An autumn syllabus: The Enlightenment: At Risk?

Jean Huber, Voltaire Planting Trees, 1775 (click to enlarge).

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

“Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes — Pangloss, Voltaire, Candide .

For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University
Day: Eleven Mondays,
Sept 24 to Dec 3
4801 Massachusetts Ave, NW. Washington DC
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 Voltaire’s Candide, Diderot’s The Nun, Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands, and an abridged edition of Madame Roland’s Memoirs. But we will also see clips from films, and I’ll offer a group of famous on-line texts (in the philosophical treatise vein), which people are free to peruse or not for further context. It is suggested that before class starts, people obtain and read Dorinda Outram’s The Enlightenment: New Approaches to European History.

Garand, Diderot (1760)

Required Texts (in the order we’ll read them):

Voltaire, Candide, trans. Robert M. Adams, ed. NIcholas Cronk. 1966; rpt. NY: Norton, 2016. 978-393-93252-2
(Alternative: Voltaire, Candide, Zadig and Selected Stories, trans. Donald Frame, ed. John Iverson, afteward Thaisa Frank. 1961; rpt. NY: Signet, 2009.978-0-451-53115-5
Diderot, Denis. The Nun, trans., introd. Leonard Tancock. NY: Penguin, 1974. ISBN 978-0-140-44300-4
(Alternative: Diderot, Denis. The Nun, trans., introd. Russell Goulbourne. 2005: rpt. NY: Oxford, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-955524-6)
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. ISBN:0-14-043221-3
(Alternative: Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, Journey to the Hebrides, ed., introd. Ian McGowan. 1996; rpt: Edinburgh: Canongate, 2001. ISBN 978-0-86241-4
Johnson, Samuel: Oxford Authors, ed. Donald Greene. NY: Oxford, 1984.
Roland, Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, Memoirs of Madame Roland: A Heroine of the Revolution, trans, abridged, introd. Evelyn Shuckburgh. NY: Moyer Bell, 1990. ISBN 1-55921-014-1. It is nowadays available in paperback.

Johnson and Boswell’s route through Scotland (click to enlarge)

Format: The class will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.

Sept 24th: 1st week. Introd. What do we mean by this term? Overview of course. For next week read Letters on the English 5-11, 13; and all of Candide.

Oct 1st: 2nd week: Clip from La Nuit de Varennes; Voltaire, life, career. For next week finish or reread Candide, and Letters on England, 15-16, 18, 23-24. Also Roy Wolpert, “The Gull in the Garden,” Eighteenth Century Studies, 3:2 (1969):265-77. For those who bought the Norton, J. G. Weightman’s “The Quality of Candide,” pp 175-88.

Oct 8th: 3rd week: Candide & Letters on England. For next week, read one-half of Diderot’s The Nun.

Oct 15th:  Voltaire’s life and career;  then introduction to Diderot, life, career. The Encyclopedia, On Slavery, other works. For next week, finish Diderot’s The Nun.

Oct 22nd: Clips from Candide?  Diderot; career, Eloge de Richardson, Rameau’s Nephew, The Nun, introducing Johnson

Oct 29th: 6th week Clips from 2013 film, Finish discussion of Diderot. Introducing Scotland, Jacobitism,  Johnson and English enlightenment:

Nov 5th: 7th week. Johnson biography. Dictionary, Shakespeare.   ?ourney to the Western Islands of Scotland, Boswell’s Tour of Hebrides.

Nov 12th: 8th  Culloden; Discuss movies

Nov 19th: 9th week:  Finish Johnson; Begin Madame Roland and the 1790s in France, England, Ireland, US

Nov 26th: 10th week French Revolution seen from outlook of Roland Memoirs. Helen Maria Williams, Letters from France

Dec 3rd: 11th week. More on French revolution, 1781-1995; going over Roland’s text; final thoughts on what’s at risk; Richard Feynman’s Address to the Academy of Sciences upon his resignation

Stills from La Nuit de Varennes

Bibliography: Supplementary reading:

