WLIT 340 - Seminar in Enlightenment Art and Literature: Piranesi and Vico

Institution:

Case Western Reserve University

Subject:

Description:

This course explores aspects of the European eighteenth century as a transformative epoch in the history of western culture. Though the Enlightenment is usually associated especially with France, in this course we will focus on Italy, as the irresistible goal of travelers taking part in the "Grand Tour," and as a landscape of powerful ancient and modern architecture and artworks universally recognized as exemplary. In particular we will study one of the strangest and most fascinating visual artists of the period, the self-proclaimed architect Giovani Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) famous no less now than in his own time for his fantastic prison engravings as well as his views of Rome, involving a radical rethinking of the city as a particular kind of inhabited as well as imagined space. Piranesi's polemical response to the advocates of the Greek revival, then coming into fashion, will lead into discussion of the key philosophical debates and aesthetic shifts of the time, notably the emergence of the notion of the sublime as a category eventually subversive of western ideals of rationality and still present -- and potent -- in our own culture. Finally we will place Piranesi within a current of discussion of the origins and nature of language and of human society in general, not least as manifested in architecture and other symbolic practices. The leading figure here is the Neapolitan G.B. Vico, whose New Science of 1725 remains one of the most stimulating texts in the western intellectual tradition. Offered as CLSC 340, COGS 340, WLIT 340, CLSC 440, and WLIT 440.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.case.edu

Phone Number:

(216) 368-2000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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