Civilized Savagery

The Island of Dr. Moreau explores the boundary between civilization and savagery, imagining brutal medical procedures capable of transforming beasts into men. Like the best science fiction, the novel functions as social commentary in addition to being a thought experiment about science’s philosophical consequences.

Reading:
H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau

Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:

1. Point to a moment when the novel comments on the ideology and practices of the British Empire.
2. Comment on the significance of a key event or detail from the opening chapter for the novel’s larger themes.
3. Comment on the role of pain in transforming beasts into men, as described by Moreau in Chapter XIV.

The Painter and the Camera

In The Annotated Mona Lisa, Carol Strickland positions her chapter on the French Impressionists immediately after a section in early photography. While she doesn’t discuss the influence of photography on the Impressionists in particular, several recent museum exhibits have done just that, arguing for “the crucial role of early photography in inspiring [not only] Impressionist iconography, but also, and more emphatically, Impressionist style and particularly its strategies of asymmetry, cropping and the blurring of motion” (source).

Reading:

• Strickland, pp 92-96, 99-103, 106, 108.
• Elena Martinique, “How Did Photography Influence The Impressionists?” (link).

Viewing 1, some representative Impressionists:

• Édouard Manet, Olympia (1863)
• Édouard Manet, Un bar aux Folies Bergère (1882)
• Edgar Degas, The Dance Class (1874)
• Mary Cassatt, Young Mother Sewing (1893)

Viewing 2, a close study of Claude Monet’s Houses of Parliament (1899-1904):

Monet created this exquisite series during a series of visits to London. Fascinated with the city’s fog and other atmospherics, he positioned himself across the river, in front of St. Thomas’ Hospital. The paintings were begun on site, then completed at his home in Giverny with the aid of photographs. A 2006 study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society showed that the paintings are sufficiently accurate as to provide a useful empirical record of London’s fogs—a phenomenon caused by urban pollution and consigned to history following the passage of environmental legislation in 1956 (source).

Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:

1. Point to a stylistic or thematic pattern you see in some or all of these paintings.
2. Point to a striking detail in one particular painting.
3. Point to a painting that strikes you as betraying the influence of photography’s “way of seeing.”