Seminar in Romanticism

3 units

German Romantic literature goes in many different directions. At its beginning, we have a new appreciation of the world of the arts by Wackenroder and Tieck, a literature that will have an impact on the Romantic Nazarene school of painters a decade later. We have (with Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea Schlegel and Novalis) ambitious writers who want to give the educational novel (Bildungsroman) as established by Goethe a more poetic twist. At the same time, they are inventing and rediscovering the world of the fairy tale (Volks- und Kunstmärchen) in the case of Tieck, Fouqué, and the Grimm Brothers. Then there are authors like Chamisso, ETA Hoffmann, and Hauff who show the clash of a romantic concept of life with the new realities of capitalism in trade and industry. Finally, stories by Eichendorff are reflecting the cultural European heritage with its friction between Antiquity and Christianity. We will discuss these stories and novels in their literary and historical contexts (politics and art), and will consult theoretical writings both of the authors and from secondary literature. This is a graduate course, but undergraduate senior majors can be admitted with permission of the instructor.