ENGL 216 - Art, War, and Abstraction

FC ARHU WINT

4 credits
The early 20th century was filled with writers, musicians, and painters whose work was explicitly connected to science and mathematics. Gertrude Stein claimed that she wrote mathematically; Arnold Schoenberg protested that, despite appearances, his twelve-tone composition was no more mathematical than what had come before him. In only a few years, the same conjunction of art and industry would become associated with European Fascism. Do different art forms lend themselves more easily to intellectual abstractions or politics? We will explore this question by reading widely from thinkers like Stein, Schoenberg, Thomas Mann, Walter Benjamin, Mina Loy, and Wyndham Lewis.