• Name
  
• Major
• How do you like to express yourself (e.g., art, music, writing, performance/theater/dance, cooking, sports, etc.)?
  

  ---

• What were French and German authors writing about before and after Shelley composed Frankenstein?
  

• The European Romantic Movement aims to foster understanding of the term “Romantic,” especially as it relates to the fiction, prose, poetry, and drama in Britain, France, Germany, and abroad ca. 1780 to 1830. We will read harbingers of the European Romanticism (Rousseau’s Confessions, and Goethe’s Sufferings of Young Werther); key texts of the period (Goethe’s Faust, Shelley's Frankenstein, and Hoffmann's Sandman); poetry by Droste-Hülshoff, Novalis and Heine; and overlooked writers and artists who influenced major issues of the day like the French Revolution, colonialism, and women’s rights.
  

• The class will discuss themes common to Romantic-era writing, such as nature, utopia, freedom, the grotesque, and the uncanny across several fictional genres (poetry, drama, prose, memoir, and novellas). Students will leave the course with an appreciation for the ways in which literary movements transcend national and generic borders.
  

• Satisfies pre-1900 (1b)/2011 pre-1900 (1c or 1d), Other Literature (1c), Genre Study (Fiction) and TE 3c, multinational (4a)/2011 International Issues (3a), Gender Studies (4d)/2011 Women and Gender Studies (3c)
  

• To foster in-depth critical understanding of the term “Romantic,” especially as it relates to the fiction, prose, poetry, and drama in Britain, France, Germany, and abroad ca. 1780 to 1830;
  

• To engage students’ understanding of the ways in which writers and artists influenced socio-political thinking (French Revolution, colonialism, proto-feminism);
  

• To teach an appreciation for the ways in which literary movements transcend national and generic borders;

• And to move students from being consumers of knowledge to becoming producers of knowledge, by encouraging original literary analysis in essays, exams, and class participation.
  

Review of Week 1

• freedom of speech
  
• freedom of religion
• equality of men, women, all races
• rights of workers
  
• right to your own body
  
• right to healthcare
  
• right to live
  
• right to protection
  
• right to gain knowledge
  
• right to privacy
  
• right to a fair trial
  
• right to oppose war
  

Keywords in Declarations:

• beauty

• citizen

• declaration

• despotism

• ensnared

• equality

• fanaticism 

• foolproof

• freedom

• imprescriptible

• liberty

• rights

• sovereignty

• tocsin

• woman

• union

Lecture 1/19

1. The French Revolution

- caused by American ex., poverty of masses, bread famine, aristocrats' abuse of power, legacy of Enlightenment thinking (Rousseau)

- revolt in Haiti, abolition of slave trade

- first significant break from a vertical world

God > King > Clergy > Aristocracy > everyone else

 to a secular one with a burgeoning middle class

--> How should people act like middle class citizens (not peasant, not aristocratic, but something in between)?

2. Olympe de Gouges

- ex. of proto-feminist revolution which incl. women fighting in the conflict (both sides: royalist and republican)

Ques. about lecture

Kristin: "Why or even how did the idea of religion just vanish? Or how did it become secular and what aspects changed?"

- revolt vs. Catholic Church = revolt vs. institutions of political, economic power

- Church property seized, but peoples' belief systems did not necessarily change

- Nuns, priests guillotined

- New national holidays to supplant religious ones

- Festival of Supreme Being

--> Catholicism did not totally disappear, although its break w/religion is a notable part of its relationship with the Church:

• France still nominally Catholic
  
• France also very strict about maintaining (the illusion) of a secular state
  

Chelsea: "If Olympe de Gouges was of the lower classes and fought for the rights of women, then why would she change her name to Olympe de Gouges? I understand that she felt she was of the aristocratic class, but if she’s fighting for these women’s rights and the like, why would it matter if she was Marie Gouzes rather than, as you stated, celestial Olympe de Gouges?"

- 17th c. debate of women as shrews/monsters vs. Strong Women (Femmes Fortes)

- Gouges and class (contradictions and paradoxes)

• biological father

• supported constitutional monarchy

• Freemason and supporter of working women

Erica: Why were there so many Olympe de Gouges [websites featuring her Declaration] that excluded the part about women causing harm?

