Enlightenment Energy: Comedy, Eroticism, and the Grotesque

3 units

In this course we will examine works in which the comic, the erotic, and the grotesque--base urges that eighteenth-century audiences deplored yet found entertaining--made inroads into the literature of the time. The Enlightenment was highly suspicious of impulses and intuitions that challenged or escaped the bounds of virtue, sentiment, and reason. French philosophes debated whether genius lay in the supreme mastery or the spontaneous creation of art, whether talent was inborn or could be acquired through practice. Reading texts that span the long eighteenth century, by authors such as Molière, Marivaux, Crébillon fils, Voltaire, Diderot, Restif de la Bretonne, Beaumarchais, Sade, and Hugo, we will investigate how the satirical, the bawdy, and the profane served as the wellspring of Enlightenment inspiration, giving rise to visions of an ideal society. Prereq: Fr 325 and Fr 326 or one of these courses and the equivalent WU transfer literature course from Toulouse or Paris. One-hour preceptorial for required for undergraduates.