Sallee-O’Toole-Sheinfeld
Humanities
Seminar Discussion Topics: Semester One
Directions: Type or write detailed notes on the following three topics. The first topic will help
you to prepare for the exam. Your choice of one of the second two topics will be the basis for
your exam essay. We will give more detailed instructions about developing the exam essay after
the seminar has taken place. The notes will be checked on the day of the seminar and
collected with the exam essay.
Prompt #1 – The Baroque Era and its Characteristics
This prompt is intended to help us review and consolidate what we’ve learned about the Baroque
era and Baroque style. We have mentioned five terms that help to characterize the Baroque, but
have not yet applied these terms consistently or thoroughly. For this part of our discussion and
review, prepare as follows:
Choose two of the five terms characterizing the Baroque:
Cosmic Implications
Emotional Intensity
Complexity
Dramatic Tension
Ornamentation
Apply each of those two terms to two works of literature, music, or art. For each of your two
discussions (applying one of these terms), you should be applying the term to two works in two
different areas: i.e., using both a music and a literature example, or both an art and a music
example, or both a literature and an art example. Furthermore, we’d like each of you to make
sure to “cover” all three arts with your two discussions. For example, if you choose a work of
visual art and a work of literature to discuss as exemplars of “complexity,” then when you discuss
your other characteristic (let’s say, “dramatic tension”), you should be sure to work with a music
exemplar (as well as with one from either literature or visual art).
We encourage you to try to apply other concepts and terms that we’ve been discussing, and to
explore how the five Baroque characteristics relate to those other concepts. For example, within
visual art, we’ve looked at Wollflin’s five contrasts between Renaissance and Baroque style.
How do the qualities he associates with Baroque – painterliness, open form, unclearness,
recession, multiplicity -- correspond and relate to the five Baroque characteristics we’re using to
discuss the Baroque in general, across all of the arts? Similarly, review some of the key
innovations and forms associated with the Baroque in music and look at how they relate to these
more general Baroque characteristics.
Prompt #2: Compare and contrast from different periods
Choose two works from different periods (Medieval, Renaissance, or Baroque) and analyze their
similarities and differences in some detail—note form is fine. In the case of literature, it is a good
idea to incorporate some quotations. (Recall that Hamlet can be considered as either a
Renaissance or Baroque work.) In the course of your analytic notes, be sure to include the ways
in which each work reflects the characteristics of its period, remembering that a single work
rarely reflects all characteristics and that the exceptions often prove the rule. We believe this
comparison-contrast will work most readily within the same area (literature, visual art or music)
but you may cross disciplines if it makes sense to you to do so. For the purposes of this
question, please do not go back to works in the Foundations unit since they were drawn
from all different periods.
Prompt #3 – Re-imagining a Work
Try to re-imagine a work (literary, visual, or musical) that was created in one era into another era.
(Make sure that the Baroque era is one of your eras. That is, you should be “translating” a work
either into or out of the Baroque.) This may be a very difficult task, so keep the word “try” in
mind! If you run into problems, then describe and analyze those problems: What might be the
obstacles to making this translation or adaptation of a work from one era into another? One can
learn a great deal from even “failed” attempts, by looking carefully at the obstacles that arise
along the way. Variant: Try to reimagine a work from one of the arts, from the Baroque era,
through the lens of another of the arts, to perhaps "translate" a work of literature into music, or
from music into art, and so on.