Marissa: Why did Gouges's Declaration not gain in popularity?

Maria: Why does she support prostitution though? Is prostitution not a way to oppress and abuse women?

Jen: Which side should I be on: the Aristocracy (royalists) or the French revolutionaries (republicans)?

--> Which side is Rousseau on?

Review

Rousseau

• from the Swiss Republic, and city-state of Geneva
• Pre-Romantic
• Discourse on the Origin of Inequality = 2nd Discourse
  

savage (sauvage) > native peoples

• Caribs
  

• South America Orinoco
  

• so-called Hottentots (southern Africa)
  

• 74, fn. 5 + 82, fn 10: ex. of travel narrative
  

• see under Readings > Supplemental Readings: Moran, Francis. “Of Pongos and Men: Orangs-Outang' in Rousseau's 'Discourse on Inequality'.”
  

• Discourse about the "noble savage" (77, fn. 9)
  

• Kaspar Hauser, subject of Werner Herzog's movie, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
  

More ques. about Rousseau:

Brenda: My question is who are the "masters" that Rousseau refers to (3)?

Erica: Which group of people was he trying to prove were not equal? "Savage man'? "Modern man"? Animals? Why is this section important to some of the readings assigned in the last class? One group I noticed that Rousseau thinks should be unequal is women. He states "Now it is easy to see that the moral aspect of love is an artificial sentiment born of social custom, and extolled by women with so much skill and care in order to establish their hegemony and make dominant the sex that ought to obey." Every other idea in his paper was explained thoroughly and supported with Rousseau's reasoning, but this one statement seems to be the only one that he thinks is general knowledge and obvious to everyone who reads it.

    Abeer responds

Kristin: Rousseau uses a lot of examples throughout his discourse but one that somewhat confused me was his example about the Spartans. He states, "Nature in this case treats them exactly as Sparta treated the children of her citizens: those who come well formed into the world she renders strong and robust, and all the rest she destroys; differing in this respect from our modern communities, in which the State, by making children a burden to their parents, kills them indiscriminately before they are born." I don't understand the latter part of the section. I also am somewhat confused about the term "well formed", what is he actually mean? Whether or not they are well informed with how everything is? Because if that's the case isn't he contradicting himself in a way? That knowing how one should act in nature is not natural? Or am I just taking it way too far?

Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754)
Darwin, Origin of Species (1859)

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992. Print.

Ques. about lecture

Denise: "What if a person such as Hauser, whom undeniably was ignorant to morals of society, committed an act of murder or betrayal. Surely some could claim that the man doesn’t “know any better” because of his origin. But would he still constitute as a morally righteous person, according to Rousseau?"

--> Frankenstein's monster

• Pagan traditions + Christianity: Easter bunny, Christmas tree
  

• In Nerval's "Delfica" (1845): Daphne (l. 1, woman who transformed into a tree to escape a lustful Apollo), "the Temple" (l. 5), "those Gods" (l. 9), and "the Sibyl with the Latin face" (l. 12) coexist with the "Arch of Constantine," the Roman leader who embraced Christianity (Farber).
  

• If you feel you need to look up such information, please consult a dictionary, or the Literary Reference Center (Library > Articles & Databases > Language/Literature) and cite your source in both cases.
  

• Goethe's "Elf King" (1782): death and the afterlife follow native European folk traditions
  

• Erl king ‘taking’ the young child > stealing its reproductive rights / immortality
  

3. Neoclassicism

• Hölderlin's Hyperion poems use a Classical framework, but spiritual meaning is mostly found in nature. 

"Hyperion's Song of Destiny" = Ex. of German TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY

-    called Idealism because it envisions a dialectical (Fichte, Hegel) movement toward an absolute state of being
-    mimicked / found also in poetry of Hölderlin, Novalis in particular (Frühromantik)

Stanza 1 = THESIS: You all (plural) "walk up there in the light" (l.1).

Stanza 2 = ANTITHESIS: The "heavenly ones breathe" and "Gaze in tranquil, / Eternal clarity" (l. 8, 14-15).

Stanza 3 = SYNTHESIS or hypothesis: We "find rest nowhere."

