2017-2018-1

TO-ANGTSZV02-2

_Szeminárium, _Gyakorlati jegy

TO-ANGTSZV, Szabadon választható tárgyak

TO-ANGTSZV, Szabadon választható tárgyak/Any Course Seminar

Angol-Amerikai Intézet (BTK Bölcsészettudományi Kar)

heti 2.00

2

nincs korlát

konfirmálandó

Current best-sellers (e. g. The Lost Symbol) and films (e. g. National Treasure) often feature
the topic of freemasonry. Recent studies have also demonstrated that this secret society yields
significant insights into modern socio-political, religious and literary history. Virtually any short list of notables in the last three hundred years would include freemasons such as Washington, Monroe, Truman along with another twelve masonic American Presidents, five British kings, Hogarth, Scott, Burns, Kipling, and Wilde. Despite the importance of Freemasonry in the formation of the modern world this originally British institution has received little attention from British academics. This is clearly exemplified by the fact that the first British academic research centre for the study of freemasonry was founded in 2001. This course aims to explore the history of the largest secretive fraternity of the world and discuss the role that freemasons played in modern political, social and literary history. The seminar will explore, inter alia, the tensions between masonic ideology and practice; how British constitutional principles were lived out for the first time in masonic lodges; how masons learnt to act in the public sphere during their meetings; how leading academics propagated the new science of the Enlightenment during lodge nights; how the eighteenth-century mixed lodges “showed quite clearly the first stages of feminist thought” (Burke 2000, 255). We shall critically analyse these themes based upon masonic primary sources including the constitutions, rituals and official publications of the Grand Lodge of England as well as literary texts, which are concerned with masonic themes.