The Philosophes and the Public in Enlightenment France
Course Organiser: Dr. Joseph Clarke
Weighting: 10 ECTS
Teaching Staff: Dr. Joseph Clarke
The nature of the Enlightenment in France remains one of the most contentious questions in cultural history. This course introduces students to some of the major themes in, and most influential interpretations of, the French Enlightenment through a selection of texts by authors such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot and Rousseau.
In addition to these canonical texts, the course will also look at less familiar sources, the ancien régime’s ‘forbidden bestsellers’, its periodical literature and private correspondence, in order to explore the relationship between writers and the reading public in its eighteenth-century context, and the problems of interpretation this poses for our understanding of the Enlightenment as a whole.