Revolution and Romanticism

4.0 credits

Victor Hugo said famously that Romanticism was “liberalism in literature.” Course will examine how literature and politics intertwine during an era of great social transformation (1789-1848). Starting with the period of the French Revolution, and continuing through the Empire, the Restoration, and the Bourgeois Monarchy, we will discuss the relation between theatrical representation and the political system, the emergence of a public space, and the relation between political and artistic freedom. Readings from Rousseau, Madame de Staël, Chénier, Hugo, Stendhal, Vigny, Musset. Conducted in French.