Course Syllabus
The rise of nations and nationalism in most Central and East-Central European countries in the 19th and much of the 20th centuries was supported and accelerated by, as well as reflected on, art and art-forms. The study of art in this region helps understand the way "imagined communities" or real we call nations emerged. The national language, poetry, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and a host of other artistic genres have impacted the philosophy and politics of nation-building, national and nationalist movements throughout the former "Eastern" Europe. The fabric of national and nationalist thinking can be better approached and understood through the study of artistic expression.
The course will serve as an introduction into the most important cultural differences among various Central and East-Central European countries, ethnic, national and religious groups. Special emphasis will be given to what we may identify as the "national idiom" such as the language, the folk poetry and folk music, and the "national genres" such as the national opera, the national painting and the historical novel, which have both created and expressed national cultures. As Central and East Central European nations are deeply embedded in their languages, cultures, and cultural symbolism, this field of study is essential to the historical appraisal of the region. Providing a general cultural background to Central European studies in Vienna, the course is essential to understand nationalism as it has developed in the modern history of Central and East-Central Europe.
Basic knowledge of 19th and 20th century European history.
English
lectures, organized discussions, student presentations
Attendance 10%, mid-term exam 30%, take-home paper 30%, final exam 30%
Required
| Week I | Introduction I: The age of nationalism |
Ethnicity, nation, nationality, nationalism in Europe and in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. National products, national economy, national market. Regional differences in Europe. The unification of Germany and Italy. From empires to nation state: emerging nations in Russia, the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Ottoman Empire. Nation-building: new nations in Central and East-Central Europe. Comparisons with the United State
Readings: Part II of Reader
| Week II | Introduction II: From romantic to modern: the making of national art |
Art-forms and movements in modern Europe and their impact on the United States. From Classical to Romantic: the impact of political and social change in England and France. Interactions of social revolutions and artistic change. Art-forms as expressions and shapers of historical development. European art and national art: the rise of the national in artistic expression. Great figures of the Romantic movement in Europe. Links between Romanticism and nationalism.
Readings: Parts II and III of Reader
| Week III | National idioms I: The rise of the national language(s), folksong and poetry |
The creation of a modern vernacular from regional and local dialects and idioms: the German of the Grimm brothers, the making of Serbo-Croatian (Vuk KaradIiç), linguistic innovation in Hungary (F. Kazinczy and his circle), A. Pushkin and the renewal of the Russian literary language; the languages of the Habsburg Monarchy and their survival in the successor states. Language and national identity. National languages and supranational languages (e.g. Latin, German, French, recently English). The role of folksongs and poetry in creating the vernacular. Folkmusic, folksong: ethnic elements as modern national idiom.
Readings: Part III-IV of Reader
| Week IV | National idioms II: National symbol, national design |
National patterns, forms, and colors on coats of arms, flags, anthems; ancient symbols and their survival through the modern nation state. The case of the Russian national flag: its historical relations to the Dutch and the various Slavic flags. History on the British and the U.S. flag. Coats of arms in the Habsburg Monarchy and its successor states. Patterns of national symbolism: crosses, flowers, rivers, hills, crowns, colors. The use of national symbols in war and peace. Interpreting national symbols in the visual arts, music, and literature.
Readings: Parts II and V of Reader
| Week V | Review session Mid-term exam |
| Week VI-VII | National genres I: The opera |
The rise of opera as a national genre; from Italian opera to German opera: the idea of human liberty and national freedom (W. A. Mozart, Die Zauberflöte, L. van Beethoven, Fidelio); opera and national unification: the case of Italy (G. Verdi, Nabucco, Don Carlo) and Germany (R. Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen, DieMeistersinger von Nürnberg), maintaining national identity and the sense of sovereignty: national opera in East-Central Europe (F. Erkel, Bánk bán, B. Smetana, Prodaná nevusta, S. Moniuszko, Halka); Russian history in opera (A. Borodin, Knjas Igor, M. Mussorgski, Boris Godunov, M. Glinka, Ivan Susanin).
