• Name
  
• Major
• What is your favorite medium for expressing yourself (e.g., art, music, writing, performance/theater/dance, cooking, sports, etc.)?
  

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• 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 2nd Discourse, 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.

What words, scenes, legends, people, and history do you associate with the American Revolution? What, if anything, does it mean to you?

- Sam Adams

- only war fought (besides 1812 + Civil War) on soil

- independence, rebellion, Tea Party

- unconventional warfare / Battle of Trenton

- Crispus Attucks

- excluded many people: blacks, women, poor, disabled, homosexuals, children

Keyword Analysis: What did the word romantic mean to the Romantics?

Step 1: In-class writing (individual): Select a keyword from one of the Declarations. Analyze the meaning of the word in its context; its multiple meanings in terms of symbolism, connotation, and syntax; and its importance for understanding a theme in one of the texts. 

Step 2: Read your group's submissions and determine which keyword is most important and/or interesting.

Review of Steps in Keyword Analysis:

- Circle important keywords. Why is it an important word? What's the etymology of the word? What did it mean to the Romantics? What significant role does it play in the syntax of the sentence?

- What symbolic meanings does the word imply?

--> Use for your Close Analyses and other writing (Comparative Paper) in class

- What NOT TO DO: Plot Summary

What do you associate with the words "nature" and "society"?

Jess: Can Rousseau's attitudes towards gender roles be seen as progressive? Or should they be considered (un)intentionally sexist?

Herb: Did Rousseau believe that the civilization he prescribes can be achieved in reality, or did he offer it merely as a utopian model for what all civilizations should be more like?

Garrett: On page 17 Rousseau states that "Religion commands us to believe that since God himself drew men out of the state of nature, they are unequal because he wanted them to be so" This statement greatly intrigued me because, going back to our discussion on the Deceleration of Independence, our nation was founded on "all men were created equal under God." Why do you think Rousseau felt that way about God and religion and who is more right, men like Thomas Jefferson, or someone like Rousseau and why?

Arianny: I am very much bothered by Rousseau's statement that "Once peoples are accustomed to masters, they are no longer in a position to get along without them. If they try to shake off the yoke, they put all the distance between themselves and liberty, because, in mistaking for liberty an unbridled license which is its opposite, their revolutions nearly always deliver them over to seducers who make the chains heavier" (3). I think his definition of liberty is flat out wrong and is tantamount to saying that the oppressed should just stay in their place instead demanding complete freedom because they're just making things worse for themselves. That makes absolutely no sense to me and actually makes me very angry.

Bianca: I think what confuses me about what Rousseau writes is, he mentions that a child without a mother would die quickly. But how would they die, if someone else can take care of them and feed them the nutrition they need? But Rousseau says that once the direct nutrition is cut off, the baby would die (21).

Michelle P: I am a little confused or maybe I disagree with Rousseau with the statement that when talking about nature "we must deny that, even before the deluge, such a state ever existed among men". I feel that Rousseau is questioning what is and wants proof of what is without accepting what God has provided.

Alex: was confused on the theory that was brought up on page 25, "Some philosophers have even suggested that there is a greater difference between two given men than between a given man and an animal" (Rousseau).

• Romantic hero // Werther: seeking happiness, resorting to death/supernatural
• secularism/paganism (Faust's rejection of traditional learning/thinking)
• literary allusions
• introspective
  
• NOT: harmony w/nature
  

• Death of Gretchen, Baucis and Philemon
• Overwhelming striving is insatiable
  
• How far he searched for divine knowledge
  
• Irony of wanting something new, and not realizing what he does have

Is Faust himself evil?

• When someone does something evil to a lot of people and it turns out very badly
• Knowing that one is corrupt and perverse but doing nothing about it or keeping itself under control (Bateman, American Psycho)
• Something that was normal but that has been perverted beyond recognition and no longer accepted under social norms
  
• Objectively unacceptable to non-monsters?
  
• hideous, abhorrent, grotesque
  
• being who lacks empathy
  

• hungry for love
• acting on instinct w/o thinking of consequences
• narcissistic
  
• greedy and not happy w/the end results (wanting more)
• manipulative but open to manipulation
• wanting the unattainable
  
• God and power complex
  
• willingness to make a deal w/the devil in order to have power, love, etc..
  

The (Romantic) Sublime

• experienced in solitude & usually in nature
• in reaction to something awe-inspiring / bordering on terror
• connected to the imagination
• moment of transcendence / epiphany

Lessons from the De Laceys

• social injustice, poverty
• language ("godlike science")
• caring / family
  
• power of music
  
• rejection > ingratitude
  

Write for 5 min.: To what extent do you think parents are responsible for their children's violence after they abandon them?

• social constructs of beauty?
  

At one point in chapter 4 of vol. 3, Victor Frankenstein expresses remorse over the death his creation causes (132). Yet, he defends Walton's actions to his men by citing the need "to be hailed as the benefactors of your species" in the final chapter (155). In your opinion, has Victor Frankenstein learned the true lesson of striving and ambition, or does he resemble Faust?