Thomas More’s Utopia in the early 16th century created a genre of writing and a mode of thought that
was to have a longstanding fortune in Britain. Besides a strong tradition of utopian writing, revolutionary
moments prompted attempts at realizing utopia on earth. Think of the Owenist industrial communities
in the early nineteenth century. Think also of the ‘Diggers’ of the 1650s English Revolution, who earned
their nickname because took their spades and dug up a wasteland in Surrey, establishing a short-lived
communistic colony of Puritan saints. This seminar explores the intertwining of revolutionary junctures
in Britain, utopian thought and/or practical realizations, and their impact on gender relations.

This course addresses itself to students of civilisation, literature and linguistics. Students will
construct their corpus of study and choose their own critical approach.
Utopia lends itself to many kinds of approaches, including intellectual history, the history of
political movements (during the English Revolution of the 1640, the French Revolution, etc.),
translation, literary studies (utopia as a genre, wordplay, onomastics, narratological perspectives...) and
linguistics (imagined languages, metalinguistic comments, eg Thomas Spence’s phonetic alphabet).

Bibliographie (sélection) :

Une bibliographie plus précise sera fournie en cours de séminaire.

• BEETON, Isabella. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. (Oxford World’s Classics).
• BOSWELL, James. London Journal: 1762-1763. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.
• BOSWELL, James. Life of Johnson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. (Oxford World's Classics).
• BURNEY, Frances. Evelina: Or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World. Several editions (OUP World’s classics, Penguin).
• OGEE, Frédéric, et alii, William Hogarth, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 2006.
• SMOLLETT, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Ed. L. M. Knapp, P.-G. Boucé. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. (Oxford World’s Classics).
• STEELE, Richard, and Joseph ADDISON, Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator, ed. Angus Ross. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988.

Secondary sources (selection):

• Leaves, 10 (2020) : Pies in the Sky            https://climas.u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr/leaves
• La Sociabilité en France et en Grande-Bretagne au siècle des Lumières. Paris : Editions Le Manuscrit. 7 vols to date.
• BICKHAM, Troy O. Eating the Empire: Food and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Reaktion Books, 2020.
• CAPDEVILLE, Valérie, and KERHERVE, Alain, eds. British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century. Woodbridge, Suffolk ; Rochester, NY: Boydell and Brewer, 2019.
• CLARK, Peter. British Clubs and Societies, 1580-1800: The Origins of an Associational World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• HABERMAS, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. MIT Press, 1999.
• LUDINGTON, Charles. The Politics of Wine in Britain: A New Cultural History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
• MEE, Jon. Conversable Worlds: Literature, Contention, and Community 1762 to 1830. Oxford University Press, 2011.