Courses

“…Romanticism is the largest recent movement to transform the lives and the thought of the Western world. It seems to me to be the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West that has occurred, and all the other shifts which have occurred in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries appear to me in comparison less important, and at any rate deeply influenced by it.” (Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism)

This seminar will introduce students to the manifold expressions of Romanticism in Europe from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century. It is geared both at History majors, particularly but not exclusively those specializing in European Intellectual History, and at students interested in the literature and culture of Germany, France, and Great Britain. We will also  take a  brief look at Romantic writers in Eastern Europe. We will read primarily works written by philosophers and social thinkers, but also a good deal of literature, both prose and poetry. We will have two sessions devoted to the plastic arts – including a class trip to the Metropolitan Museum to view paintings and sculptures, and we will have one session devoted to Romantic music (a study of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.)  We will include readings relating to the Romantic fascination with “the East,” and devote one session to the crucial subject of Romanticism and gender.  Most of the readings will be primary sources either originally in or translated into English, as well as a selection of pertinent secondary sources.