Autodidacts: Eighteenth-Century Progress Narratives and the Limits of Enlightenments

Abstract

This project describes how eighteenth-century progress narratives conceived the autodidact as an antagonist. Before the nineteenth century transformed it into an emblem of self-reliance, it was a reminder of the perils of undisciplined learning. This errant character diverged from literary experiments with liberal individualism to highlight its anxieties about self-governance. In this regard, I suggest that the autodidact was a marginal figure at two junctures in the eighteenth century: hierarchies of position—the metropole and the periphery; and debates on scientific methods of inquiry. These two critical approaches, I propose, will expand autodidacticism's literary history and contribute to eighteenth-century and postcolonial studies.