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With the expectant horror of an imminent war hanging in the air, the early 20th century of volatile Europe "was a period of ambivalence" (Adams, 2006, p. 591), as it was so described in the textbook Exploring the Humanities. Artists and intellectuals who are traditionally sensitive and perceptive to changes in social atmosphere and dynamics certainly sensed the anxiety and uncertainty in people about the world they were in and what the world would then become. Virginia Woolf made an observation that declares the change in how people of that time think of and behave to the world around them, "...human nature [undergoes] a fundamental change on or about December 1910", according to EDSITEment's review of "The Modernist Revolution: Make it New" by Academy of American Poets. Some may think Virginia Woolf's statement is a unique testimony that witnesses the change in human nature while in fact, changes in human nature have been periodically played out through out human history, ironically not by design but by default. It is a way of human kind rediscovering and reinventing itself to, in a metaphysical sense, explore and understand its existence and the purpose of existence through arts, music, literature, and even science.

The repeated events usually persist a pattern and common ingredients which includes imposition of values, dissonance, and a catalyst. One such period in history in which the change took place was the time during the relentless onslaught of Black Death that disrupted social order in 14th century and that leading up to the dazzling Renaissance when unprecedented artistic achievements combusted. The difference between the arts produced before Black Death and after is day and night. The artistic leap from one era to the next was almost unimaginable. If arts are the expressions of souls, feelings and thoughts, then it's apparent that "something fundamental in human nature" changed during that period for such dramatic artistic transformation. Prior to Black Death, individual and social life were primarily centered around religion and the Church. Christianity and spirituality were the sole values to follow, and this was supported by the fact that artworks predated the plague collectively contained only religious theme. Prescriptive pursuit of spirituality imposed on individuals and the society demanded by the Church invariably stifled the creative and artistic aspect of humanities. That suppressed energy was waiting to come out and ready to roll when the plague hit and wiped out a large population of Europe, as a result there created a new social order that germanized secularization. There was a sense of liberation and exhilaration as humankind for the first time in a long long time explored beauty and joy outside religion, in particular the beauty of nature. Artist, writers and song writers explored and expressed such beauty in the form of art, music and literature. It was this change that led to the development of Humanism and Naturalism with the revival of Classical arts during Renaissance when explosive accomplishments in paintings, sculptures, architecture and literature took place. Human kind has rediscovered itself, and found new confidence in the things that it's capable of doing and doing it beautifully.

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