Aubrey, John (1626–1697). Collector of biographical anecdotes, which were published after his death as Brief Lives of Eminent Men.
Blake, William (1757–1827). Self-taught poet and artist who developed a highly original myth that embodied profound criticism of Enlightenment thinking.
Boswell, James (1740–1795). Scottish lawyer, author of richly detailed diaries that were unpublished until the 20th century and of the classic Life of Samuel Johnson.
Bunyan, John (1628–1688). Baptist preacher who wrote the classic Pilgrim’s Progress while imprisoned for refusing to give up preaching.
Descartes, René (1596–1650). Mathematician and philosopher, author of the Discourse on Method, which sought to ground all knowledge in the fundamental intuition “I think, therefore I am.”
Diderot, Denis (1713–1784). Central figure in the French Enlightenment; edited the great Encyclopedia and produced successful plays but is best known today for unpublished works, such as Jacques the Fatalist and Rameau’s Nephew.
Franklin, Benjamin (1705–1790). American printer, scientist, and statesman, who left Boston in his teens to become a leading figure in Philadelphia; made important contributions to the study of electricity; and after the American Revolution, became one of the most admired of the Founding Fathers. Author of an Autobiography not published until the 19th century.
Gibbon, Edward (1737–1794). Reclusive writer (though he served for a few years in Parliament); author of the great history The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and of an Autobiography that was published after his death.
Halifax, George Savile, first Marquess of (1633–1695). Statesman who promoted toleration and parliamentary sovereignty; author of a trenchant memoir of King Charles II.
Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679). Philosopher who espoused a mechanistic view of human motivation and, in Leviathan, produced a classic theory of the centrality of power in political life.
Hume, David (1711–1776). Scottish philosopher and historian whose Treatise of Human Nature and other works are the definitive expressions of empiricist thought.
Johnson, Samuel (1709–1784). Scholar, critic, and essayist who dominated London literary life in the second half of the 18th century; among his works are the first major edition of Shakespeare, the first comprehensive English dictionary, and a set of critical biographies, The Lives of the English Poets.
Laclos, Choderlos de (1741–1803). Army officer whose Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a masterpiece of French fiction; in later years, he served as a general under Napoleon.
Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine de (1634–1693). Hostess of an influential salon in the court of Louis XIV and author of several works of fiction, most notably La Princesse de Clèves.
La Rochefoucauld, François, Duc de (1613–1680). Military officer who became a central figure in the intellectual life of Louis XIV’s court; author of the epigrammatic Maxims on human behavior.
Locke, John (1632–1704). Physician and philosopher whose Essay Concerning Human Understanding was a formative text in British empiricism and whose Two Treatises of Government was an important defense of parliamentary supremacy over the monarchy.
Pascal, Blaise (1623–1662). Mathematician and religious thinker, closely connected to the Jansenist movement, whose Pensées (“Thoughts”) is a classic of religious writing.
Pope, Alexander (1688–1744). The leading English poet of the 18th century; author of social satires and of An Essay on Man.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–1778). Geneva-born musician, novelist, and theorist; author of A Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract (classics of social thought), Émile (a groundbreaking treatise on education), Julie (the bestselling novel of the 18th century) and Confessions (one of the most important autobiographies ever written).
Smith, Adam (1723–1790). Professor at the University of Glasgow; author of Theory of Moral Sentiments, which proposed a psychological basis for modern individualism, and The Wealth of Nations, a classic of economics.
Voltaire (1694–1778). Born François-Marie Arouet, a playwright, poet, and tireless propagandist for the
Enlightenment program of intellectual and social reform; among his scores of works is the classic satire Candide.
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Bibliography
Primary Sources:
These are the basic texts for the course, in excellent modern editions and translations (passages quoted from French in the lectures, however, are my own translations). All are available in paperback and have good critical and historical introductions.
For those who would like to read the French texts in the original, excellent modern editions are available in most of the major paperback series: Éditions Garnier, Garnier Flammarion, Gallimard Folio Classique, Livres de Poche, and so on. I have noted below one exceptionally valuable hardbound edition, the Oeuvres Complètes of Rousseau in the Pléiade series.
