Choudhury, Moinak2023-11-282023-11-282023-05https://hdl.handle.net/11299/258716University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2023. Major: English. Advisor: Timothy Brennan. 1 computer file (PDF); ii, 221 pages.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.enAutodidactEducationEighteenth-CenturyEnlightenmentProgress NarrativesSovereigntyThesis or Dissertation