Readings: Part IV of Reader
| Week VIII | National genres II: Historical painting and sculpture |
The function of painting and sculpture in the 19th century. Historical painting in Europe: Karl v. Piloty and his school in Munich. "Gedankenkunst" in Germany. The painting of Karl Becker, Wilhelm Kaulbach, Franz Lenbach. The role of historical subjects in Hungary during and after Habsburg absolutism: B. Székely, V. Madarász, Gy. Benczúr, M. Than, K. Lotz. Historical monuments as shapers of the national consciousness. French historicism: Th. Géricault, E. Delacroix, P. Delaroche. Russia at war and peace: V. Vereshchagin, I. Ryepin.
Readings: Part II and V of Reader
| Week IX | National genres III: Historical fiction |
The Napoleonic wars and the notion of world history; the political functions of the historical novel in 19th century Europe. From feudal France to bourgeois (Victor Hugo, 1793, H. de Balzac, La comédie humaine, Les illusions perdues, G. Flaubert, Salammbo, R. Rolland, Colas Breugnon); imagining Scotland (Walter Scott, Waverly, Rob Roy, The Bride of Lammermoor, Old Mortality) England and America (W. Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond, The Virginians); unifying the Italian mind (A. Manzoni, I promessi sposi); the making of modern Germany (Th. Mann, The Buddenbrooks, H. Mann, Henry IV, recreating national identities in East-Central Europe (Poland: H. Sienkiewicz, Quo vadis? Trilogia, B. Prus, Lalka, Faraon; Czech lands: A. Jirásek, Rroti vsem, F. L. Vek,Temno; Hungary: M. Jókai, Az aranyember, Kárpáthy Zoltán, A kőszívi ember fiai; Romania: M. Sadoveanu, Neamul Soimarestilor, Fratii Jderi, L. Rebreanu, Padurea spinzuratilor, Craisorul Horia)
Readings: Parts II and V of Reader and Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel
| Week X-XI | Theories of national art. The national canon. Art, ideology, and politics |
The rise of national ideologies in Central and East-Central Europe: a comparison of art-forms, movements, and schools. National vs. nationalist: positive and negative functions of ethnocentrism. Offensive and defensive nationalism. The role of national and nationalist elements in the various national canons. Art as a political tool in Central Europe. The legacy of national and nationalist art in 20th century political rhetoric. National art and totalitarian art, art and dictatorship: modes of artistic expression in Nazi dominated Europe and under Communism. Nation and art today in the region.
Readings:Part I of Reader
| Week XII | Review session Final exam |
A reader has been compiled for this course and is available through the program office
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Chapters 1-6, pp. 1-111
Donald E. Pease, "New Americanists: Revisionist Interventions into the Canon", Boundary, An International Journal of Literature and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 1990, pp. 1-37
Donald E. Pease, "New Perspectives on U.S. Culture and Imperialism", in Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism, pp. 22-37
Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds., Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader
Frantz Fanon, "On National Culture", pp. 16-52, Anthony Giddens, from The Consequences of Modernity, pp. 180-189, Deniz Kandiyoti, "Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation", pp. 376-390
A. L. Kroeber, Anthropology: Race, Language, Culture, Psychology, Prehistory, pp. 124-251
Brison D. Gooch, "The Romantic Movement", in Europe in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 129-169
Harry J. Carroll, Jr. et al., "The Reshaping of Europe 1815-1870", in The Development of Civilization: A Documentary History of Politics, Society, and Thought, Vol. 2, pp. 120-152, 204-210
John P. McKay et al., "The Age of Nationalism, 1850-1914", in A History of Western Society, 4th ed., Vol. II, pp. 788-821
Robert E. Lerner et al., "Nationalism and Nation-Building (1815-1870)", in Western Civilizations: Their History and Their Culture, 11th ed., Vol. II, pp. 809-839
Marvin Perry et al., "Ferment of Ideas: Romanticism, Conservatism, Liberalism, Radicalism, Early Socialism, Nationalism", in Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics & Society, 3rd ed., pp. 480-499
Lawrence Cunningham and John Reich, "The Romantic Era", in Culture and Values, 2nd ed., Vol. II, pp. 254-317
Roland N. Stromberg, "The Crisis of European Thought 1880-1914", in European Intellectual History Since 1789, 5th ed., pp.
