The decades around the year 1800 in Europe and America saw so many and such profound changes that historians have dubbed that period "the age of revolution" and "the beginning of the modern world." This course explores the cultural side of these changes in the movement called Romanticism. Romanticism united many different forms of expression, so the course focuses on a variety of artists, musicians, and writers: their lives, works, and ideas. It also deals with ways of analyzing and appreciating visual art, music, and literature.
You can expect to listen to such music as a symphony by Beethoven, some Schubert songs, Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique, and an opera by Verdi or Bizet. You will study paintings by artists like David, Goya, Friedrich, Turner, and Gericault. And you will read poetry and prose by writers like Blake, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein). A typical syllabus includes the headings "Revolutions in Art and Life," "Nature in the Heart and Mind," and "Individualism and its Costs."
The course will lead you out beyond the classroom into concerts and museums in the University are the area. For example, you may be asked to attend a concert by the University's own Hartt School symphony, and to view Romantic paintings at the Wadsworth Atheneum, nearby in Hartford. Students also read, discuss, and write about ways in which Romantic views concerning such issues as creativity, sexuality, spirituality, and social change have persisted into the present, influencing our own. |
