CWL 257

Fall 2021 Part of Term 1

Part of Term 1
Aug 23-Dec 8

Enlightenment Literature and Culture

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Credit: 3 hours.

Same as ENGL 206. See ENGL 206.

This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Fall 2022 for:

Humanities – Lit & Arts

Cultural Studies - Western

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CWL 257 class schedule data for fall 2021
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	39525	Online	P	11:00AM -12:15PM	TR	n.a.	Nazar, H	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/23/21-12/08/21 Degree Notes: Humanities - Lit & Arts, and Cultural Studies - Western course. Section Info: English 206/CWL 257: Enlightenment Literature and Culture - The Enlightenment has been much in the news in recent times. After the 2016 US presidential election, pundits all over the world declared that the Enlightenment was likely dead. Fears about the demise of the Enlightenment were greatly heightened by the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021, since American constitutional democracy is widely considered to be one of the Enlightenment’s greatest accomplishments. The subsequent inauguration of Joseph R. Biden as the US President has brought hope to many that the Enlightenment is not dead, after all! This course offers you a broad-based introduction to “the Enlightenment” that surfaces so regularly in our public discourse. While many of you will likely be familiar with key texts and figures of the American Enlightenment, our focus this semester is the European, and more particularly, the British Enlightenment, which preceded the founding of the United States. As a moment in history, the Enlightenment covers roughly the period 1650-1800. During this time, Europe witnessed unprecedented social, economic, cultural, and political changes that collectively produced a giant leap toward the world we inhabit today. It was an age of revolution and of newfound faith in the rights of the individual, though these rights were by no means extended to all. It was an age of reason, of tremendous advances in science and technology, though reason was by no means the only altar at which so-called enlightened men and women worshipped: God and sentiment remained powerful forces throughout the long eighteenth century. This semester we will grapple with the principal trends and countercurrents of this period by focusing on a select group of highly influential literary and non-literary works. Our readings are divided into four parts. After an overview of the Enlightenment spirit in Part I, we will dig deeper into such crucial concerns of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century letters as property, race, and empire (Part II); morality (Part III); and knowledge (Part IV). We will explore how the individualistic mindset typically associated with the Enlightenment was developed in the context of these concerns, and how it complicated traditional conceptions of duty and long-established social and political hierarchies. As our precursor culture, the Enlightenment continues to speak to us today—as is evidenced by its omnipresence in current public discourse—and our aim this semester is not only to understand its core values but also to link them to our own.