French Studies 444 - EighteenthCenturyTheatre&Novel

The French Enlightenment involved a critical renewal of European political and philosophical self-understanding through an iconoclastic revision of literary and philosophical representational forms associated with the ancien regime. This ?renewal? entailed a rethinking of the role of reason in political and social life, a re-conception of gender relations, and a redefinition of Europe?s relationship with non-European cultures. We will follow the staging of this triple agenda in the works (novels and plays) of Montesquieu, Beaumarchais, Marivaus, Rousseau, Diderot, Laclos, Prevost, Voltaire, and other luminaries of the Encyclopedie movement.