Fictions of Enlightenment (Level 5)

• Credit value: 15 credits at Level 5
• Coordinator and lecturer: Ann Lewis
• Assessment: a 1500-word essay (60%) and a one-hour 20-minute in-class test (40%)

This module 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 vs servants, and the question of whether human beings have free will.

Indicative module syllabus

• 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)

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the French fictional texts under discussion
• demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the historical and generic context of the prescribed texts
• evaluate the prescribed texts at a thematic as well as linguistic and stylistic level
• demonstrate a command of a range of skills acquired during the module to theorise the texts and mobilise related arguments to analyse them.