “serious” literature is ultimately one of observation,...
Before the telephone was invented, people wrote letters to each other to stay in touch. Soldiers would write letters to their wives and families conveying their love and, even today, people write letters to better communicate. Writing is a way of expressing yourself, a way...
In order to rationalize the south’s peculiar institution of slavery, the southern plantation novel surfaced. It idealized the plantation lifestyle by creating and romanticizing characters that otherwise would be viewed upon as evil by blacks—the oppressed. Life was portrayed as easy and carefree by the...
The Conjure Woman by Charles Chestnutt is a frame narrative, retelling a story within a story and incorporating valuable information about the traditional African fetishism practiced by the slaves against their slave masters. Fetishism or Voodoun provides a source of empowerment and gives the slaves,...
A fetish object possesses a distinct, almost superstitious power, often linked to sexual gratification, desire, and even worship. As noted in the article “Sexualization in the Media,” fetishization is a cultural, psychological, and social technique that magnifies certain items, rendering them larger than life, animate,...
George Bernard Shaw exemplifies values of the “new woman” and “superhero” through the character of Vivie Warren, in the play Mrs. Warren’s Profession, in order to promote individualism and critical thinking amongst females. Even the male characters like Sir George Crofts and Frank Gardener are...
Writing in the Germany of the 1920s, Brecht shattered the then staple notions of dramatic theatre, with his propagation of the Epic theatre. In terms of play righting, his was a move away from the Isben model of the “well made” play; in terms of...
Playwrights, unlike the authors of novels and other forms of literature, employ the use of production elements and stage designs in the development of their works. These additional aspects present within the creation of theatre grant playwrights with the opportunity to support and develop the...
Introduction In Major Barbara (1907), George Bernard Shaw questions the prevailing ethical assumptions and attitudes of Western culture on social engineering and poverty. Like Nietzsche, he calls for the revaluation of values, as the meaning of concepts like “good,” “evil,” and “truth,” with no eternal,...
The Mahabharata is one of the two great Indian epics, the other being the Ramayana. Composed in Sanskrit, it embodies the quintessential definition of the word epic with length of roughly 90,000 verses and a clearly defined hero upon whom his tribe depends. The hero...
Most novelists do not kill off half of the characters in their book to prove a point, but this one does. The tragic, bloody deaths in the novel only enforce the fact that the West was wild and could not be conquered by any one...
In Satire VI and In Catilinam I and II, Juvenal and Cicero both make attacks on their enemies’ personal conduct to construct a Roman identity while appealing to “Roman values.” Their projects are indeed very similar; both raise questions of class, expressing fear at the...