“Self Fashioning” was one of the harder pieces of text for me to tackle, saving the best for last. The Renaissance was a unique time for Europe because of the changing time and artistics styles, so the fashion and look of the powerful had to change as a result. Powerful people over any time period since a social hierarchy began to be developed tended to have a unified look to show the superiority of the upper class compared to the rest. Greenblatt’s concept of self fashion exemplifies the idea of a single class wanting to look a specific way, but focusing on the Renaissance the nobles needed to receive a wide range of education and artistic understanding to be a well rounded person overall. Again, authority or another power at play can be seen creating a uniform type of people. Individuality seemed to only appear under creatives who were breaking new ground in their forms of art, so they did stand out amongst the rest of the flock following the same guidelines to dress fancy and act ladylike. Even Greenblatt said that most people who were powerful still submitted to a higher authority because they felt a calling to whether it be a secular king or the teachings of the bible. Acting as an individual keeps reappearing as a common theme among all the reading sections, but I find it most interesting here as falling into the background of trends dictated by one source of power has been around since the time of the Renaissance. Criticism of art and uniform judgement are no new forms of human nature to modern times. My interpretation may be more off than usual on this passage since I struggled with grasping the ideas, but I think it sets an interesting groundwork in the early time periods for a trend of authority to come in every century after.
My journal connects notes on the authoritarian control of self fashioning in the time period, seemingly locked in this endless loop of new authority always coming into power no matter if an alien removes it. There seems to be a removal of individual thought because of this authority, veering away from my notes in the previous journals about how individuality is something to strive for. Throughout my notes, I repeatedly talked about how authors in the time of the Renaissance lived through struggles and triumphs, whether it be progression in the culture at the time or religious influence over the art. They took all the good and the bad and seemed to use it as inspiration for all their works of art at the time. From what I’m trying to gather from this complex piece is that we will try and have our voices stand out in our writing. Unlike the uniformity of the Renaissance self fashioning period, our opinions on art and approach will try and vary to build off each others differing points of view instead of trying to come together and all just agree. With no differing opinions and getting rid of individual thought, a class would not be able to grow as a whole.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorRead more about me on the About Page! Archives
March 2020
Categories |