CMLT 350 - Reason and Romanticism

Reason and Romanticism covers the “long 18th-century.” Students explore the spirit of the Enlightenment and its relation to the subsequent Romantic rebellion-roughly, 1750-1850. However, course readings will include seminal writings of John Locke (1632-1704), Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Isaac Newton (1642- 1727), and other thinkers who shaped Enlightenment questions about nature and reason, reason and God, politics, and art. The first half of the course features writings of German, French, Irish, Scottish, English, Russian, and American Enlightenment thinkers. Literary works include Tristram Shandy, Candide, Rameau’s Nephew and Nathan the Wise, and plays of Catherine the Great. The second half of the course features writings of French, German, and Russian participants in the Romantic cultural age. The Sorrows of Young Werther, Queen of Spades, and A Hero of Our Time are among works read. We enlist the 20th- and 21st-century theoretical and philosophical approaches of Ernst Cassirer, Isaiah Berlin, and Bill Brown (Thing Theory) to understand the legacy and lasting influence of “the long 18th-century.” (Group III) (Writing Option)