HON 201. Great Cultural Epochs II
Professor: Robert W. Brown
Course Description
CSP 201 is an interdisciplinary course which introduces within a chronological
framework some of mankind's most enduring creations in art, architecture,
thought, literature, and music. It begins with the Renaissance and ends
in the recent past (the 1990s). Since this course only covers some four
centuries of the human experience eventful years to be sure , we will be
able to treat in some detail our many topics. Setting out about 1400, we
examine first the Renaissance in Florence, Rome, Northern Europe, and Venice,
and then the flowering of Baroque art, architecture, literature, and music.
Following a study of the Enlightenment and the age of Neo-classicism, we
focus our attention on Romanticism, the last great European-wide movement
in the arts. The Industrial Revolution and the Realist reaction against
Romanticism serve as a transition to the extraordinary cultural and intellectual
transformations that begin to occur after 1870. By studying the birth of
modern art, literature, and music, we explore the revolutionary innovations
in culture that fill the years before 1914. Our semester concludes with
an overview of western culture from the 1930s to Post-modernism. This course
satisfies the UNC Pembroke General Education objective that students "should
demonstrate knowledge of, appreciation for, and understanding of the contributions
to society of" the arts, literature, history, and ideas.
Discussion Questions for Reading Assignments
The Renaissance Style;
The Roman Renaissance Style; Northern Renaissance Styles; and The Venetian
Renaissance and International Mannerism.
This Page is Maintained by Robert W. Brown
Last Update: 05.III.2001