Virtue, Vice, and the Commercial Society in Early Modern Literature

3 credits · Undergraduate

An important development in early modern Europe is the emergence of the commercial society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The course will consider literary works by authors who grappled with the moral implications of the growth of commercial society in Europe, particularly in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. These authors sought to understand and to some extent criticize the notion of a society chiefly devoted to the acquisition of economic wealth. Furthermore, they employed literary genres such as travel literature and satire to explore the changing conceptions of virtue and vice in Europe, thus presenting often ambiguous treatments of commercial society. As well, reference will be made throughout to other philosophical and artistic works of the period. FORMATS: Lecture | Seminar