seventeenth-century europe cultural and intellectual history syllabus
TRANSCRIPT
Cultural and Intellectual History of 17th-Century Europe
Spring 2008
MW – 3:30-4:45 PM, Haines A25
Louis XIV as a youth, marauding German soldiers, illustration from Descartes’ L’Homme
Instructor: K. Pangburn ([email protected]) Office Hours: MW 5-6 PM or by appointment This lecture course offers an introduction to the cultural and intellectual history of Europe during the 17th century, a time of great crisis and transition. By means of primary and secondary source readings, students will investigate the origins and progress of the Scientific Revolution, the birth of modern philosophy, the flowering of baroque culture, religious ferment and critique, and the emergence of clashing new political theories. Readings Hermann Bauer and Andreas Prater, Baroque (Taschen, 2006). THIS BOOK IS OPTIONAL. Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences (Princeton University Press, 2001). H.J.C. von Grimmelshausen, The Adventures of a Simpleton, trans. Wallich (Continuum, 2002). Molière, The Misanthrope and Other Plays (Penguin Books, 2000). * There is also a course packet, available for purchase at the campus bookstore Course Requirements Short response papers: 10% Two 6-page papers: 40% Final exam: 50% Students are expected to attend all lectures and to have done the weekly reading before coming to class. The response papers (1-2 pages) are homework assignments that will be assigned periodically in order to help students reflect on the weekly readings. The 6-page papers – due on April 28 and June 2 – will be written in response to prompts provided by the instructor. The final exam will be a take-home exam, to be submitted to the History Department secretary on the sixth floor of Bunche Hall no later than 12:00 PM on Friday, June 13th.
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Lecture and Reading Schedule Week 1 ~ Dear, 1-48; arts. “Copernicanism” and “Copernicus”; Copernicus’s Dedication to The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies.
March 31 Introduction – The Turbulent 17th Century
April 2 Renaissance Humanism and the Copernican “Revolution”
Week 2 ~ Dear, 49-79, 101-148; excerpts from Bacon’s The Great Instauration; arts. “Bacon”, “Galileo” and “Kepler.”
April 7 Reading the Book of Nature: Paracelsus, Gilbert, Bacon
April 9 Mathematics and Physics: Galileo and Kepler
Week 3 ~ Dear, 80-100, 149-170; art. “Descartes”; Descartes’ Discourse on Method.
April 14 Descartes’s Mechanistic Vision of the Universe
April 16 The Primacy of Reason: Descartes’s Analytical Method
Week 4 ~ Arts. “Pascal” and “Locke”; excerpts from Pascal’s Pensées and Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
April 21 Pascal and Locke: Critics of Rationalist Philosophy
April 23 Reformation and Counter Reformation
Week 5 ~ Excerpt from Friedrich’s Age of the Baroque; arts. “Bernini”, “Rubens”, “Monteverdi”, “Dutch School of Painting Flourishes” and “Rembrandt”; excerpt from Alpers’ Rembrandt’s Enterprise; Bauer and Prater (optional).
April 28 The Catholic Baroque *PAPER DUE*
April 30 Dutch Painting: Science, Commerce, and Art
Week 6 ~ Arts. “Thirty Years’ War” and “Grimmelshausen”; Grimmelshausen’s The Adventures of a Simpleton
May 5 Religious Struggle and the Thirty Years’ War
May 7 Grimmelshausen’s Portrait of Life During Wartime
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Week 7 ~ Pennington, “Religion and the Churches”; arts. “Bayle” and “Spinoza”; excerpt from Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise.
May 12 Spinoza and Bayle: Challenges to Religious Orthodoxy
May 14 Jansenism, Pietism, Puritanism
Week 8 ~ Arts. “English Civil Wars”, “Hobbes” and “Levellers Launch an Egalitarian Movement”; excerpt from Hobbes’ On the Citizen.
May 19 Background to the English Civil Wars
May 21 Clashing Voices: Hobbes vs. the Levellers
Week 9 ~ Arts. “Glorious Revolution” and “Locke Publishes Two Treatises of Government”; excerpt from Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.
May 26 NO CLASS
May 28 Locke and the Glorious Revolution
Week 10 ~ Arts. “Louis XIV”, “Bossuet” and “Molière”; excerpts from Burke’s The Fabrication of Louis XIV and Bossuet’s Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture; Molière’s Tartuffe.
June 2 Louis XIV, Bossuet, and the Triumph of Absolutism *PAPER DUE*
June 4 Molière on 17th-century French Society
* FILM: Le Roi Danse (2000), 4:15-6:00 PM *