Enlightenment | Essays and Criticism

  • Comparing the Grand Inquisitor

    Bussey holds a master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies and a bachelor’s degree in English literature. She is an independent writer specializing in literature. In the following essay, Bussey compares the Grand Inquisitor in Voltaire’s Candide to literature’s most famous Grand Inquisitor, who appears in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. By comparing these parallel characters from different literary movements, she sheds light on the Enlightenment as a whole.

  • Sensuousness in the Poetry of Eighteeth-Century Women Poets

    In the following essay, Doody examines the exploration and treatment of sensuousness, including that of the natural world, in poetry by women in the eighteenth century.