Mar 28, 2024  
2016-2017 Catalogue 
    
2016-2017 Catalogue [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

CMLT 24801 - the Perils of Romanticism: Nineteenth Century European Literature


This course will examine some of the major issues that arose from European Romanticism (German, French, English and Russian) - the rebellion against rationalism, new notions of selfhood and individuality, the rejection of traditional morality and models of authority, and the longing for a reintegration with nature. We will study these questions in the works of major nineteenth-century authors, and we will consider the commentaries of some twentieth-century artists, philosophers and critics on this period. The goal will be to understand how European writers engaged in a complex cross-cultural intellectual dialogue not simply on a discursive level but through the use of symbolic, dramatic and formal paradigms. Authors include Goethe, Hoffman, Shelley, Flaubert, Maupassant, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Thomas Mann. Supplementary selections of philosophy will be provided - from Rousseau and Schlegel to Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt.