The purpose of this tour is to encourage students to make connections between the literary culture we are studying in the course and the material culture that those societies produced. By requiring students to go outside of the textbook and the classroom, the cultural site visit report (either with Dr. Long and the rest of the class or on one's own with these notes) is intended to foster in students an appreciation of all the forms of cultural production that occur alongside literature.
Students who need directions should consult the Chrysler Museum Web site. Students should read carefully the explanatory signs that are posted beside exhibits and individual works.
Entering the main front door (or the side door adjacent to the parking lot for students with disabilities), students will pay at the admissions desk. An information desk in the Huber Court is staffed by volunteers and has useful maps.
The Italian Renaissance Revival style of the court and of the entire museum testifies to the enduring prestige of Greco-Roman culture as the epitome of human achievement.
Walking to the end of the Huber Court under the arch that forms the main staircase, students should pass into the Greco-Roman Gallery.
The Classical world of the Greeks and Romans imagined the human person as the center of the universe. As you glance around at carvings and sculpture, note the glorification of the human form (naked or draped, resting or in action). Figures of gods (like the small bronzes or the stone herm) are anthropomorphic (i.e. in human form). In the Greek and Roman epic literature we have read, we have seen very anthropomorphic gods intervening in human affairs, while the human figures and their concerns are central to the action. Similarly, Greek drama was conscious of the gods role in human affairs, but their central focus was human action.
The Standing Female Figure, Male Torso, and Torso of a Man demonstrate the Greco-Roman celebration of physical beauty and excellence.
The Black Figure Amphora represents anthropomorphic gods and celebrates both reason (Apollo) and passion (Dionysus). Notice how a practical household object is elaborately decorated. On the reverse, the Athenean hero Theseus overcomes the bestial Minotaur.
Pass from this gallery into the Egyptian Gallery.
Pass from this gallery into the Asian/Oriental Gallery.
Walk behind the costume display.
Go directly behind you into the last gallery of this sequence.
Examine the pottery from the Mayan world, whose epic The Popul Vuh we will read later in the course.
Pass out of this gallery, through the Oriental Gallery, back into the Egyptian. Turn left into the African Gallery.
African art is not the Chrysler Museum's strong suit and its descriptions are limited. Pay particular attention at the back wall of the gallery to the items from Dogon Tribe of Mali, the East African empire whose Epic of Son Jara (or Sundiata) we will read. These are ritual objects related to fertility and death rituals.
Pass out of the African Gallery into the Greco-Roman Gallery and across into the Indian/Islamic Gallery.
Once again, we are not in the Chrysler Museum's strongest collection; indeed, placing Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist art together seems an odd juxtaposition of the Middle East and South Asia.
Hindu divinity appears in a variety of material manifestations or avatars, such as those depicted here: Vishnu, Chamunda or Kali, Narayana, Laksmi, Surya. In our course we will read the Bhagavad-Gita, in which Krishna, one of the avatars or manifestations of Vishnu, counsels the epic hero Arjuna at the edge of a battlefield and reveals himself in his terrible multiplicity. Buddhism is a later development from Hinduism, when the Hindu prince Gautama Buddha sought enlightenment and escape from the endless cycle of rebirth; in Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a completely enlightened person who has remained in this world in order to lead others to enlightenment, a type of the spiritual hero.
The Koran Page (Arabic manuscript) employs Arabic calligraphy to copy the Islamic sacred scripture. Although we will not be reading the Q'uran but a later narrative, Ibn Ishaq's Life of the Prophet, this page may give you an impression of the elegance and refinement of classical Arabic and Islamic cultures.
Re-enter the Huber Court and ascend the main staircase. (An elevator is also available that will bring you into the first medieval gallery, where the tour will continue.) Entering the second-floor landing, turn right into the first medieval gallery.
Medieval Europe emerged on the ruins of Classical Greco-Roman culture. The dominance of the Roman Catholic Church ensured the continuation of education and the reproduction of ancient texts.
We are now solidly in the European Renaissance, a time of the rebirth of Greco-Roman humanistic ideals. Though there are still paintings with religious themes, not two shifts: a turn toward Classical mythic themes and a turn toward individual portraiture. The sculptures in this gallery, for example, come from Greco-Roman mythology.
Our course ends with the 17th century. In the next semester, Survey of World Literature II will examine modernity from the late 17th century with the rise of empiricism and science in the Age of Reason.