EUST 1000 - Modern Imagination in Europe

This course introduces students to the expression of the modern condition in major nineteenth- and twentieth-century works of European prose, poetry, and the visual arts. Each of the works/artistic movements is representative, in both its form and content, of the modern predicament. We will explore such themes as realism, nihilism, absurdism, the boredom and alienation of urban life, fascism, the Holocaust, existentialism and new modes of representation. In the visual arts, we will be looking at French impressionism, German expressionism, cubism and abstractionism, and New Wave cinema. We will be reading classic works such as Camus's The Outsider, Sartre's Nausea, Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Kafka's The Trial. In poetry, we will be studying Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, a selection of Surrealist poems (Breton, Desnos), and Holocaust poems by Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs and Gertrud Kolmar.