1/17/13- The Semester Begins!

Welcome to my blog about the History of Theatre! This is the second half of the history lesson, where I'll be posting and researching the topics and lessons I've learned each class day. Hope you learn something- there's a lot of interesting things to learn from this class!   -Travis

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Today we begin by taking a look at the Romantic Revolution. The philosophy of it was that the most fundamental one in art is your concept of the world based on:

• order (theistic- divine plan; atheistic- natural principles/patterns)
• chaos (no explanation for anything)

Neoclassicism & Classicism were based on the philosophy of the ordered universe. There was a phrase of "Sturm und drang", which literally translates to "storm & stress", or- "chaos". This was the basis of Idealism vs. Realism in the early 1800's.

Next, we took a look at Hegel:

Hegel

• German philosopher
• dialectic: always find a middle option between two opposing forces/viewpoints
• (pendular viewpoint)
• Thesis
• Antithesis
• Synthesis (in between)
• becomes Thesis again

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Today was the first lesson from the History of Theatre II Semester. Whereas the previous semester left off with the history of French Neoclassicism and 18th Century Theatre, this first unit will take us from The Romantic Revolution through the beginnings of Realism. This first lesson began a shift in philosophy between Neoclassicism and Classicism towards Romanticism. The beginning of the above paradigm shift began with the German philosopher Hegel, who believed in the dialectic approach to describe the shift.