Aubrey, John. Brief Lives, ed. Richard Barber (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1982). A good selection from Aubrey’s voluminous manuscript.
Blake, William. The Complete Illuminated Books (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000). Excellent color reproductions of all of Blake’s illustrated works, in a large-format paperback edition.
———. The Complete Poetry and Prose, ed. David V. Erdman (New York: Anchor, 1988). The standard edition of Blake’s works.
———. The Early Illuminated Books, ed. Morris Eaves et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
Superbly annotated color facsimiles of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and other works.
———. Songs of Innocence and of Experience, ed. Andrew Lincoln (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
A splendidly annotated color facsimile edition.
———. William Blake Archive. A magnificent Web site at the University of Virginia, constantly being enlarged, offering the complete text of Blake’s works and superb color reproductions of his “illuminated books”
(http://www.blakearchive.org/main.html).
Boswell, James. Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763, ed. Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950;
reprinted, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). Superbly annotated and very readable edition of Boswell’s most engaging journal.
———. The Journals of James Boswell, 1760–1795, ed. John Wain (London: Heinemann, 1991). An excellent selection of excerpts from the long sequence of diaries that Boswell kept throughout his life.
Bunyan, John. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, ed. W. R. Owens (New York: Penguin, 1987). A moving spiritual autobiography, recounting a life of painful psychological struggle but also of intense commitment.
———. The Pilgrim’s Progress, ed. Roger Sharrock (New York: Penguin, 1965). The classical allegory of the self’s combat against its own unworthy impulses and its journey to ultimate integration.
Descartes, René. Discourse on Method and Related Writings, trans. Desmond M. Clarke (New York: Penguin, 1999). A foundational work of modern philosophy, arguing from a rationalist position that Enlightenment thinkers would later critique.
Diderot, Denis. Jacques the Fatalist, trans. Michael Henry (New York: Penguin, 1986). A fine translation that conveys much of the narrative energy of the original.
———. Rameau’s Nephew and D’Alembert’s Dream, trans. Leonard Tancock (New York: Penguin, 1966). A fine translation with excellent explanatory material.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. Kenneth Silverman (New York: Penguin, 1986). A good edition of this widely available work, with some interesting selections as well from Franklin’s essays and letters.
Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. David Womersley (New York:
Penguin, 2001). An excellent selection of chapters from Gibbon’s masterpiece, also available from Penguin in a three-volume unabridged edition.
———. Memoirs of My Life, ed. Betty Radice (New York: Penguin, 1984). The relatively impersonal but highly intelligent account of a literary career.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan, ed. C. B. MacPherson (New York: Penguin, 1982). A powerful theory that bases social and political life on brute power and proposes a behaviorist theory of psychology as its corollary.
Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Martin Bell (New York: Penguin, 1970). One of Hume’s most accessible and stimulating works.
———. My Own Life, reprinted in various collections of his work, such as Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987). A brief and curiously dispassionate overview of Hume’s life as he saw it at the very end.
———. A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary Norton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Convenient edition prepared by leading Hume scholars.
Johnson, Samuel. Samuel Johnson, ed. Donald J. Greene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974). The best collection of Johnson’s writings in print; includes the full text of Rasselas.
Laclos, Choderlos de. Les Liaisons Dangereuses, trans. P.W.K. Stone (London: Penguin, 1961). A fine translation.
Lafayette, Mme. de. The Princesse de Clèves, trans. Robin Buss (New York: Penguin, 1992). An excellent and conveniently available modern translation.
La Rochefoucauld, François, Duc de. Maxims, trans. Leonard Tancock (New York: Penguin, 1959). Trenchant aphorisms on human pride and self-deception, by a close friend of Mme. de Lafayette.
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Roger Woolhouse (New York: Penguin, 1997). A good recent edition of Locke’s magnum opus.
Pascal, Blaise. Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (New York: Penguin, 1995). A religious classic that stresses human pride, subjection to sin, and desperate need for divine intervention.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). A faithful and very readable translation of Rousseau’s autobiographical masterpiece.
———. A Discourse on Inequality, trans. Maurice Cranston (New York: Penguin, 1984). Excellent translation and introduction by a political scientist who was also Rousseau’s most recent biographer.
