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Department of History

Week 5 - Nature and the Environment

I hope your essays are going well and there are no problems submitting them. Get in touch if there are any issues and we'll try to sort them out together.

Please try and review as much of the primary source material linked on this week's entry on the module timetable.

To help you visualise what we are talking about this week, also have a look also at the following links regarding Romantic-era painters and/or paintings:

  1. J.M.W. Turner
  2. Caspar David Friedrich (and especially his Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818))
  3. John Constable
  4. Mr and Mrs Andrews (1748-9), Thomas Gainsborough
  5. Brooke Boothby (1781), Joseph Wright of Derby

Music By Which to Read

This week looks at music popular in Europe between about 1800 and 1900, an era loosely dubbed 'Romantic'. Combining elements of observation of the natural (and supernatural) world and a healthy fascination with the power of nature, this music breaks away from the more structured offerings of previous weeks. It also begins to synthesise, particularly in the works of Czech composer Smetana, folk tunes and melodies. Text list can be found here.