Fictions of Enlightenment (Level 5)

Our short course Fictions of Enlightenment brings together a selection of literary and philosophical texts by the best-known French Enlightenment thinkers, in a range of different genres (the conte, the essay, the theatre). We will examine the fictional portrayal of the passage from ignorance to knowledge - through various types of journey of discovery and stories of human development (whether of an individual or the species), and fictional experiments. These provide us with a range of perspectives on what ‘enlightenment’ might mean, dramatising the limits of human knowledge and understanding, and exploring a range of key philosophical issues and debates along the way. These include, for example, the origins of social inequality, the nature of power relations between the sexes and between masters and servants, and the question of whether human beings have free will.

We plan to cover the following content:

• Voltaire, Candide (1759)
• Marivaux, La Dispute (1744)
• Rousseau, Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750)
• Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1755)
• Sedaine, Le Philosophe sans le savoir (1765)

Assessment is via a 1500-word essay (60%) and a one-hour 20-minute in-class test (40%).