———. Émile, or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979). A superb edition, with excellent introduction and notes, of Rousseau’s great treatise on education.
———. Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. Peter France (New York: Penguin, 1979). A fine translation that catches the flavor of Rousseau’s most eloquent book.
———. The Social Contract, trans. Maurice Cranston (New York: Penguin, 1968). Companion volume to the same translator’s Discourse on Inequality.
Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). An excellent modern edition of Smith’s psychological and social theory.
———. The Wealth of Nations, ed. Andrew Skinner, 2 vols., (New York: Penguin, 1999). Convenient modern edition of a foundational work of modern economics.
Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, ed. Christopher Ricks and Melvyn New (New York:
Penguin, 1997). The novel that inspired Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist.
Voltaire. Candide and Other Stories, trans. Roger Pearson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). A translation that catches much of Voltaire’s supple wit and includes Zadig and other important fables, as well as Candide.
———. The History of Charles XII, King of Sweden, trans. Antonia White (London: Folio Society, 1976). A briskly told but psychologically unpersuasive account of a once-famous military figure.
Secondary Sources:
There are innumerable studies, many of them very valuable, on the various aspects of cultural and literary history covered in this course. The following list is confined to selected works that avoid undue specialization and will engage the interest of the general reader; all of them are mentioned in the “Suggested Reading” sections of the lecture outlines.
Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: Norton, 1971). Classic and very readable study of the tradition that developed Rousseauian insights.Ackroyd, Peter. Blake (New York: Knopf, 1996). An excellent biography, which gives a good sense of Blake’s art and thought, as well as recounting his life.
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Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1981). Influential theoretical investigation of the importance of dialogue, as opposed to
“monologic” authorship, in much of modern literature.
Bate, Walter Jackson. Samuel Johnson (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1977). A Pulitzer Prize–winning biography by the greatest modern Johnsonian: excellent introduction to Johnson’s life and writings.
Bennett, Jonathan. Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). Somewhat technical but a stimulating critique of empiricist thought from the perspective of a modern philosopher.
Brands, H. W. The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Anchor, 2000). Thorough biography, drawing on the extensive resources of modern scholarship.
Brewer, John. The Pleasures of Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). An enjoyable and well-illustrated overview of cultural and artistic development.
Brooks, Peter. The Novel of Worldliness: Crébillon, Marivaux, Laclos, Stendhal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969). A brilliant presentation of an important French tradition, valuable for La Princesse de Clèves, as well as Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
Broome, H. J. Pascal (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1966). An excellent introduction.
Brown, Greg. Songs of Innocence and of Experience (St. Paul, MN: Red House Records, cassette and CD).
Impressive musical settings of the songs, with rich instrumental accompaniment.
Carnochan, W. B. Gibbon’s Solitude: The Inward World of the Historian (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987). Interesting attempt to see traces of Gibbon’s temperament in his magisterial history.
Cottingham, John. The Rationalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). A good modern overview of 17th -century philosophy.
Cranston, Maurice. John Locke: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). A good place to start for readers not experienced in studying philosophy.
———. Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1754 (New York: Norton, 1983).
The first volume of a somewhat dry, but very complete and reliable, three-volume biography of Rousseau.
———. The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754–1762 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). The second volume in Cranston’s standard biography of Rousseau.
———. The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). The final volume, left partly unfinished at the time of Cranston’s death, of his biography of Rousseau.
Damrosch, Leo. Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). An extended investigation of some of the themes of this course.
———. God’s Plot and Man’s Stories: Studies in the Fictional Imagination from Milton to Fielding (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1985). Explores the development of novelistic narrative from religious writing, with chapters on Puritan experience and on Bunyan.
———. Symbol and Truth in Blake’s Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). An attempt to unravel the dilemmas and paradoxes in Blake’s thought, with particular attention to psychology.
Davies, Simon. Les Liaisons Dangereuses (London: Grant & Cutler, 1987). A good brief introduction.
DeJean, Joan. Literary Fortifications: Rousseau, Laclos, Sade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Fascinating argument connecting Laclos’s profession as a military engineer with the imaginative world of Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
France, Peter. Diderot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Very readable brief introduction.
———. Rousseau: Confessions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). A good brief introduction.
