Goethe, Schiller, and German Romanticism
COL 293
Spring 2019 not offered
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This course covers a period of roughly 60 years that defined the shape of German literature and culture for good. In 1774, Goethe entered the literary scene with his epistolary novel THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER. In 1832, he published his final work, the second part of FAUST, and became immortal. With his earthly death, a period now known simply as the "Age of Goethe" [Goethezeit] came to an end. The tasks of this course will be twofold. We will first examine the aesthetics and core ideas of Goethe and his friend and occasional collaborator, Friedrich Schiller, the second major representative of Weimar classicism. We will then contrast the ideals and works of Weimar classicism with the much more freewheeling and often deeply ironic intellectual and artistic production of German Romanticism as embodied in members of the Romantic circle around Dorothea von Schlegel and her lover and later husband, Friedrich, and Caroline Schlegel and her husband, August Wilhelm Schlegel (Friedrich's brother). The young and hip members of the Schlegel circle acted both as profound admirers of Goethe's achievement and as acerbic critics of what they perceived to be the stilted style of Weimar classicism. While Romanticism is often misunderstood as a cult of irrationalism, the German Romantics were closely allied to the transcendental idealism of Fichte and Schelling and advocated their own brand of a communal thinking or "symphilosophy." The course will probe both the continuities and the antagonisms that characterize German literary culture in the Age of Goethe. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA GRST |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (GRST-MN)(GRST) |
Major Readings:
TBA
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Examinations and Assignments:
Three papers. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
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