German 580 – Seminar in German Literature

“The Germans and the Greeks” examines the transformations of German ideas about antiquity from the Enlightenment through the twenty-first century. The syllabus runs from Winckelmann to Christa Wolf and explores not only competing images of ‘Greekness’ across the battlefields of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy, but also the ways that conceptions of the ancient Other helped to shape notions of what it means to be ‘German.’ We will pay especially close attention to encounters with Homer and the Greek tragedians, and we’ll trace the metamorphoses of influential theories of drama, aesthetics, and translation prompted by these engagements.
Discussion in English; readings in German.