Frye, Northrop. Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947). The classic introduction to Blake’s myth, by a great critic.
Furbank, P. N. Diderot: A Critical Biography (New York: Knopf, 1992). A lively and interesting biography with valuable interpretations of Diderot’s works.
Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. I: The Rise of Modern Paganism and vol. II: The Science of Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1966, 1969). A very readable overview of the Enlightenment move to secular interpretation of human life.
Gay, Peter. Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). A fine study of Voltaire’s passionately committed reformist activism.
Goldmann, Lucien. The Hidden God: A Study of Tragic Vision in the Pensées of Pascal and the Tragedies of Racine, trans. Philip Thody (New York: Humanities Press, 1964). A challenging and thought-provoking study of the sociological implications of Jansenist belief.
Hill, Christopher. A Tinker and a Poor Man: John Bunyan and His Church (New York: Norton, 1990). A readable account of Bunyan’s life and thought by a great historian.
Hulliung, Mark. The Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). Stimulating account of the ways in which Rousseau threatened his erstwhile colleagues among the philosophes by critiquing their ideas from the inside.
Kelly, Christopher. Rousseau’s Exemplary Life: The Confessions as Political Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987). Shows how Rousseau’s social and political ideas are implicit in his autobiography, with interesting interpretations of some important episodes in his life.
Lafayette, Mme. de. The Princess of Clèves, ed. John D. Lyons (New York: Norton, 1994). Includes a good selection of modern essays on the novel.
Lewis, C. S. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1964). A brilliant account of the premodern picture of man and the universe that Enlightenment thinkers sought to replace.
Livingston, Donald W. Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
Considers Hume’s philosophy in the context of his political and historical thought.
Martin, Peter. A Life of James Boswell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). A good overview of Boswell’s life, including the later years that Pottle’s biography didn’t reach.
Mason, Haydn. Voltaire (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975). A brief, readable account of Voltaire’s career.
Mason, Haydn. Voltaire: A Biography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981). Another brief, readable account of Voltaire’s career.
Melzer, Arthur. The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau’s Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). A readable exploration of Rousseau’s thinking about society, arguing persuasively that apparent contradictions can be seen as contributing to a larger unity.
Moore, W. G. La Rochefoucauld: His Mind and Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). The best introduction in English.
Morgan, Edmund S. Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). Briefer than the Brands biography and focused on episodes in Franklin’s life that throw light on his personality.
Mossner, Ernest C. The Life of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). The standard biography and a good introduction to Hume.
Newman, Donald A., ed. James Boswell: Psychological Interpretations (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995). A collection of essays that throws light on Boswell’s personality and problems.
Norton, David Fate. David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Skeptical Metaphysician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). Stimulating argument that Hume’s philosophical skepticism was intended to reinforce confidence in the common wisdom of the human race.
Porter, Roy. The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment (New York: Norton, 2000). Spirited account of the significance of the British contribution to the Enlightenment, with an emphasis on social history.
Pottle, Frederick A. James Boswell: The Earlier Years, 1740–1769 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1985). Masterful biography by the editor of the London Journal and the other Boswell papers at Yale, covering the most interesting years of Boswell’s life.
Roche, Daniel. France in the Enlightenment, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). Superb survey of all aspects of political and cultural life.
Rosbottom, Ronald. Laclos (Boston: Twayne, 1978). A good brief guide to this brilliant but rather shadowy figure.
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Starobinski, Jean. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988). Fine translation of the greatest single book on Rousseau, by a brilliant Genevan writer; full of insights into Rousseau’s personality and ideas.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). A richly detailed survey of philosophical thinking about the self, from ancient times to the present day.
Tuck, Richard. Hobbes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). A good recent introduction to Hobbes’s thought.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957). Classic study of the development of novelistic realism, concentrating on the 18th century in England.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Routledge, 2001). A major classic of historical sociology, full of interest for anyone studying Benjamin Franklin and Adam Smith.
Williams, Bernard. Descartes: The Project of Pure Inquiry (New York: Penguin, 1978). Valuable introduction by a major modern philosopher.
Wokler, Robert. Rousseau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Brief, reliable survey of Rousseau’s intellectual career.
Woolhouse, Roger S. The Empiricists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Good overview of empiricist philosophy.