Enlightenment Communications
Professor William B. Warner
The Enlightenment was a movement in European thought, located in time between the Renaissance and the Romantic periods, which emphasized the centrality of skepticism about received ideas, independent critical thought, and the invention of new systems of knowledge (science, history, literary criticism). Those particiapting in this movement commited themselves to the process of enlightenment. Those leading the scientific, economic and political revolutions of the period ascribed an ethical value to their turning away from the darkness, superstition and rusticity they ascribed to the past and turning toward the truthful light of a future that promised collective liberation. We shall study the Enlightenment by focusing upon four related projects of the period: the free circulation of print as the matrix for public culture; the two-way correspondence between colonial periphery and imperial center, the production and consumption of entertainment, and the making of revolution. Each is a form of enlightenment communication, and each plays a pivotal role in shaping the culture of the period.
