This course is designed to fulfill the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement. The primary goal of this course is to develop students' reading and writing skills; a series of assignments will allow them to formulate observations made in class discussions into coherent argumentative essays. Emphasis will be placed on the refinement of effective sentence, paragraph, and thesis formation, keeping in mind the notion of writing as a process. Other goals in this course are a familiarization with French literature and the specific questions that are relevant to this field. In addition, students will be introduced to different methods of literary and linguistic analysis in their nonliterary readings.

This course will focus on the intersection of fiction and philosophy in a series of texts written during the European Enlightenment. We will examine both the philosophical uses of fiction and the fictional uses of philosophy to address why and how a selection of 18th-century authors chose to invent rather eccentric stories in order to convey important critiques of their contemporary society. Many of the fictions we will read rely on the idea of an “innocent gaze,” often connected with a figure of alterity (such as a foreigner, a social outcast, or a woman), which enables a character to provide a fresh perspective on their surrounding world. But what does it mean for a philosopher to speak through the voice of such fictional beings, and why is this such an important feature of Enlightenment literature?

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills