FREN 4400

Enlightenment Without Borders

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2017-2018.

The Age of Enlightenment is traditionally seen as the Age of Reason, and is celebrated as the advent of a time which promoted the advance of ideals such as liberty, progress, and equality in France and Europe.  It is also seen as the Age of Cosmopolitanism which celebrated the era of a new individual, the 'Citizen of the World'.  We owe to French and Europeans Philosophers the texts that proclaimed the universality of Human Rights in a world without borders. Seen from the vantage point of the non Europeans  or the non citizens,  the Enlightenment ideals are, at times, put into question. Examining different texts and representations of the long eighteenth century and its colonial and post-colonial aftermaths thise course will analyze these  diverse encounters with the "internal others"  (non-citizens  and women) and of the outside e.g.the non western world ).  Primary texts to be examined will include  philosophical writings (by Montesquieu, Rousseau ,Diderot…) as well as novels and travel writings of the eighteenth century and beyond. (Les Lettres persanes, Manon Lescaut, Le Supplement au voyage de Bougainville , Paul et Virginie , Ourika , Indiana)

When Offered Fall.

Breadth Requirement (HB)
Distribution Category (CA-AS)

Comments Conducted in French.

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