Freshmen Writing Seminar (3 credits). Readings in English. No knowledge of German required.

The course will provide an introduction to the study of German cultural and political history through the discussion of exemplary writings from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Poems, short stories and plays will include Schillerís Ode to Joy and and Beethovenís rendition of it in his Ninth Symphony, his drama Don Carlos and a novella by Kleist reflecting the authorsí preoccupation with the principal political events of the age, the American and French revolutions. We will read The Tragedy of Gretchen, Faustís young lover, from Goetheís Faust, and explore the issue of infanticide. Weíll close with Mozartís Magic Flute, the work that most eloquently restates the Enlightenmentís faith in the perfectibility of the human race.
 

1.1   Introduction.  The First Meeting

1.2   The second meeting. Poems and Songs
2.1
2.2   Schiller/Beethoven IX,4

3.1   TIECK: Eckbert The Fair
3.2

4.1   KLEIST: The Earthquake in Chile
4.2
5.1   KLEIST: The Betrothal on Santo Domingo
5.2

6.1 ff.  SCHILLER: DON CARLOS

        Some background material provided for Goethe's EGMONT is helpful here too.
 

9.1 ff. GOETHE: FAUST. The Tragedy of Gretchen.

        The Uris Library staff has put together an extensive web site for this topic. Please use it, it is truly first rate.

     Check also my webpgage Galileo for information on the cosmology employed in the Prologue in Heaven.
 

    Faust
       (I)  The scholar

        A very brief introduction to the nature of both Faust and Mephisto can be found in my review of Pelikan's
        Faust, The Theologian. (hand-out).

    Faust
       (II)  The lover
    Faust
       (III)  The fugitive. Gretchen in Hell
 

    Final week:  MOZART: The Magic Flute

    For the Goethe connection please check my web page on Goethe's Novelle.

For general background information on the historical period and on individual pieces and topics I have placed some books on reserve in the Uris Library Reading Room. Don't panic, none of it is required reading, but you might find them helpful when putting the individual "German" pieces into an international context. They all reflect concerns and preoccupations and deal with topics and events that are not restricted to the German scene or, like the two principal events of the age, the American and French revolutions, were even part of it.
I'll comment on some titles and add others as we go on.

Please do NOT take these books out of the library. Read them  there, in the Reading Room if possible.

Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization. Vols X (Rousseau and Revolution)  and XI (The Age of Napoleon).
The authors had intended volume X to be the final one of the series but found they couldn't let go. Volume XI came as an unexpected gift to their large and appreciative audience.
"We pass it on, not to specialist scholars, who will learn nothing from it, but our friends, wherever they are, who have been patient with us through many years, and who may find in it some moment's illumination or brightening fantasy." (Quoted from the Preface).

Page Smith, A New Age Now Begins. A People's History of the American Revolution. 2 vols.
The first two volumes of a 4-volume set. Written against the grain, as it were, abandoning the view of nineteenth century historians who "believed that the past could be understood and, moreover, that they understood it; and they believed that the history of the United States constituted the greatest success story since man had emerged from prehistory." He quotes Arnold Toynbee's statement in 1961 "that we had lost the leadership in our own revolution - that we had become, in the common phrase, 'counterrevolutionary,' more concerned with wealth and security than with justice and equality." Among his spiritual ancestors are not "those amiable and optimistic historians of our past - Bancroft , McMaster, Rhodes ... Perhaps the Roman Tacitus is a more appropriate model." (From the Introduction to vol. 3, pp. xii and xiii).

R.R. Palmer, The World of the French Revolution.
Read in particular chapter 9: "Germany: The Revolution Philosophized."

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason. Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology.
The 1794 classic. "It contains my opinion upon Religion. ... I have always strenuously supported the Right of every man to his opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. ... The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall."

Daniel Boorstin, The Americans. The Colonial Experience.
                           The Americans. The National Experience.
V.S. Naipaul, The Loss of El Dorado.
Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise.
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
Garrett Mattingly, The Armada.
Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading.
Brigid Brophy, Mozart the Dramatist.
Nicholas Till, Mozart and the Enlightenment.
Helmut Perl, Der Fall "Zauberfloete" (German).

Please check thw eb site Gretchen for material on the issue of infanticide