4. Poetry terminology

• volta: turn of the lyrical voice, when it gains a new sense of recognition
  
• rhyme schemes
  
• --> use these elements to underscore an interpretation of keywords and phrases in a poem
  

• obsessive nature of love and in death
• to encourage not to fall in love
• if you can't find a place in society, you can't keep going
• human life is expendable
• the workings of the heart make us human
• innocence of childhood
  
• aggressive about finding someone like Lotte for himself
  
• female coldness is part of love
  
• confusing messages about how relationships work
  

• unchanged, earthy
• dynamic, change
  
• individualistic (both interpretations of and nature's nature)
  
• beauty and danger
  
• source of inspiration and knowledge
  
• going to the beach
• stargazing
• hiking
  
• depends on the culture
  
• associated with disasters
  
• simple and complicated
  

What does it mean to you to be a scientist? What all can science (and scientists) do? What do scientists try to accomplish?

• be able to explain how the environment changes, what improvements we can do, what affects the environment
  
• make new discoveries by experimenting
• try to reach a hypothesis that can be supported or not supported
• base their view on the world on facts and findings
• try to stay away from religious explanations & that's why they become creators and inventors
• try to see the world around them differently & almost like artists in that way
• strive for objectivity
  
• strive for physical and visible answers rather than abstract ideas

The Sandman

• Geneva = theocracy that becomes banking center in 18th c, rising class differences in Geneva

• Father's friends = opposition

• Rousseau in favor of everyone taking part in military exercise (ques from Canadian about us militarism: see Keane)
  

• Discourse on Inequality, which argues that private property creates inequality, didn't win prize

• Rousseau thought that pity / compassion are the "root of our salvation"

• Rousseau didn't believe in original sin

• Solution to inequality > education

• Problem : inequality in our schools

• Need to mix w/ people who aren't like you (cited experience in the army)

• We used to fight our own wars / war by proxy
  

•     rebel or an outlaw hero (Misbah)

•     "fantastical elements" (Matt) & supernatural (many)
  

•     "folklore legends" (Denise)

•     doubles (Erica) / duality (Rene)

•     "rejection of science in favor of mysticism and magic" (Keith)

•     nature: "Oh full mom radiance, would that you, / Who many a midnight vigil through / Have found me wakeful in this  chair, / Might look you last on my despair!" (13/386-89 [Kristin])

•     writing style (Bailey)

•     Gothic romance + Medieval setting (Courtney)

•     "The theme of death is also important as Faust's own near death is a crucial moment in the plot when Faust wants to commit suicide. In a way Faust's old self dies and a new "evil" self is born when he meets Mephistopheles" (Debbie).

•     "declines the going-back-to-nature scenario" (2362-64) (Matt, Misbah)

•     "the idea of the woman being cold and the man being more emotional" (Erica)

•     "Lieschen asks, 'What, you pity her still?' as if the unwed [mother]’s pain is something that should not be pitied. Not only does she lack feelings, she is also volunteering to tear of her wreath if she is to get married, which just shows a cruelty on the women’s part." (Misbah)

• Was Goethe a Romantic? See argument by Angus Nicholls that he was: http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2002/v/n28/007207ar.html

See also: What is romantic about Goethe's Faust?

What might Goethe be saying about gender in having at least 2 characters who are hermaphroditic (Homunculus, Mephisto)? What does it mean if men can turn into women?

Maria + Marissa: Does Faust realize that only love will give him happiness? Is this the true tragedy of Faust (his failure to find love)?

Tia: How can he be redeemed by love when he shows no love for anyone or anything but himself?

Where do you think (the spark) of life comes from?

What does it mean to you to be "human"?

• ability to all types of emotions
• morality
  
• ability to make choices
• seek refuge in fantasy, creation, imagination (the symbolic), concepts
  
• intelligence
  
• vices
  

• could just be a biological definition
  
• Are sociopaths inhuman?
  
• Are humans and animals the same?
• Is humanity on a spectrum? 
• Is murder a human trait?
  

Romantic Era:

- emergence of concern for human rights (American and French Revolutions, end of slave trade in Europe, proto-feminists like Gouges)

- rhetoric of sensibility

- also an era of scientific experimentation

> What is Life?