Introduction to Course: Major Historical/Cultural/Intellectual/Aesthetic/Philosophical Movements

Drake 258
Major Movements and Dates covered in this Course:

(1450 – 1600)    Pre-Enlightenment Europe/Renaissance

(1600 - 1798)     The Enlightenment (or Neo-Classical Era, or Age of Reason)

(1798-1832)       Romanticism

(1839-1901)       Modernism and "isms": Victorianism, Impressionism, Symbolism, Colonialism, Marxism, Feminism, Alienation

(20-21st Cent.)  Post-Modernism and Existentialism

3) Note these “movements” and their dates are:
a)  somewhat arbitrary classifications; we use them for our convenience: they are easy to learn and test, but history and culture is fluid, complex, often contradictory etc. Be wary of oversimplification. -- I will grossly simplify much of what we cover in this class, spending five minutes on topics many people spend their entire lives trying to understand. Consider this class a teaser, a sampler...consider me the pusher and this your first, free taste...go out and score more this stuff more on your own and in other classes.

b) each continues to influence those that follow it: Romanticism is an outgrowth of, response to, and continuation of the Enlightenment, etc.

c) each continues to influence our current paradigms; the way we currently perceive our world: history as strata, layers, not a progressive line; or history as converging rivers, widening with each convergence and changing course yet still made up of the original elements.

We tend to think of history as looking like this:

Really, Really Old Stuff ----------> Really Old Stuff ---------->Old Stuff ----------> Today

But really, it looks more like this:

                                                                                                                                   Today------->

                                                                                                 Old Stuff------------------------------->

                                                        Really Old Stuff ------------------------------------------------------>

Really, Really Old Stuff ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

In other words, the Enlightenment never stopped; we are still debating the major ideas it put forth.  The same goes for Romanticism.  The same goes for, for that matter, ideas and values that predate the written word; these ideas may be buried and tweaked beyond recognition, but they are still around, influencing the ideas that you, today, woke up and took for granted.

4) Assumptions We'll Make In This Class:

a) All ideas have a genesis, starting point or, more accurately, an historical evolution; literature is the written history of those ideas and that evolution, and writing allows us to trace and understand that evolutionary history.

b) All ideas in your head got in there somehow: there are no innate ideas; ideas come from experience -- nearly always culturally bound (because even the way your parents raised you occurred within your given culture, language) (we'll compare this assumption to Platonic Idealism)

c) This is not church; no conversions to ideas necessary; we're interested in understanding ideas and their genesis, effects on culture etc etc. - you don't have to agree with any of the philosophers/authors etc we read, but you do need to understand:

d) We study the past to understand the present and help shape the future. The value of this class is, in my opinion largely in connecting its contents to current debates, issues, values, ideas, assumptions etc. Each of us should leave this class with a far better understanding of where current ideas came from and what our own, personal and civic relationship to those ideas is.