Many of the attitudes toward art, nature, and the self that we regard as timeless and universal actually find their origins in a very specific time and place: the Europe and America of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This course will examine how the self-styled Romantic movements in Germany, England, France and the nascent United States have shaped our notions of creativity and imagination as the hallmarks of the free and powerful self-and the unconscious as a force in us that can render us unfree; of nature-and the supernatural-as a site of inspiration and self-discovery, but also fear and self-loss; and of transcendence of the immediate as a valuable artistic, intellectual, and spiritual quest. To this end we will explore various literary, epistolary, essayistic, musical, and artistic works. Authors may include Novalis, Schlegel, Hoffmann, the Brothers Grimm, Wordsworth, both Shelleys, Keats, Coleridge, the Brontes, Hugo, Stendahl, de Stael, Baudelaire, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Friedrich, Turner, and others. All readings and discussion in English. Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: active class participation, two short papers, one final paper/project. No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 15). (Literary Movements)