English 3160y    

C. H. Plotkin
The English Colloquium on the Enlightenment: "Reason and Imagination"   401b Barnard
Spring term, 2007  

x42101
 

Syllabus

cplotkin@barnard.columbia.edu

 

I What is the Enlightenment? Periodicity and content
Milton, Paraside Lost [Handout]

Descartes [1596-1650], Discourse on Method [1637]
Corneille [1606-1684], The Cid [1636]

Pascal [1623-1662], Pensées [1662]
Racine [1639-1699], Phèdre [1677]

Dryden [1631-1700], handout
Molière [1622-1673], The Misanthrope [1666]

Madame de Lafayette [1634-1693], The Princesse de Clèves [1678]

Defoe [ca. 1660-1731], Moll Flanders [1722]

Pope [1688-1744], "An Essay on Criticism" [1711]; An Essay on Man [1733] 
Voltaire [1694-1788], Candide [1759]

d'Alembert [1717-1783], "Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopédie" [1751]
Swift [1667-1745], Gulliver's Travels [1726]
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII

SPRING BREAK

IX Handouts from: Locke [1632-1704], An Essay concerning Human Understanding [1690]
Sterne [1713-1768], Tristram Shandy [1760........]

Rousseau [1712-1778], "Creed of a Priest of Savoy" (from Emile [1762])
Laclos [1741-1803], Liaisons Dangereuses [1782]

Handout: Turgot [1727-1781], "A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind" [1750]
Kant [1724-1804], "What Is Enlightenment?" [1784]

Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker [1778]
Goethe [1749-1832], The Sorrows of Young Werther [1774]

Handouts from Joshua Reynolds [1723-1792], Blake [1757-1827]
Wordsworth, Prospectus to The Recluse (handout)

Hegel [1770-1831], Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV 
 

Short paper (optional), about 5 pp. (1250 words) in length on a subject to be assigned. (If you have a number of papers due around midterm, feel free to hand this one in well ahead of the due date.)

Term paper (10 pp., roughly 2500 words). This essay is to be comparative in nature (ie, drawing on at least two texts). Suggested topics will be distributed in advance.

Final examination: Identification and commentary.

Course Texts
(on order at Labyrinth Books)

Descartes, Discourse on Method (Hackett)
Pascal, Pensées (Penguin)
Corneille, The Cid, etc. (Penguin)
Racine, Phèdre (tr. M. Rawlings, Penguin)
Molière, The Misanthrope (Harbrace)
Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse de Clèves (Penguin)
Defoe, Moll Flanders (Riverside (HM))
Swift, Gulliver's Travels (Norton Critical)
Voltaire, Candide (Penguin)
Sterne, Tristram Shandy (Norton)
Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Penguin)
Rousseau, Reveries of a Solitary Walker (Penguin)
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Signet)
Hegel: Texts & Commentary (Notre Dame)