The print “Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre” by Jacques Callot is a telling historical piece, which both takes the viewer on a journey through France in the 1630’s and makes a bold controversial stance against the Thirty Years’ war.
“Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre” illustrates an army of French soldiers named the Cardinal Richelieu hanging civilians in the town of Lorraine before overtaking it and annexing it to the French. In the print, the soldiers loot a farmhouse and torture regular common people. This print shows the French soldiers as aggressors causing harm to the innocent civilians, which plays in part with Callot’s anti-war sentiment for the casual viewer. In addition, Callot makes an effort to represent the diverse individuals that
…show more content…
live in Lorraine rather than just the homogeneous wealthy population in which Callot grew up. Among the individuals depicted in the print are beggars, nobles, farmers, religious figures, and, soldiers. This print is part of a larger series created by Jacques Callot. The series of prints as a whole emphasize Callot’s strong stance against war and for the most part illustrate soldiers either causing harm to civilians or creating distress in general. Callot places soldiers in this negative light to express his fervor against war and aggression towards civilian life. Moreover, many of the prints in Callots’ series include wide panoramic views, with many tiny figures. Callot creates tiny figures; especially tiny soldiers in part to illustrate that soldiers and war are small and unimportant in the large scheme of things. Interestingly, Callot includes a six-line verse caption below each print in the series.
This caption is intriguing not only for its’ uniqueness, but also because it is written by famous print-collector Michel de Marolles. Marolles, who clearly shares Callot’s anti-war sentiment, includes six-line rhyming couplets that both summarize the print and provide analysis on the background and events of the print. In “Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre,” the caption translation reads, “Finally these infamous and abandoned thieves, hanging from this tree like wretched fruit, show that crime (horrible and black species) is itself the instrument of shame and vengeance, and that it is the fate of corrupt men to experience the justice of heaven sooner or later.” Marolles uses sarcasm and detailed description in this caption to color the Thirty Years’ War as an act of evil. It is evident that Marolles and Callot share similar thoughts on the atrocities of …show more content…
war. Jacques Callot is quite an interesting character himself.
Callot lived from 1952 until 1635, during which he lived a successful career creating thematic works of art. In fact, Callot was appointed to the Lorraine court under the patronage of Duke Henri II. As a result, Callot received contracts from religious hierarchy and created art with religious figures in mind. In addition to receiving contracts from religious hierarchy, Callot also sold prints to the general public, which gave him more exposure and opened up his work for criticism from the masses. Interestingly, Callot was born into a family of nobility, which is unexpected given Callot’s strong anti-government sentiment. Callot’s hometown of Nancy, France included many prominent individuals who dabbled in the arts, theater, music, as well as many more of the finer things in life. With this in mind, it is especially intriguing that Callot was so critical of the government and the army of France in the 1630’s who, for the most part, made decisions with the wealthy and elite classes in
mind. Callot created this print with a échoppe, which allowed him to engrave detailed lines and create in-depth and meticulous figures. This etching also includes tiny acid markings in order to create definite light areas throughout the print. Callot perfected the use of light in this print to show the soldiers and the civilians in different lights. For example, there is an evident contrast between the soldiers, who are represented in dark light as evil and the civilians who are shown in a brighter light and who appear as more innocent figures. Additionally, Callot makes an effort to etch the tiny soldiers in the background to make his point that soldiers and wars are small and unimportant in the large scheme of things. The viewer can barely make the figures hanging from the tree out to be human beings. Callot intentionally chose to dehumanize the people of Lorraine who are bombarded by what Callot sees as the cruel and heartless French soldiers. It almost appears as though the figures hanging from the tree are fruit and not even humans in the way that Callot portrays the print. This is a testament to the fact that Callot sees the French soldiers as robbing the people of Lorraine of their humanity and their homes and leaving them as degraded figures rather than parents, brothers, sisters, and community members. Callot’s etching is both aesthetically pleasing and rather symbolic. Callot successfully uses this print to speak out against the horrors of war, which was a very unpopular thing to do in 1630’s France, especially for someone of Callot’s caliber and elite status.
The Return of Martin Guerre, written by Natalie Zemon Davis, is the tale of a court case that takes place in sixteenth century France. Martin Guerre is a peasant who deserted his wife and family for many years. While Martin Guerre is gone, a man named Arnaud du Tilh arrives at Martin’s village and claims to be Martin Guerre. Bertrande, who is Guerre’s wife, Guerre’s sisters, and many of the villagers, accepts the imposter. After almost three years of being happily married, Bertrande takes the fraud to court under pressure of Pierre Guerre, her stepfather and Guerre’s brother. Arnaud du Tilh is almost declared innocent, but the real Martin Guerre appears in the courthouse. Throughout this tale, many factors of the peasant life are highlighted. The author gives a very effective and detailed insight to a peasant’s life during the time of Martin Guerre. Davis does a successful job of portraying the peasant lifestyle in sixteenth century France by accentuating the social, cultural, and judicial factors of everyday peasant life.
