Throughout 19th Century Central Europe, the ideas of Romanticism helped awaken national identities and rekindled hopes of national emancipation. Organic models of community, based on ties of nature, culture and language, gave birth to grand narratives of national history. The upsurge of nationalism created sharp divisions in multilingual and multiethnic societies, leading to a deep and protracted crisis of many Central European nations lasting from the beginning of WWI to the 1990s.
This course will focus on Romanticism and related movements in art, literature and philosophy in the past two centuries within Central Europe. From its origins in the late Enlightenment period through its manifestations in folklorism, Panslavisim, utopias, nationalist epics, or titanism, Romanticism played a key role in the development of Central European culture. In addition, we will also examine Romanticism in literary works of twentieth-century Central European writers, including Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, Karel Čapek, Milan Kundera and Vaclav Havel.
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