The European Enlightenment

Catalog description

This course traces the transformation of European culture and society between the last decades of the 17th century and the end of the 18th century. Texts include political and philosophical essays, theological works, and examples from the “literary underground” of the 18th century. While drawing significantly on select major writers such as Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet and the Scottish moralists, the course also examines figures who are sometimes overlooked in introductory surveys, such as Daniel Defoe, Richard Price and Mary Wollstonecraft. The overall goal of the course is to provide both an extended contact with the works of one particular historical period, and to survey the different ways in which historians have approached the period.