Reading Transnational Cultures: Questions for Essay Two

Write an essay of approximately 800 words on one of the following topics.

The deadline for this piece of work is 2pm on Friday 29 April 2022 – please submit the
essay using the Turnitin icon in the Assessment Tile in Moodle.
Your work will be penalised if you do not address and answer the question you have
chosen, or if you do not demonstrate your own engagement with, and understanding of,
the set text(s). Where appropriate, you must also show engagement with relevant
secondary literature, with sources referenced in footnotes. Your reference to the set
works should include page references. (You will find a range of critical readings tailored to
this section of the module in the post-session section of each Week tile, and in the fuller
Reading List, in the Reading tile.)

Questions

1. ‘In Letters concerning the English Nation, English habits, customs and practices are
validated chiefly insofar as they offer a contrast with different aspects of French
culture’. Discuss this statement with detailed reference to at least TWO aspects of
English culture that are explored in Voltaire’s text. To what extent do you agree?

2. ‘The most useful books are those in which the readers themselves supply half the
meaning’ (Voltaire). Discuss this statement in relation to the comparative
perspectives dramatized in Letters concerning the English Nation. You should make
detailed reference to the text in your answer.

3. To what extent may we see Persian Letters as a narrative of Enlightenment? You

should include detailed examples from the text to develop your argument.

4. ‘The reader can glean a picture of the East and its mores, but this is of secondary
importance in a work that is primarily about seeing French and European life and
institutions from an outside perspective’. Discuss Montesquieus’ Persian Letters in
the light of this quotation – do you agree?

5. Compare the ways in which Letters concerning the English Nation and Persian Letters
use the epistolary form to allow the reader to ‘read across cultures’?