Poetry after Kant

Begins with the intensive study of a selection of writings by Immanuel Kant focused especially on force and conflict in politics and aesthetics. This study, along with relevant readings from more recent work, will provide the basis for an approach to this topic in nineteenth-century poetry. Readings of Kant (Critique of Judgment, "Toward Eternal Peace," The Conflict of the Faculties), Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben and will lead to several "case studies" of nineteenth-century poetry, including works by Friedrich Hölderlin, Charles Baudelaire, and Matthew Arnold.