German Literature (1700-1900)

How the literature of the period between 1750 and 1900 gives voice to new conceptions of selfhood and articulates the emergent self-understanding of modernity. Responses to unprecedented historical experiences such as the French Revolution and the ensuing wars, changes in the understanding of nature, the crisis of foundations, and the persistence of theological motifs. Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, Kleist, Heine, Buchner, Keller, and Fontane. Taught in English, readings in German.