Blum, Carol. Diderot: The Virtue of a Philosopher. NY Viking, 1974. Very readable reasonably short biography.
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.
Craveri, Benedetta, trans. Teresa Waugh. Madame du Deffand and Her World. Boston: Godine, 1994. One chapter on her correspondence with Voltaire.
Davidson, Ian. Voltaire in Exile. NY: Grove, 2004. You’ll learn a lot about Voltaire.
Diderot, Denis. Selected Writings on Art and French Literature, ed, trans. introd. Geoffrey Bremner. Penguin, 1994.
Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew, trans., intro. Leonard Tancock. NY: Penguin, 1966. Also Gutenberg pdf at University of Australia. http://tems.umn.edu/pdf/Diderot-RameausNephew.pdf
Diderot, Éloge de Richardon [In praise of Richardson], translated online: http://graduate.engl.virginia.edu/enec981/dictionary/25diderotC1.html
Greene, Donald. Samuel Johnson. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Has the real merit of presenting Johnson apart from Boswell.
Johnson, Samuel. Selected Writings, ed. Patrick Cruttwell. 1968; rpt. NY: Penguin, 1986. Wonderful choices of texts. You emerge with a good picture of Johnson and having read some of his finest texts.
Hitchings, Henry. The world in 38 Chapters, or Dr Johnson’s Guide to Life; Defining the World: The extraordinary story of Johnson’s Dictionary. Macmillan, 2018; Picador (Farrar, Strauss Giroux), 2006.
Yale Digital Works: http://www.yalejohnson.com/frontend/node/1 Complete Works.
Kant, Immanuel. “What is Enlightenment.” 1784. Online: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html
May, Gita. Madame Roland and the Age of Revolution NY: Columbia, 1970. Superlative.
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, Jeanne-Marie Phlippon. Memoires of Madame Roland, complete, unabridged, ed. C.A. Daudan. Paris, 1864. Elibon facsimile reprint
Shenker, Israel. In the Footsteps of Johnson and Boswell. NY: Oxford UP, 1982.
Trouille, Mary. Sexual Politics in the Enlightenment: Women Read Rousseau. State University Press of NY, 1997.
Voltaire, Letters on the English, or Lettres Philosophiques. Fordham University, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1778voltaire-lettres.asp
Wain, John. Samuel Johnson. NY: VIking Press, 1974. If you can get hold of this one, it is so enjoyable.
Williams, Helen Maria. Letters Written in France, ed. Neil Fristat & Susan Lanser. Ontario: Broadview, 2001.
Wilson, Arthur. Diderot. London: Oxford UP, 1972. The standard and a great biography of the man.
Yalom, Marilyn. Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women’s Memory. NY: Basic Books, 1994. A long excellent chapter on Roland

Films:

Candide. Dir. Humphrey Burton. Script. Hugh Wheeler. Music: Leonard Bernstein. Featuring: Jerry Hadley, June Anderson, Christa Ludwig. Barbican, 1991.
Candide. Dir. Lonny Price. Script changed to Broadway comedy. Music: Marin Alsop. Featuring: Paul Groves, Kristin Chenoweth, Patti LuPone. Lincoln Center, 2004
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.

Madame Roland, circa 1790 (click to enlarge)

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The new Poldark: the third season, another handy list; The Cult of Poldark …

Demelza and Ross Poldark (Eleanor Tomlinson, Aidan Turner, the last still of this year’s first episode, both looking grim or distressed)

Demelza and Ross in front of fire. She: “If you do not challenge the corrupt and unjust, who will?” He: “What would you have me do? I am not that man, Demelza, I have never been that man [someone who seeks power, loves the grand gesture, yet blows to authority].

Ross to Warleggan: “I believe belief is a beautiful thing” — from the final episode of this season

Friends,

It’s time to bring together another year’s worth of episodes in the saga of the new Poldark mini-series. We now have three year’s worth, five and one-half of the novels. To begin with, the the first season’s episodes and blogs on topics (like mining, poaching. I wrote also of the scripts of the first season. The novels adapted were Ross Poldark and Demelza (Poldark novels 1 and 2).

For the second season, the handy list is longer than the following for the third because the series itself had more history and the scripts had been published before the season ended. The novels adapted were Jeremy Poldark and Warleggan (Poldark novels 3 and 4):

This year no scripts have yet been announced; there was intense interweaving of the personal and public where the personal became contrived and at times far too melodramatic. I wish I had had the scripts to compare to see if this impression is the result of the director’s choices. The novels adapted were The Black Moon and most of The Four Swans (Poldark novels 5 and 6).

Poldark 3:1 & 2: again changing emphases, bringing out deep sense of community

Poldark 3: 3 & 4: the difficulty of returning to material 20 years dormant

George and Elizabeth Warleggan (Heida Reed, Jack Farthing — seen as a pair intimately for the first time …., he putting jewelry on her)

Poldark 3:4 & 5: deeper emotionalism but loss of verbal subtleties; late stage capitalism replaces exciting adventure

Poldark 3:6 & 7: Coerced and reluctant relationships; Agatha’s death, Ross’s refusals, Demelza charmed

Agatha Poldark (Caroline Blakiston)

Poldark 3: 8 & 9: like a song, previously individualized scenes

I’ve been putting this year’s blogs on my site for film adaptations and cultural arts in general, but these are also films from books very much rooted in the 18th century. Next up will be a list of the second season of Outlander, a sort of companion and comparable set of films partly set in the 18th century.

Morwenna Chynoweth Whitworth and Geoffrey Charles Poldark (Elisse Chappell and Harry Marcus)

In general, this year’s season compared in the same way as the previous two did to the 1975-78 Poldark mini-series. Both depart from the books, with the older series keeping much more to values of individual liberty and social justice, revolutionary Enlightenment norms, and the newer returning us to community as safety, compromise and desperate cooperation as modes of survival for its characters. See Poldark Rebooted, Twenty Years On.

For intelligent comments by the actors on the 1970s mini-series you cannot do better than this YouTube of The cult of Poldark:

The older series is subtler and more successful in conveying complex psychologies of characters interacting; the newer one is more overtly and interestingly political, a woven tapestry of juxtaposed epitomizing scenes (at its best symbolic art, with the character no longer presences on a stage, but figures in a picture). This year was much drabber than the previous — as befitting characters growing older, wearier, yielding the world’s demands.

Compare these at the close of the first season:

A mythic Ross

An archetypal Demelza

Ellen

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