The modern imagination in Europe

Elecitve Course

This course is an introduction to the modern imagination and changing aesthetic sensibility in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Europe. It emphasises some of the major stylistic innovations and intellectual currents that have transformed the way in which Europeans (and now increasingly the world at large) perceive and shape the world around them. The course combines examples from literature (including drama), visual art and film. We will explore how the styles, currents and works we are studying have emerged as creative responses to the great upheavals that have taken place in European society with the rise of modernity.