• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.8
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• pp.33-58
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• 2009

This paper examines four genre paintings on the subject of child education by Jean-Baptiste-Sim${\'{e}}$on Chardin(1699-1779). The Governess, The Diligent Mother, Saying Grace, and The Morning Toilette garnered critical attention after they were exhibited in the Salon from 1739 to 1741. After the exhibition, the paintings were made into prints and frequently sold to members of the bourgeois class in Paris. The iconographical details of Chardin's genre paintings have, thus far, been compared to Dutch genre pictures of the seventeenth century. Further, most studies conducted on Chardin's paintings focus on formal analysis rather than the historical and social contexts. Through attempting social-contextual readings of Chardin's educational series, this paper argues that the significance of Chardin's painting series of child education lies in his representation of the ideal French bourgeois family and the standard of early childhood education in the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment period. In each of the four child education paintings, Chardin depicted a mother with children in a domestic space. Even though this theme derives from traditional Dutch genre paintings in the seventeenth century, the visual motifs, the pictorial atmosphere and the painting techniques of Chardin all project the social culture of eighteenth century France. Each painting in the child education series exemplifies respectively the attire of a French gentlemen, the social view on womanhood and the education of girls, newly established table manners, and the dressing up culture in a 'toilette' in eighteenth century France. Distinct from other educational scenes in previous genre paintings, Chardin accentuated the naive and innocent characteristics of a child and exemplified the mother's warmth toward that child in her tender facial expressions and gesturing. These kinds of expressions illustrate the newly structured standard of education in the French Enlightenment period. Whereas medieval people viewed children as immature and useless, people in the eighteenth century began to recognize children for their more positive features. They compared children to a blank piece of paper (tabula rasa), which signified children's innocence, and suggested that children possess neither good nor bad virtues. This positive perspective on children slowly transformed the pedagogical methods. Teaching manuals instructed governesses and mothers to respect each child's personality rather than be strict and harsh to them. Children were also allotted more playtimes, which explains the display of various toys in the backgrounds of Chardin's series of four paintings. Concurrently, the interior, where this exemplary education was executed, alludes to the virtue of the bourgeois's moderate and thrifty daily life in eighteenth century France. While other contemporary painters preferred to depict the extravagant living space of a French bourgeoisie, Chardin portrayed a rather modest and cozy home interior. In contrast to the highly decorated living space of aristocrats, he presented the realistic, humble domestic space of a bourgeois, filled with modern household objects. In addition, the mother is exceptionally clad in working clothes instead of fashionable dresses of the moment. Fit to take care of household affairs and children, the mother represents the ideal virtues of a bourgeois family. It can be concluded that the four genre paintings of child education by Chardin articulate the new standards of juvenile education in eighteenth century France as well as the highly recognized social virtues between French bourgeois families. Thus, Chardin's series of child education would have functioned as a demonstration of the ideal living standards of the bourgeois class and their emphasis on early childhood education in the French Enlightenment period.

• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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• no.49
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• pp.49-71
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• 2013

Melodrama emerged as a form of the moral in the early modern age. As an approach 'the moral' not only means that rewarding virtue and punishing vice, but also refer to a principle of spiritual life and a way of life. -Melodrama theatricalizes a new vision of human life and society through a new type of the virtuous protagonist and sentiment/-ality. -This allows melodrama to be a dominant cultural form in this modern age, beyond the borders of the theater, mass-media, and literature. Virtue and sentiment/-ality are the core elements of melodrama, which differentiate it from tragedy and comedy especially in the structure and effect of the drama. Actually virtue and sentiment/-ality have been a main target of criticism. Virtue has been regarded as a trite quality of the stereotypical protagonist, and sentiment/-ality as a banal emotion which paralyzes an audience's recognition of reality. -However, this thesis regards both virtue and sentiment/-ality as vehicles for showing and sharing the morals of the modern age. First, the virtues of the protagonist included the general and universal ones of the bourgeois -at that times, the bourgeois represented themselves as a human being- such as the responsibility and obedience of a father, a mother, a wife, a husband, a daughter and a son. They also included the professional ethics such as courage, honesty, and justice and so on. The fall or salvation of the protagonist is largely determined by his/her private individual virtue. Second, sentiment/ality is a theatrical device that makes the audience internalize the protagonist's virtue. The protagonist expresses his/her universal virtue sentimentally, and the audience also expresses their virtue by sympathizing with the protagonist's virtue sentimentally. However, the melodramatic protagonist as an individual, is not connected with society, but remains isolated. As a result, s/he has no influence on the society, where s/he can only ends her/his play alone with a happy-ending. S/he is happy alone, or at best happy with his/her own family. On the contrary to this, tragic protagonist usually fixes social disorder through his/her fall. In that sense, we can say that melodrama presents only the half of the human life.