EUR1200 - Foundations of contemporary Europe: liberalism, socialism, romanticism

Leader(s): Dr Natalie Doyle

Offered

Clayton Second semester 2009 (Day)

Synopsis

This unit surveys the evolution, during the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, of European ways of understanding and explaining the world and humankind that are associated with Romanticism. We examine the cult of individualism and its philosophical background; romantic views of imagination, creativity, the psyche, and nature; and romantic notions of history, language and the nation. The unit reflects on romantic ideas of the arts and human creativity. It introduces texts by such thinkers as Fichte and Hegel, as well as representative works of literature and the other arts from the national traditions of both Western and Eastern Europe.

Objectives

On completion of this subject students will have a familiarity with, and an understanding of, the general features of Europe's cultural and intellectual development during the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, with a special focus upon the European Romanticism and its ambivalent relationship to the birth of modern society, as well as a knowledge of some representative expository texts and works of literature and the other arts. They will have basic skills in library use, essay writing, analysis and interpretation of texts, as well as oral presentation and discussion.

Assessment

Tutorial preparation and participation (250 words): 6%; Class paper (250 words): 6%; Essay 1 (1000 words): 22%; Essay 2 (1500 words): 33%; Exam (1.5 hours, 1500 words): 33%.

Contact hours

Two 1-hour lectures and one 1-hour tutorial per week

Prohibitions

EUR1015