{"id":1285,"date":"2021-05-25T15:26:06","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T22:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/devuwcps\/course\/german-580-a-seminar-in-german-literature\/"},"modified":"2021-05-25T15:26:06","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T22:26:06","slug":"german-580-a-seminar-in-german-literature","status":"publish","type":"course","link":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/course\/german-580-a-seminar-in-german-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"GERMAN 580 A: Seminar In German Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this course we will look at various theories of tragedy for purposes of distinguishing it from what Walter Benjamin considered the specifically modern predicament of absolute immanence as depicted in the Baroque mourning play.\u00a0 In a post-Reformation world in which deeds don\u2019t matter, tragedy is no longer up to the mimetic task prescribed by Aristotle.\u00a0 Instead, the mourning play, in which the sovereign has no access to an absolute to legitimate his decisions, makes of the hero an anti-hero, of the world a valley of tears.\u00a0 In that respect, we will also read Benjamin\u2019s Origin of the German Mourning Play as a diagnosis of modernity and its ailments.\u00a0<br \/>\nWe will begin, however, with Plato\u2019s Ion in which ontology is juxtaposed with the constant becoming that goes nowhere or an \u00a0\u201cIontology.\u201d\u00a0 We will then interrogate Aristotle\u2019s Poetics, particularly for its understanding of catharsis and mimesis.\u00a0 What assumptions about the world underlie the Aristotelian notion of tragedy?\u00a0 After reading Antigone we will jump to Hegel\u2019s reflections on that play and tragedy overall in The Aesthetics: How does Hegel come to think of tragedy as something that has been overcome or rendered obsolete?\u00a0 Next, we will turn to Nietzsche\u2019s The Birth of Tragedy to understand how Nietzsche rethinks the Greeks to wrest it from the delicacies that framed its appropriation by the German classics.\u00a0<br \/>\nMore important, we will identify those aspects of Nietzsce\u2019s text that underwrite Benjamin\u2019s Mourning Play.\u00a0 How does Benjamin refute the ahistorical claims of Nietzsche?\u00a0 What distinguishes the mourning play from tragedy, the German mourning play from Calderon? To prepare ourselves for Benjamin\u2019s work, we will read \u00a0Andreas Gryphius\u2019s Leo Armenius along with Pedro Calderon\u2019s Life is a Dream.\u00a0 We will conclude the course by questioning what is it that allows for the sudden dialectical reversal at the end of Benjamin\u2019s text.\u00a0 Has the project succeeded in rupturing the immanence of modernity; has that constellation finally exhausted itself; is it possible now to imagine with Heine a time when capitalism is finally over?<br \/>\nReadings in German (translations of all texts will be available).\u00a0 Discussion in English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[47],"class_list":["post-1285","course","type-course","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive-courses"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-18 16:41:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/course\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/course"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/course"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}