Classical Art And Literature example essay topic

Classical Style (art and literature), a descriptive term for art and literature of ancient Greece or Rome, or similar in style or quality. Classic, Classical, and Classicism are terms describing the style, historical period, or quality of a work of literature, art, or music. The terms were originally associated with the artistic achievements of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. However, they have come to have much broader meanings and applications.

Classic is a term used primarily to denote and characterize a type and style or period of creative work. In a strict sense, a classic is any ancient Greek or Roman literary work of the highest quality, such as the works of the Roman poet Virgil or the Greek dramatist Sophocles. In a broad sense, the term classic is applied to any work accepted either as a model of excellence or as a creation of enduring cultural relevance and value. Classical, in the strictest sense, is a term used to characterize the art, literature, and aesthetics created by the ancient Greeks and Romans. In its wider sense, the term classical is applied to any style or period of creative work distinguished by qualities that are mainly suggestive of, or derived from, classical Greek or Roman art, literature, and aesthetics.

Chief among these qualities are a sense of conscious restraint in the handling of themes and a sense of rational ordering and proportioning of forms. In architecture the classical orders are the three Greek orders-the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian-and the two Roman additions to them-the Composite and the Tuscan (see Orders of Architecture). In ancient Greece the classical era ran from 500 to 320 BC, and in ancient Rome the Golden Age lasted from c. 70 BC to AD 18.

French literature in the second half of the 17th century is also considered classical, as is English literature of the period 1660-1714. Classicism describes the imitation or use primarily of the style and aesthetic principles of ancient Greece and Roman classical art and literature, notably harmony, clarity, restraint, and idealism. The most important periods during which Classicism was the prevailing movement in Western thought and creative art were the Renaissance, when Cicero's prose was widely imitated in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, known as the period of Enlightenment, during which, in France particularly, a rich literary classicism developed, represented in the works of the writers Pierre Corneille and Jean-Baptiste Racine, and of the philosophers Ren'e Descartes and Blaise Pascal. Other Restoration and Enlightenment figures associated with the Classicism of the period are the English authors John Dryden and Alexander Pope, and the German writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Gott hold Ephraim Lessing. The term Neo-Classicism is often used to refer to works inspired by the arts of classical antiquity but produced at a later date.