Ashley Chang, Diana Kim, Justin Park, Jenny Yu P1 t1
Friday, December 9, 2011
Enlightenment Synthesis
As different kinds of guilds were formed during the Medieval Era, the strong bonds between the families were continued through Renaissance onto the next Era, the Enlightenment Era. More and more family alliances were formed for political or social reasons. However, those social connections were begun to be viewed as hypocritical and superficial in the eyes of the intellectuals such as writers, thinkers and artists starting at the Enlightenment Era (1650-1750). Many new ideas from several philosophy thinkers were praised and broadcasted through media such as newspapers. Since press prints become more available to public, the spread of new information occurred more in people’s lives at the time. The intellectuals, instead of coming from an upper class, were mostly middle class men and their writings were more available to the middle class also. To support other Enlightenment thinkers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau who already mastered in music, switched to writing. John Locke’s writings especially influenced people’s thoughts during the Enlightenment Period. John Lock is known as the Father of Liberalism had rights to property and freedom as the main ideas behind his writing. His writings encouraged people to rebel again the old form of government and churches. Before the Enlightenment Period, the Pope, who is the head of all the Catholic Church also controlled the politics. However, during this time of Restoration, enlightenment thinkers’ literary works began to change that; thus the idea of “separation of church and state” came about in this era.
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Asher.p2.t1.Enlightenment Era Response
ReplyDeleteby Brianna Loo, Calvin Chan, Christina Yang, and Jane Lu (Period 2, Team 1)
Overall great response! You guys had a lot of great ideas, but the synthesis could have been strengthened by reorganizing the order of sentences and making the synthesis flow better. It is quite evident that the social criticism you guys are talking about is about family connections, and thus the thesis statement is well-written and easy to follow. However, by switching directly from that idea to media makes it a little bit confusing. We understand the point you guys are trying to get across, but maybe that piece of information should have been saved for after you guys explained which other artists, writers, or philosophers other than Moliere expressed their social criticism of family connections. That being said, having another example (another person) might have strengthened your synthesis even more. Because both examples were about writers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, it sort of limits the validity of the thesis statement since the thesis seems to imply that other philosophy thinkers and artists, not just writers, “viewed [such social connections] as hypocritical and superficial.” For example, another person that could have been mentioned was the artist William Hogarth. Hogarth created a collection of six paintings entitled “Marriage a la mode.” In those paintings, he criticized family connections by satirically criticizing the women and men of the time period who married into wealthy families purely based on monetary gains. Regardless, you guys did a great job in writing and composing your synthesis answer; continue to keep up the good work! :)