“All that is solid melts into air,” wrote the young Karl Marx as he surveyed the landscape of the early nineteenth century. And though many of his contemporaries disagreed with his political outlook, many also shared his admiration and horror at the world that the nineteenth century was making. For the period following the French Revolution was one of great uncertainty, in which the expansion of democracy, the growth of a free-market economy and the race of technological progress brought immiseration along with luxury, the breakdown of social and cultural traditions along with new freedoms in art and expression. This class will explore the art and thought of this exciting and tumultuous period, looking at authors whose work mapped out the foundations of modern political action and the extremes of individual knowledge and feeling.