Writing Enlightenment 1688 - 1789 (P01906)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : LLC-P-P01906

This course introduces students to the new conceptions of social formation developed in the literature of this period, and in particular the challenge of contractarian liberalism and political economy to an inherited civic humanism as ways of conceiving the relation between the subject and the state. It examines the genres which emerge to negotiate this relationship, introducing students to the role of the novel and the new periodical press in naturalising economic individualism, or georgic in conceiving of a mercantile British Empire, for example. In particular, it concentrates on the impact of a "Scottish philosophy" (Hume, Smith, Ferguson) on the wider British literary field, and asks to what extent "modern" conceptions of British society are a product of Scottish responses to the Union of 1707. And it asks students to consider the ways in which these "modern" conceptualisations of the social whole have been adapted, adopted and challenged by those twentieth-century thinkers who underpin contemporary literary-critical practice.

Entry Requirements

? This course is not available to visting students.

? Costs : Essential course texts.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

English Literature, (School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, Schedule G)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

? Other Required Attendance : 1 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

- an understanding of how literary and cultural works document the complex and changing relationship between England, Ireland and Scotland from the 'Glorious revolution' of 1688 to the French Revolution of 1789.
- an understanding of how debates concerning the nation also explored a range of ideas concerning the adequacy of social and gender hierarchies.
- An understanding of the variety of enlightenment modes and genres in which ideas of the national and national difference were articulated.