Raymond Phineas Stearns, ed., "The Impact of Romanticism upon Literature and Thought", in Pageant of Europe, rev. ed. pp. 531-545
Leon Bernard and Theodore B. Hodges, "Romanticism and Science", in Readings in Modern World Civilization, pp. 304-317
George L. Mosse, "Nationalism", in The Culture of Western Europe. The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 3rd ed., pp. 65-84
Robert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918, Chapters VII and X, pp. 367-405, 521-564
Emil Niederhauser, "National Language and National Scholarship", in The Rise of Nationality in Eastern Europe, pp.
Peter F. Sugar, ed., Eastern European Nationalism in the 20th Century
Peter F. Sugar, "Nationalism, The Victorious Ideology", pp. 413-429
Tibor Frank, "Nation, National Minorities, and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Hungary", pp. 205-242
Nikolai Danilevski, from Russia and Europe, in Peter N. Stearns, ed., in World History, Vol. II, pp.
Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, "Habsburg Vienna: City of Paradoxes", in Wittgenstein's Vienna
Paul Hoffmann, The Viennese: Splendor, Twilight, and Exile, pp. 1-51
A. J. P. Taylor, "The Vienna of Schnitzler", in A. J. P. Taylor, From Napoleon to the Second International. Essays on Nineteenth-Century Europe, pp. 383-389
Carl E. Schorske, "Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio", in Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. Politics and Culture, pp. 116-180
Carl Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, pp. 19-33
Gerald Abraham, "Opera (1830-93)", in Gerald Abraham, The Concise Oxford History of Music, pp. 705-745
William Weber, "Wagner, Wagnerism, and Musical Idealism", in David C. Large and William Weber, eds., Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics, pp. 28-71
Jacques Barzun, "The Artistic Revolution", in Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner, pp. 231-317
Gerald Abraham, Essays on Russian and East European Music, pp. 68-82, 113-171
Malcolm Hamrick Brown and Roland John Wiley, eds., Slavonic and Western Music: Essays for Gerald Abraham
David Brown: "Tchaikovsky and Chekhov", pp. 197-205
John Clapham, "Dvorak's Visit to Worcester, Massachusetts", pp. 207-214
Edward Garden, "Sibeliuis and Balakirev", pp. 215-218
Martin Cooper, "Alexander Skriabin and the Russian Renaissance", pp. 219-239
Howard Hartog, ed., European Music in the Twentieth Century
Everettt Helm, "The Music of Béla Bartók", pp. 11-39
Bernard Stevens, "Czechoslovakia and Poland", pp. 296-319
Béla Bartók, Rumanian Folk Music, Vol. III, pp. xxxix-cvl
Historische Volksmusikforschung
Bálint Sárosi, "Historical Documents Concerning Gipsy Musicians and Their Music in Hungary", pp. 111-120
Ghizela Suliteanu, "Antique South-East-European Elements in the Rumanian and Greek Contemporary Musical Folklore", pp. 181-208
Musica Antiqua pod Padronatem UNESCO, Acta Scientifica, Bydgoszcz, Polska, 1982, pp. 223-236, 565-579, 651-667
Károly Viski, Hungarian Dances, pp. 7-63, 80-90
A. J. P. Taylor, "Ranke: The Dedicated Historian", in A. J. P. Taylor, From Napoleon to the Second International. Essays on Nineteenth-Century Europe, pp. 258-266
Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology, pp. 116-136
Anthony Heilbut, Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, pp. 1-30
Geoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History, pp. 233-268
Jeremy Howard, Art Nouveau: International and national styles in Europe, pp. 1-15
Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863-1922, pp. 9-36
Tibor Frank, The Secret of Survival: Problem Solving and Creativity in Hungarian History In: László Somlyódy and Nóra Somlyódy, eds., Hungarian Arts and Sciences 1848-2000 (East European Monographs--Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 5-21.
Tibor Frank, Supranational English, American Values, and East-Central Europe (PMLA [Publications of the Modern Language Association of America] Vol. 119, No. 1, January 2004), pp. 80-91.
*Touring national/historical public monuments in Vienna
*Visiting the Romantic Collection of the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest
*An audio/video performance and discussion of an East-Central European national opera such as Bánk bán by Ferenc Erkel or Prodaná nevusta by Bed?ich Smetana or Halka by Stanislaw Moniuszko