Autodidacts: Eighteenth-Century Progress Narratives and the Limits of Enlightenments
2023-05
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Autodidacts: Eighteenth-Century Progress Narratives and the Limits of Enlightenments
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2023-05
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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.
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University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2023. Major: English. Advisor: Timothy Brennan. 1 computer file (PDF); ii, 221 pages.
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Choudhury, Moinak. (2023). Autodidacts: Eighteenth-Century Progress Narratives and the Limits of Enlightenments. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/258716.
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