James Donelan / CV / Education

B.A., Ph.D. in Comparative Literature , Yale University , 1985, 1993

Dissertation

Self-consciousness and Music in Early Romanticism: Hölderlin, Hegel, Wordsworth, and Beethoven
Director:  Cyrus Hamlin
The dissertation describes how music became a metaphor for the philosophical problem of self-consciousness at the beginning of the Romantic period, affecting musical and poetic composition.  Analyses of Hölderlin’s late poetry and Hegel’s aesthetic lectures demonstrate the German Idealist transformation of aesthetic theory; interpretations of Wordsworth’s Prelude and Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 in Bb trace the development of a musical concept of Romantic self-consciousness.