Fictions of Enlightenment (Level 6)

• Credit value: 15 credits at Level 6
• Convenor: Dr Ann Lewis
• Assessment: an in-class test (40%) and a 2500-word essay (60%)

In this module we bring together a selection of literary and philosophical texts by the best known Enlightenment thinkers, in a range of different genres (the conte, the novel, the essay, the theatre).

We will examine these texts’ 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 syllabus

• Diderot, Jacques le Fataliste (1784)
• Marivaux, La Dispute (1744)
• Riccoboni, Histoire d’Ernestine (1765)
• Rousseau, Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750)
• Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1755)
• Voltaire, Candide (1759)