GE207 Reason, Romantics and Reactions
Module Outline
Term One
- In Week 1, BOTH sessions will be lectures. The first lecture (Tuesday) will be at 16.00 in H4.02 (tbc) and the second lecture (Wednesday) will be, exceptionally, at 10.00 in Room S0.09 (Social Science building).
- Thereafter (WEEK 2 onwards) there will be a lecture on Tuesdays 4-5 in H4.02 (tbc) and a seminar Wed 9:30-11.00 in H2.02.
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OVERVIEW: CONTEXTS AND DEVELOPMENTS
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Week 1 |
Lecture: (Tues) |
Lecture: The Legacy of the Enlightenment in Germany: Continuities and Challenges |
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| Lecture: (Wed) |
Lecture: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The French Revolution and Its Impact on Germany |
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THE POLITICS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN GERMANY
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| Week 2 | Lecture: (Tues) |
Contradictions and compromise: Reason, the Individual, and the Absolutist state in 18th century Prussia (4pm H4.02) |
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| Seminar: (Wed) |
Immanuel Kant, ‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?’ (1784) (9.30am H2.02)
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IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE
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| Week 3 |
Lecture: |
Too Different for Equal Rights? Enlightenment Debates on Jewish Emancipation |
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Seminar: |
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Die Juden (1749) |
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| Week 4 |
Lecture: |
Lecture: Historical Background to Friedrich Schiller, Maria Stuart (1800) |
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| Seminar: (Wed) |
Schiller, Maria Stuart: Women in Charge? |
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| Week 5 | Lecture: (Tues) |
Too different for equal Rights? Enlightenment Debates on Women’s Status in Society |
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| Seminar: (Wed) |
Schiller, Maria Stuart: Contemporary Themes |
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| Week 6 | Reading week; no class | ||
| THE INDIVIDUAL AND AUTHORITY – THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NATIONAL COMMUNITY |
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| Week 7 | Lecture: (Tues) |
Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell (1803-4): Tyranny, Revolt, Revenge – exploring the revolutionary Character |
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| Seminar: (Wed) |
Schiller, Wilhelm Tell: Tell – Assassin or revolutionary Hero? |
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| Week 8 | Lecture: (Tues) |
Ideas of the Nation |
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| Seminar: (Wed) |
‘Wir sind ein Volk und einig wollen wir handeln’ – the Construction of the Swiss People in Schiller's Wilhelm Tell Additional reading: Stuart Hall, extracts from "The question of cultural identity", in: S.Hall, D. Held and |
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| Week 9 | Lecture: (Tues) |
Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg (1810): exploring the Tensions within ‘benevolent Despotism’ |
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| Seminar: (Wed) | Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg: Romantic Hero vs Prussian Officer? |
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| Week 10 | Lecture: (Tues) |
Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg: conflicting readings |
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| Seminar: (Wed) |
Whose values, whose reality? Ambiguity and conflict in Homburg |
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Term Two
NB: teaching in Term 2 begins on TUESDAY of Week 1 (10 January) and will be a lecture starting at 16.00. There will be NO seminar on Wednesday of Week 1. Seminars start in Week 2.
| THE ROMANTIC REBELLION | ||
| Week 1 |
Lecture: (Tues) |
‘Romanticising the world’. German Romanticism in its socio-political context. |
| Seminar: (Wed) |
NO CLASS! |
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| ROMANTICISM AND INTERIORITY | ||
| Week 2 | Lecture: (Tues) |
Romanticising the World: The philosophical underpinning of German Romanticism |
| Seminar: (Wed) | Ludwig Tieck, Der blonde Eckbert | |
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| Week 3 | Lecture: (Tues) |
Landscapes of the mind (II): Art and the artist. Romantic love and the quest for utopia; Eichendorff’s poetry and introduction to Das Marmorbild |
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Seminar:(Wed) |
Joseph von Eichendorff Das Marmorbild | |
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| Week 4 | Lecture: (Tues) |
Landscapes of the mind (II): The dark side of reason: madness and death in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann |
| Seminar: (Wed) | E.T.A. Hoffmann Der Sandmann | |
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| POLITICS, PERSPECTIVE AND THE QUESTION OF HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY |
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| Week 5 | Lecture: (Tues) |
What is evil? The return of Grand Theory. Leibniz, Kant and Rousseau and the problem of human wickedness and social change. |
| Seminar (Wed) | Heinrich von Kleist Das Erdbeben in Chili | |
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| Week 6 | Reading week | |
| Week 7 | Lecture: (Tues) |
The landscape of politics (I). Napoleon, German Nationalism and the question of ‘total revolution’. Heinrich von Kleist and the Haitian revolution. |
| Seminar: (Wed) | Heinrich von Kleist Die Verlobung in St. Domingo | |
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| Week 8 | Lecture: (Tues) |
The landscape of politics (II). ‘Vormärz’, propaganda and political literature. The aesthetics of revolution. |
| Seminar: (Wed) | Georg Büchner Lenz | |
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| REVOLUTION AND THEORIES OF HISTORY | ||
| Week 9 | Lecture: (Tues) |
A revolution in Germany? The French Revolution revisited. The political background to Georg Büchner's Dantons Tod |
| Seminar: (Wed) | Georg Büchner Dantons Tod | |
| Week 10 | Lecture: (Tues) |
What is history? Theories of history and human progress. The origins of Communism. |
| Seminar: (Wed) |
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Das kommunistische Manifest (Please note that this session is a lecture and will be at 10.00am venue tbc.) |
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Term Three
| Week 1 |
Lecture: (Wed) |
The political scene in Germany between the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the 1848 revolution (NB. This lecture will be on Wednesday morning at 10:00 in H202!) There will be no seminar in week 1 |
| Week 2 | Lecture: (Tues) |
Heine and Modernity |
| Seminar: (Wed) |
Heine, Die Harzreise (I) |
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| Week 3 | Lecture: (Tues) | no lecture |
| Seminar: (Wed) |
Heine, Die Harzreise (II) |
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