Samuel Johnson reading (Joshua Reynolds)
A Syllabus
Where a great proportion of the people are suffered to languish in helpless misery, that country must be ill policed, and wretchedly governed: a decent provision for the poor, is the true test of civilization. — Samuel Johnson
For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at George University
Day: Six Wednesdays
June 26 to July 31
4215 Roberts Road, Tallwood, Fairfax, Va.
Dr Ellen Moody
Description of Course
The Enlightenment: At Risk
It’s been suggested the ideas associated with the European Enlightenment, a belief in people’s ability to act rationally, ideals of social justice, human rights, toleration, education for all, in scientific method, are more at risk than any time since the 1930s. In this course we’ll ask what was & is meant by the term, how & why did this movement spread, against what obstacles, what were the realities of the era and what were the new genres & forms of art that emerged. Our focus will be on select works by three major figures: Voltaire’s Letters on England, Diderot’s The Nun, Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands. We will also see Peter Watkins’s docudrama, Culloden (1965). It is asked that before class starts, people obtain and read Dorinda Outram’s The Enlightenment: New Approaches to European History.
Required Texts (in the order we’ll read them):
Voltaire, Letters on England, trans. Leonard Tancock. 1980; rpt. NY: Penguin, 2005.
Diderot, Denis. The Nun, trans., introd. Russell Goulbourne. 2005: rpt. NY: Oxford, 2008.
Johnson, Samuel. A Journey to the Western Islands in Scotland, together with Boswell’s The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, ed., introd. notes, Peter Levi. NY: Penguin, 1984.
(Alternative: Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, Journey to the Hebrides, ed., introd. Ian McGowan. 1996; rpt: Edinburgh: Canongate, 2001. ISBN 978-0-86241-4
Jean Huber, Voltaire Planting Trees, 1775 (click to enlarge).
Format: The class will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion. Read for the first day on-line Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html
June 26: What do we mean by this term? Voltaire: life & career. Values embodied: list of good and bad buzz words. The 4 Revolutions. For next week read Letters on England.
July 3: Voltaire, Letters on England. Diderot: life, career, Encyclopedie, On Slavery, Art Criticism. Read for next time, “Eloge de Richardson” (“In Praise of Richardson”) online at Diderot site and Eloge de Richardson
July 9: Diderot’s The Nun. Introducing Scotland, Jacobites & Jacobins
July 17: Peter Watkins’s Culloden
July 24: London & Edinburgh: Johnson and English enlightenment (biographer, edition of Shakespeare, essays). Begin Journey to Western Islands in Scotland.
July 31: Finish Johnson; brief lecture on Madame Roland, Mary Wollstonecraft and the struggles of 1790s in France.
Johnson and Boswell’s route through Scotland (click to enlarge)
Bibliography: Supplementary reading:
Brewer, John. Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century. University of Chicago, 1897.
Buchan, James. Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh’s Moment of the Mind. London: Harper Collins 2003.
Cobb, Richard & Colin Jones, ed. Voices of the French Revolution. NY: HarperCollins, 1998.
Curran, Andrew. Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely. NY: Other Press, 2009.
Davidson, Ian. Voltaire in Exile. NY: Grove, 2004.
Diderot, Denis. Selected Writings on Art and French Literature, ed, trans. introd. Geoffrey Bremner. Penguin, 1994.
————–. Letters to Sophie Volland, a selection translated by Peter France. London: Oxford, 1972.
Greene, Donald. Samuel Johnson. Boston: Twayne, 1989
McLynn, Frank. The Jacobites. Law Book Co of Australasia, 1985.
Mitford, Nancy. Voltaire in Love, introd. Adam Gopnik. NY: New York Review of Books, 2012. A classic.
Outram, Dorinda. The Enlightenment. 3rd edition. London: Cambridge, 2013
Prebble, John. Culloden, The Highland Clearances. Both Plimico, new edition 2002.
Roland, Marie-Jeanne. Memoirs of Madame Roland, trans, ed. Evelyn Shuckburgh Paris: Mercure de France, 1990.
Trouille, Mary. Sexual Politics in the Enlightenment: Women Read Rousseau. State University Press of NY, 1997.
Wain, John. Samuel Johnson. NY: VIking Press, 1974.
Williams, Helen Maria. Letters Written in France, ed. Neil Fristat & Susan Lanser. Ontario: Broadview, 2001.
Yalom, Marilyn. Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women’s Memory. NY: Basic Books, 1994.
Diderot
Madame Roland (probably drawn while she was in prison)
Films:
Culloden. Dir, Peter Watkins. Fictional documentary. Featuring: Tony Cosgrove, Olivier Espitalier-Noel, Don Fairservice. BBC, 1968.
La Nuit de Varennes. Dir. Ettore Scuola. Script. Sergeo Armidei. Featuring: Jean-Louis Barrault, Marcello Mastroianni, Hanna Schygulla, Harvey Keitel. Opera Film, 1982
The Nun. Dir., Script. Guillaume Nicoloux. Featuring: Pauline Etienne, Isabelle Huppert, Martha Gedeck, François Négret. Les films de Worso, 2013.
The whole of Culloden online:
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 
[…] the second phase of summer teaching and courses began: I started my second course (at OLLI at Mason, The Enlightenment: At Risk?) and the class is much much more enthusiastic, we had a rousing time this past Wednesday. Even I am […]