GERM 477 - Literature at the Turn of the Century

At the dawn of the 20th-century, central Europeans lived, debated, and created amidst great doubts that their world had any future. At the heart of a conflicted and paradoxical modernity arose a keen sense of the unreality and futility of human affairs. Yet modernity’s seemingly unresolvable challenges—including questions about the political arrangements of diverse and multilingual societies, the constitution of the human psyche, the chances of human survival on the eve of World War I, as well as class, inter-ethnic and gender relations—spawned a furor of pioneering responses in the urban centers of Germanophone Europe. Exploring the resources of this rich period (1890-1924), this course investigates the cultural, literary, philosophical, artistic, and musical activity abounding in Vienna, Prague, and other sites of central European modernity. Readings include works by Zweig, Roth, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Freud, Musil, Kraus, and Kafka. Focus is on reading and writing about central Europe will be supplemented by visual works of art, architecture and cinema relevant to the period.

Credits: 1.00
Corequisite: None
Prerequisites: Two GERM 300-level courses
Major/Minor Restrictions: None
Class Restriction: None
Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
Liberal Arts CORE: None

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