This course will introduce students to writing by women from its early beginnings in the Middle Ages to the present time. Students will concentrate on close readings of representative works, which register the achievements of women writing for literary fame, artistic expression, religious utterance, economic subsistence, and political resistance. The course engages with various genres and theoretical approaches.
Credits: 3
Hours: 45 (Lecture Hours: 3)
Total Weeks: 3
Prerequisites:
Any two of ENGL 100, 105, 111, OR 112
Non-Course Prerequisites:
None
Co-requisites:
None
Course Content:
Students will sample a variety of literary genres that have been especially important to writing women: polemical writings, spiritual autobiographies, conduct manuals, periodicals, poetry, and the novel. By reading and writing about these literatures, students will consider what it meant for women to read, write, and publish at specific moments in history despite their generally inferior status and exclusion from formal education. Gendered positions and constructs will be examined in tandem with ideologies of race, class, and sexuality. Themes examined may include the body, violence, religion, family, government, environment, sexual orientation, and colonization. Discussion will intersect with feminist theories and anti-racist and queer studies.
- Old and Middle English Women’s Writing, 449-1485
Medieval Letters and Practical Domestic Documents
Leoba of England and Germany, Letters
Margery Brews Paston, Letters
Men’s and Women’s Religious Prose of the Late Middle Ages
Julian of Norwich, from Showings, The Fifty-Eighth Chapter
Margery Kempe, from The Book of Margery Kempe
- Renaissance and Early Seventeenth-Century Literature, 1485-1660
Gender and Lyric Poetry
Mary Wroth, From Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Sonnets 1, 9, 25
Anne Bradstreet, “The Author to Her Book”
Margaret Cavendish, “The Poetess’s Hasty Resolution”; “The Poetess’s Petition”
- Gender and the Querelles Des Femmes
Rachel Speght, From A Muzzle for Melastomus
- Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Literature, 1660-1800
The Professionalization of Writing
Aphra Behn, The Lucky Chance, or an Alderman’s Bargain
Delarivier Manley, from The New Atlantis
Eliza Haywood, from The Female Spectator
Sexuality, Virginity, and Marriage
Katherine Philips, “To the Excellent Mrs. A. O”; “Friendship’s Mysteries”
Lady Mary Wortley Montague, “To Lady Bute”
Mary Wollstonecraft, from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
- Nineteenth-Century Literature, 1800-1900
Romanticism
Mary Shelley, Introduction to Frankenstein
Felicia Hemans, The Hebrew Mother
The Novel
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
- Modernist and Contemporary Literature, 1900-present
Innovative Uses of Language
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Literary Internationalization: Border Crossings
Trinh T. Minh-ha, “Not/ Like You: Postcolonial Women and the Interlocking Questions”
Slavenka Drakulié, “Make-up and Other Crucial Questions"
Learning Outcomes:
The aim of this course is to help students attain the necessary skills to read and to write about women’s literature in an academic manner and to pique interest in women’s literary history and the politics of gender. Students will be expected to
- Challenge themselves by reading works written in Middle and Early Modern English
- Become familiar with canonical works by women from the major literary periods
- See contrasts and resemblances between authors' presentations of themes
- Identify and describe particular genres of literature within their specific historical contexts, including domentic documents, mystics' prose, lyric poetry, polemical pamphlets, romance novellas, and the novel
- Identify women's contributions to the development of these literary genres
- Plan and write well-structured essays that offer close analyses of literary works
- Communicate ideas about literature in WebCT discussion formats
Grading System: Letters
Passing Grade: D (50%)
Percentage of Individual Work: 100
Textbooks:
Textbooks are subject to change. Please contact the bookstore at your local campus for current book lists.