![]() Cicero was a strong supporter of the Roman Republic during a time when the republic was unraveling into a series of dictatorships. These feats were impressive for a man who was not part of the nobility and, therefore, lacking the familial influence that was so integral to Roman governance. ![]() Cicero's career took off when he returned to Rome: He was a successful lawyer, was known as the best orator in the republic, and he quickly ascended through the political hierarchy, often taking a position at the youngest age allowed by law. ![]() Cicero spent time abroad to avoid retaliation following his win of a controversial court case in 79 BC While in Athens, Greece, he conversed on Platonian philosophy and refined his oratorical style. As a young man, Cicero also became interested in philosophy, first studying Platonian philosophy and then Stoicism, an austere philosophy adhered to by some Romans. His extraordinary intellect was recognized while he was a student, and Cicero was sent to Rome to study law under the famous Quintus Mucius Scaevola. REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS Cicero (106 BC-43 BC)Ĭicero was born January 3, 106 BC to a wealthy family living south of Rome. Eliot, for example, and in the use of mythology in various works, an instance of which is Eugene O'Neill's 1931 trilogy, Mourning Becomes Electra, which is based on the Oresteia of Aeschylus. In all, the ancients believed that art was a vehicle for communicating the reason and intelligence that permeate the world and human affairs when people act rationally and according to moral precept.Ĭlassicism in the twentieth century can be seen in the literary works and critical theory of T. Following these restrictions would produce a pleasingly cohesive drama. ![]() Perhaps basing his theory of drama on Sophocles's plays, Aristotle asserted that the action of a place must occur within 24 hours, with all the events taking place in one location, and each event causing the next event. In his Poetics, for example, Aristotle stressed the unities of time, place, and action. Classicism asserts the importance of wholeness and unity the work of art coheres without extraneous elements or open-ended conclusions.īoth ancient Greek and ancient Roman writers stressed restraint and restricted scope, reason reflected in theme and structure, and a unity of purpose and design. It aspires to formal precision, affirms order, and eschews ambiguity, flights of imagination, or lack of resolution. ![]() In its varying formulations Classicism affirms the superiority of balance and rationality over impulse and emotion. Historically, the periods most associated with Classicism are the fifth and fourth centuries BC in Greece with writers such as Aristotle and Sophocles the first century BC and first century AD in Rome with writers such as Cicero and Vergil in late seventeenth-century French drama and in the eighteenth century, especially in France, during a period called the Enlightenment, with such writers as Voltaire and Condorcet. Classicism both as an art style and as the first theory of art was defined by the ancient Greeks, emulated by the Romans, and then continued to appear in various forms across the centuries. ![]()
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