GERM286 - Irony and Imagination: Romantic Revolutions in Literature, Music, Art, and Thought

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Academic Year 2005/2006

Irony and Imagination: Romantic Revolutions in Literature, Music, Art, and Thought
GERM 286 SP

Crosslistings:
GELT 286
COL 293

Thomas Mann called Romanticism "the most revolutionary and the most radical movement of the German spirit." Novalis, the proto-typical poet and thinker of German Romanticism, declared: "The whole world must be romanticized." This course will seek to explore the implications of this imperative by means of an interdisciplinary introduction to Romantic literature, painting, music, and thought. Through close readings of literature and philosophy, as well as encounters with painting and music, we will seek to go beyond the cliché of Romanticism as a cult of irrational subjectivity by focusing on the following Romantic themes: the idea of irony as the art of thinking in contradictions and fragments; philosophy as art and art as philosophy; the notion of diversity as a progressive, universal mixing and melting together of all areas of artistic and scientific expression and knowledge; the aesthetic discovery of the marginal, fantastic, surreal, eccentric, and insane; the ideal of communal thinking ("symphilosophy") and creating ("sympoetry"); the rediscovery and rewriting of medieval legends and folk stories, the renewal of mythology, and the birth of philology; the figuration of unfulfillable longing in poetry and song; the theory and practice of femininity; autobiography and the emergence of female authorship.

MAJOR READINGS

All readings are in English. Students have the option of reading some or all texts in German.

Poems by Goethe, Brentano, Eichendorff, Heine

Songs by Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert

Paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, Moritz von Schwind, Philipp Otto Runge, Friedrich Overbeck, Franz Pforr, Karl Blechen

Friedrich Schlegel, PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS, LUCINDE, "Theory of Femininity," "On Incomprehensibility," "On Diotima," "Dialogue on Poetry"
Novalis, HENRY VON OFTERDINGEN, PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS, THE NOVICES OF SAIS
Hegel, Schelling, Hölderlin, "Earliest Program for a System of German Idealism"

Wilhelm Wackenroder, CONFESSIONS FROM THE HEART OF AN ART-LOVING FRIAR, FANTASIES ON ART FOR FRIENDS OF ART

E.T.A. Hoffmann, "Kreisleriana," THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF THE TOMCAT MURR

Ludwig Tieck, PUSS IN BOOTS

Tales by Tieck and Hoffmann
Letters by Dorothea Veit-Schlegel, Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Rahel Varnhagen, Karoline von Gü nderode, and Bettina von Arnim

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Two short analytic essays (4-5 pages) and one longer research paper (10-12 pages)

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

There will be a number of joint meetings with Yonatan Malin's Seminar for Music Majors (MUSC 300).

COURSE FORMAT: Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA GERM Grading Mode: Student Option

Prerequisites: NONE

SECTION 01

Instructor(s): Plass,Ulrich

Times: ..T.R.. 01:10PM-02:30PM; Location: FISK414;

Reserved Seats: (Total Limit: UNL)

Special Attributes:

Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-30-2006