Literary Studies Course - The Long Eighteenth Century: Literature and Society Ip, IIp 3304-1DPXW-KL-045

The aim of the course is to examine the relationship between literature and the social, cultural, and intellectual transformations that took place in Europe during the long eighteenth century. The seminar focuses on selected literary and philosophical texts of the Enlightenment, understood not only as a historical period but also as a crucial moment in the formation of modern European culture, new models of subjectivity, and new ways of thinking about society, the individual, emotions, and interpersonal relations.

Throughout the course, students will analyse a variety of literary genres characteristic of the eighteenth century, including the philosophical tale, the epistolary novel, autobiography, literary fairy tale, encyclopedic text, and private correspondence. Particular attention will be paid to the ways literature both responded to and shaped contemporary debates concerning power, education, morality, gender, colonialism, emotions, and private life.

One of the central issues addressed during the seminar will be the emergence of modern subjectivity and the construction of the modern self. Students will explore, among others, the autobiographical strategies developed in Rousseau’s Les Confessions, the mechanisms of social performance and manipulation in Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses, and the critique of European institutions and customs in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes and Voltaire’s philosophical tales. An important part of the course will also be devoted to the Enlightenment project itself and to reflections on knowledge, reason, and critical thinking, approached through selected entries from the Encyclopédie and Kant’s essay Qu’est-ce que les Lumières ?

The course also includes texts that are less frequently discussed in traditional literary history, such as private correspondence and literary fairy tales by Charles Perrault and Madame d’Aulnoy. The analysis of these works will make it possible to examine transformations in everyday culture, models of femininity and masculinity, and the social functions of salon and popular literature. Another important interpretative context will be the issue of colonialism and Europe’s relationship with the Other, particularly in Diderot’s Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville.

The seminar is discussion-based and centered on close reading and interpretation of primary texts. Students will engage in collaborative analysis and discussions of the historical, social, and cultural contexts of the works studied. The course aims to develop critical reading and interpretative skills, as well as an understanding of the relationship between literature and broader social transformations. It also seeks to show how the ideas and cultural models developed during the eighteenth century contributed to shaping modern European culture and contemporary ways of thinking about the individual and society.

With regard to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in classes, the rules set out in Resolution No. 42 of the Teaching Council for the Roman Philology degree programme, dated 15 April 2024, apply.
Resolution: https://romanistyka.wn.uw.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/RD_uchwala_42_15-kwietnia-2024_wytyczne_SI_.pdf
Appendix: https://romanistyka.wn.uw.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/RD_uchwala_42_15-kwietnia-2024_wytyczne_SI_ZALACZNIK_1.pdf