Epistolary Epistemologies: Montagu's Turkish Letters

So many things come to mind when exploring Montagu's famous embassy letters: women in the public sphere, the appropriation of Eastern fashions--textile, textual, the inculcation of Eastern medicine (smallpox inoculation), unsettling orientalism and notions of Enlightenment envoys and voyeurism that service the construction of racial "Others." We will read as much as we can of Montagu's collection of letters--the complete collection is under the project gutenberg link below--but specific famous passages that are considered crucial reads are under the norton link for easy accessibility. We hope to see you on Thursday, October 30th, 2 p.m. at Sweet Claire's on Third Street. We will also be planning our two "Dinner With..." events which will likely center around (Event 1) Swift and (Event 2) The Wordsworths to round out the term.



Readings

Turkish Letters (Complete Edition)
Selections of Turkish Letters (Norton)

Pride & Prejudice, the Play!: A Theatrical Outing

Pride and Prejudice is coming to the IU Theatre! On Thursday, November 6th, our reading group will *NOT* hold a regular meeting. Instead, we will head out on Friday, November 7th, to see a stage adaptation of Austen's most popular novel. Here's the plan:

Dinner and Drinks @ Lennie's on 10th Street, 5:30 p.m.

Walk/Drive over to Ruth N Halls Theatre on Campus @ 7 p.m. for a 7:30 p.m. curtain.

Tickets are $15.00 with student ID, though we can get a group discount if we get more than 10 people to go for $12.00 a piece. Please do not forget your student ID or they will not let you into the theatre with a student ticket.

We are hoping to book as a group so we can get seats together, so please contact us via facebook or via e-mail at raseiler@indiana.edu if you would like to go. Partners / friends welcome to tag along!

Here's a link to the advert: http://www.indiana.edu/~thtr/productions/2014/prideandprejudice.shtml

Radcliffe's The Italian

Thursday, October 23rd, we will be reading Ann Radcliffe's shorter gothic novel, The Italian (1797). Join us at Sweet Claire's at 2 p.m. See below for a link to a free version of the full text!

Link to text:

The Italian

We hope to see you there!

Poetry Week! Smith & Cowper

This upcoming week (Thursday, Oct 16th) we are focusing on the works of two brilliant Romantic British poets, William Cowper and Charlotte Smith.

Click on the titles of the works below for links to full text. As always, read through what you can of the suggested list--but come with ideas and questions nonetheless!

Cowper
Book I of The Task (1785)
"The Castaway"(1799)

Optional:
"Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce; Or, the Slave-Trader in the Dumps" (1788)

Smith
Beachy Head (1807)
From Elegiac Sonnets (1800):

• "On being cautioned against walking on a Headland overlooking the Sea, because it was frequented by a Lunatic" 
• "The Dead Beggar"
• "Ode to Death"
• "To Dependance" 

Optional: 

The Emigrants ("Dedication: To William Cowper, Esq" and "Book the First") (1793)

We hope to see you on Thursday, October 16th, from 2 - 3 p.m. at Sweet Claire's on Third Street. We will also be discussing our first "Dinner with...." night, discussing which faculty and author we would like to invite to kick-start our most popular (read: populated!) series!

This week -- Descartes & Montaigne

Hi everyone!

Thanks to everyone for last week's excellent discussion of Equiano! For this week, we will be reading selections from Descartes and Montaigne. We'll be looking at three of Montaigne's Essais and Descartes Discourse on Method. You need not read all of Discourse, though it is not terribly long. What's important are his ideas about doubt, so you can read/skim for that topic.

Montaigne's Essais

"That the Soul Expends Its Passions Upon False Objects, Where the True Are Wanting"
"On the Education of Children"
"That it is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity"

Optional:
"Of Liars"
"Of Books"
"Of Friendship"

Descartes:
Discourse on Method

You might always be interested in Descarte's Meterology, originally published with Discourse, but I couldn't find a copy online. Feel free to bring it if you have it.

Finally, since what connects Descartes & Montaigne is their rejection of Aristotle, it might be useful to check out the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Aristotle, and specifically his four causes. 

Once again, we'll be meeting at Sweet Claire's on 3rd street Thursday from 2-3pm. We look forward to seeing you there!