The Wife of Martin Guerre is a novel that takes us through the life of Bertrande de Rols, wife of Martin Guerre and her story of the life she lived with and without Martin in sixteenth century France. This novel shares many reason for why she pursued the alleged impostor that was within her home impersonating her husband; such as, women not having a voice within the household, her religious values and beliefs, her choice to live a life of truth and honour over happiness and comfort, through the doubts of her family that she had to push against and trusting her better judgment. Bertrande proved to herself and the audience of readers of this novel why even within their time period then it was still right for her to do so in pursing the impostor.
To summarize the book into a few paragraphs doesn't due it the justice it deserves. The beginning details of the French and Ind...
The Young People of Today, a series of opinion polls conducted among young educated Frenchmen by Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde find romantic sentiments for war much like von Treitschke. The two authors interviewed a professor who tried to explain that there were in fact unjust wars, however, according to the professor, “the class obviously did not follow me; they rejected that distinction” (Massis and de Tarde 224). Massis and de Tarde go on to write about the many young men who left their high studies to pursue lives as soldiers because for them “it is not enough, for them to learn history: they are making it” (Massis and de Tarde 224).
Jünger’s opening chapter recalls the enthusiastic first thoughts on entering the war, upon arrival in Champagne, “Grown up in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary. We were enraptured by war .” Though the illusion was soon dispelled, throughout the novel Jünger did not seem to be phased by the reality of his mission. When Jünger described reaching Orainville, he wrote, “We saw only a few, ragged, shy civilians; everywhere eels soldiers in worn tattered tunics, with faces weather-beaten and often with a heavy growth of beard, strolling along at a slow pace, or standing in little clusters in doorways, watching our arrival with ribald remarks .” This is Jünger’s first of a pattern of acc...
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
The true beauty that war can hold despite its cruel nature is revealed in the poetry written later in the war. Guilaume Apollinaire’s poem “Gala” compares the burst of “two star shells” to a pink rose (5). The rose metaphor carries throughout the poem.
Vivid imagery is one way with which writers protest war. Crane uses imagery to glorify, and shortly thereafter demean and undercut war, through the use of imagery, by placing positive and negative images of war close to eachother. “Blazing flag of the regiment,” and “the great battle God,” are placed before “A field where a thousand corpses lie.” (A) These lines’ purposes are to put images into the reader’s head, of how great war may appear, and then displaying that there are too many casualties involved with it. In Dulce Et Decorum Est, a man is described dyin...
Nardo, Don. A. The French Revolution. San Diego, California: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1999. Print.
The Poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” attempts to make war seem as repulsive as possible. The author’s goal is to discourage people from joining the war or any future conflicts by shattering the romantic image people have of the fighting. The setting of this poem helps
Mr. Darnton’s book The Great Cat Massacre, reexamines French culture during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries with the eyes of the peasant’s. Robert Darnton looks at the writings of the peasant’s, and traces them to their origins and compares them to other texts of similar origins and texts, to create credible accounts or views of particular topics of the people during the era. In this review you’re going to see a summary of the book, describing the various subjects of this book. After that I will comment on Mr. Darnton’s on some topics like his organization, writing style, and fairness to his subject material, then discuss the historical importance of the topics that Robert Darnton mentions in his book and give you my personal opinion of the book itself. Next I will discuss with you a battery of topics like why I chose the book, is the book controversial, what was the authors purpose for writing the book, what were some of the major themes, who or what Darnton’s sources were?
Famous politician and activist, Eleanor Roosevelt, once said, “All wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished”. This criticism can easily align with Voltaire’s own anti-war sentiment as illustrated in his famous novel, Candide. Voltaire took advantage of his literary capabilities in order to present to the world a novel that attempts to not only dismantle social norms, but also subvert humanity’s common - and corrupt - way of thinking about war. More specifically, being personally influenced by the 18th century Seven Year’s War, Voltaire turned away from any positive opinions on war and instead, developed intense opposition toward the armed conflict so prevalent within our society. With this anti-war
The movie The Return of Martin Guerre provides many insights into the life of people during the sixteenth century. The movie is about a man who steals the identity of another peasant. The story discuses themes of self-identity, a new idea at the time the movie takes place. The people in the movie are portrayed as stereotypical medieval peasants, who seem to know nothing. Sixteenth century France is depicted as a stereotypical medial world that is experiencing the new ideas of that time period.
The Three Musketeers (originally published in serial form in the newspaper Le Siècle between March and July 1844) written by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet, examines the first half of the French seventeenth century. For Dumas, it wasn’t a matter of glorifying history, but of popularizing it. Therefore, Dumas institutionalized the past, yet he presented a fictive poetic awakening of the people, who figure in these historical events, such as Louis XIII of France and Cardinal Richelieu.
Dowd, David L.. “Art as National Propaganda in the French Revolution”. Public Opinion Quarterly, 1951. Web. 5th May 2013.