Top Ten Assignment

This is my top ten list of what would be the best examples from each of the following categories: art, music, architecture, philosophy, and literature from the Enlightenment period. Each item should be ranked individually, and not within its category.  I’ve provided a brief rationale of approximately 50 words for the ranking given to each example. In my writing I consider how well the example I have chosen reflects the developments in world events and cultural patterns.

Music:

        Music has the highest rank out of all the categories because it plays a big part in my life.  Romantic Age people used music to express their feelings intensely.  Emotional expression was the focus of all the arts of the Romantic Movement.  The Enlightenment Period it was an intellectual movement relating reason to issues of emotions, politics, and social relations.

Art:

        In my opinion, Art works right along with music.  This is the reason why I chose it to be second pertinent.  In the Romantic Age romantic artists hoped to inspire an emotional response in those who viewed their art; but instead of seeking to inspire faith as their predecessors had, most sought to evoke a nostalgic yearning for rural, pastoral life, the stirrings of life’s mysteries, and a sense of the power and grandeur of nature. In the Enlightenment Period, enlightenment ideas on art and the creative process were deeply influenced by the contemporary veneration for reason, empiricism and the classics.

Literature:

        I ranked this the third because literature fuels intuition, imagination and individualism.  In the Romantic age, the American Romantic movement challenged the very rational thinking that we saw in the Age of Reason during the Revolutionary War. This period produced fewer instructional texts and more stories, novels, and poetry.