Starting with the French Revolution of 1789, this course will explore a radical change in European sensibility foregrounding the self. Whether as a political subject entailed with rights (or the lack thereof), or as an artist or poet gifted with powers of "projection" - of subjectively imagining the world as it might be and somehow actually is - the Romantic subject (in England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States) became both "civic-minded" and "psychological," both hopeful and gothically depressed. Studying artists and poets such as Jacques-Louis David, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, Caspar David Friedrich, Francisco Goya, J.M.W. Turner and Raphaelle Peale, we will investigate the place of Romanticism in our lives today.
4 units · Letter (ABCD/NP)
Starting with the French Revolution of 1789, this course will explore a radical change in European sensibility foregrounding the self. Whether as a political subject entailed with rights (or the lack thereof), or as an artist or poet gifted with powers of "projection" - of subjectively imagining the world as it might be and somehow actually is - the Romantic subject (in England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States) became both "civic-minded" and "psychological," both hopeful and gothically depressed. Studying artists and poets such as Jacques-Louis David, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, Caspar David Friedrich, Francisco Goya, J.M.W. Turner and Raphaelle Peale, we will investigate the place of Romanticism in our lives today.
Offered in Spring 2026 at Stanford University.