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Notes on the Enlightenment for Euro/World Literature

The Enlightenment

(owes a great deal to The Eurlopean Enlightenment at WSU, http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/ENLIGHT.HTM)

It’s very hard to pin down just when the Enlightenment began, and much of Enlightenment thought still informs our world today, so it’s really almost as if we still live in the Enlightenment. But, for convenience, let’s say the term refers to the 18^th century (1700s) in Europe. The term was coined by people of the time (this is unusual – most major movements in thought and literature are named after the fact by historians)

Doctrines of Enlightenment thought:

1. The universe is fundamentally rational and can be understood through the exercise of reason.
2. Truth can be arrived at through empirical observation, the application of reason, and systematic doubt.
3. We understand truth through experience, not authority. That is, we should learn for ourselves, not depend on or let our experience be overridden by authority.
4. Just as we can unserstand the natural world through observation, reason, and doubt, we can do the same thing with human life. Both our individual lives and our social lives can be understood and even manipulated through reason.
5. The history of humanity is a history of progress. (We’re only getting better!)
6. Humans can improve themselves through reason and education.
7. Religious doctrines have no place in the understanding of the natural world or of human interactions.

End of info from WSU: the following are notes and thoughts on the introduction in The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. 2

Samuel Johnson – ethics= a form of morality (“He that thinks reasonably must think morally.”)

Rene Descartes – individuality= our minds, our ability to be thinkers (“I think, therefore I am.”)

Deism, which saw an impersonal deity, was very popular (also popular with US founding fathers, who lived at this time). The idea of a “clockmaker God.” He/she must be there (what else made the world) but now lets it run according to natural laws. No miracles, supernatural events, no need for priests.

Goal: moderate the “passions” with reason. We’d be much better off (do we now call the “passions” the unconscious?

Society more important than individuals

Much satire of social mores (The Rape of the Lock, The Princess of Cleves, Tartuffe, Gulliver’s travels, Candide, Rasselas), but the idea was not to overthrow all social norms but to point out the problems if they were misused. If people actually lived up to what they were supposed to do according to society, instead of doing everythingk they could to make it look like they were doing what they were supposed to do, the world would work well, make sense in a rational way.

Women become increasingly unimportant in works with a broad social scope: romantic love was deemphasized (it’s a passion, after all) and women’s “place” was in the home = private life. Private, in this thought system that emphasizes society over individual, is much less important than public. Therefore, women much less important than men.

Nature = sense of permanence. It works according to a system of natural laws (remember, Isaac Newton was cutting edge stuff here - 1687). Thus, those laws show that the deity had a plan. And, if the natural world is permanent, if natural law is permanent, then human nature must be permanent too. People are people, regardless of their time period. (Racine’s ancient Greek story should be understandable – we can follow why Phaedra was tormented by her desires because se know, basically, what people are like from our own observations.)

Conventions of writing = conventions of behavior (think manners for books and poems)

Literature is meant to delight and to instruct. It, too, should follow rational “laws” so that it will make sense and be enjoyable for readers. But it may be hard for modern readers until we learn the conventions; they are laws unto themselves, rules about how literature should work, not necessarily the realism we of the 21^st century are used to. Remember, all that was needed was a consistent set of rules that made sense and that everyone understood.

Conflict: the Ancients vs. the Moderns (see p. 7)

Satire: a problem for those who believe in authority? Or a way of calling attention to those who are being irrational while believing (or at least saying) that they’re just following the conventions of society?

posted by Jenny Caudle Crisp @ 4:40 PM