Alain De Botton Identity

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An individual's identity is significantly transformed through their moral connections established with landscapes by travel and is further developed by experiencing a diversity of landscapes encompassing sublime and aesthetic attributes. Alain de Botton’s 2002 multimodal, postmodern novel explores the development of identity by remembered or real landscapes perceived through art and poetry. This is furthermore presented in De Botton explores both positive and negative impacts of representations of sublime landscapes and their ability to encompass individuals sentiments and posses transformative powers upon individuals to transform psychological dispositions. The impact of diverse landscapes is explored throughout the personification of the detrimental physiological effects cites enforce onto individuals ‘fostering a family of life-destroying emotions’. However this is …show more content…

The expression of the malleability of our identities according to our surroundings is also expressed within individuals interactions with sublime landscapes. the impact of sublimity is seen in ‘We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains’ utilising personification expression that greater forces such as sublime landscape can have a profound impact on individuals identify by enforcing dominion of a God like form.

Art prompts an aesthetic and transformative response to landscapes, moulding an individual's identity to resonate with varying landscapes aspects shown through the representation of Vincent Van Gogh’s impressionist art and Edward Hopper realist art. De botton's changing perception of olive trees

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