1) Definition (CUET-ready)
The Enlightenment (roughly late 17th to 18th century, varying by region) is an intellectual movement emphasising:
- reason and rational inquiry,
- empiricism and scientific method,
- skepticism toward inherited authority (church, monarchy, superstition),
- progress and reform,
- the idea that human institutions can be improved through knowledge.
In literary studies, “Enlightenment” is both:
- a historical-intellectual climate, and
- a set of aesthetic and critical values influencing literature (especially prose, satire, essay, and neoclassical norms).
2) Historical and philosophical foundations (conceptual clarity)
A) Reason and critique of authority
Enlightenment thinkers challenge:
- tradition as unquestionable truth,
- revelation as the only source of knowledge,
- feudal and clerical power.
B) Empiricism and the “public sphere”
New institutions:
- coffeehouses, journals, pamphlets,
- expanding reading public,
- debate culture.
C) Progress and universalism
A key Enlightenment assumption:
- “Reason” is universal and can ground ethics and politics. Later critique notes:
- “universal reason” can mask Eurocentric and imperial biases.
Interlink: Postcolonialism (critique of Enlightenment universalism), Marxism (ideology), structuralism/post-structuralism (critique of foundational reason).