CHUMS 3331 The Shock of the New: European and American Culture at the Turn of the 20th Century
The cultural period beginning in the 1880s and culminating in World War I is termed by some the age of decadence or the "fin de siècle" (end of the century) to reflect the widespread sense that one historical age was coming to an end and another was being formed. Thinkers such as Oswald Spengler Arthur Shopenhauer and Sigmund Freud disputed the assertion that reason alone stands at the basis of human decisions and activities and "irrational" impulses are reflected in the growth of racist and totalitarian movements during this period. The group of artists known as the symbolists (Baudelaire Klimt Debussy among others) abandoned the realistic private and obscure.
Prerequisite
CLITR 1100