GRST-3315 Decadence: German Literature Around 1900

German and Austrian writers from 1890 to 1910 plumbed the depths of the human psyche and chronicled social conditions from working class neighborhoods to boarding schools for the elite. They saw their culture as profoundly decayed and sought to reveal how violence and lust seethed just below society's civilized surface. This course explores how key German-language authors during this period used different literary approaches, from realism to naturalism to expressionism, to address the burning psychological and political questions of their time from the role of sexual desire in the formation of self to the possibility (or threat) of working-class revolution.