This course looks at the Enlightenment through the eyes of its greatest writers as the source of our modern sense of "self." So many areas that define us today—politics, economics, psychology, and science and technology—were invented or refined by the Enlightenment of the 18th century.

You explore Enlightenment ideas as they are expressed in its literature, especially novels, biographies, and autobiographies. Among the books covered are The Pilgrim’s Progress, Candide, The London Journal, Confessions, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

These lectures reveal how, only a short time ago, the Enlightenment gave birth to a radically new view of life that we today take for granted.