Against the eighteenth century’s so-called progress of Reason ran a countercurrent that emphasized the irrational, the emotional, and the ridiculous. Beginning with Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels & The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, the course will read comic works by authors such as Henry Fielding, Voltaire, Laurence Sterne, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Goethe, and Jane Austen. Alongside these, we will also examine traditional Enlightenment texts by thinkers such as Francis Bacon & John Locke. The course ends with David Foster Wallace's story collection, Oblivion.