Module Identifier |
EN32520 |
Module Title |
GENDER AND ROMANTICISM |
Academic Year |
2005/2006 |
Co-ordinator |
Dr Richard J Marggraf-Turley |
Semester |
Semester 1 |
Course delivery |
Seminars / Tutorials | 10 x 2-hour seminar workshops |
Assessment |
Assessment Type | Assessment Length/Details | Proportion |
Semester Assessment | 2 X 2,500 WORD ESSAYS Continuous Assessment: 2 x 2,500 word essays | 100% |
Supplementary Assessment | RESUBMIT FAILED ELEMENTS Resubmit any failed elements and/or make good any missing elements. Where this involves re-submission of work, a new topic must be selected. | |
|
Learning outcomes
On completion of the module students should typically be able to:
1. locate and discuss issues relating to gender in their cultural and historical context;
2. demonstrate an ability to write about literary texts in the light of recent critical debates;
3. construct focused and well-structured arguments;
4. engage in coherent oral discussion of the material studied.
Aims
Brief description
This module will explore the writings of the Romantic period in relation to the changing social history of the time, concentrating in particular on issues of gender. During the years which bridged the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries social attitudes and behaviour with regard to gender were in a state of flux, in transience from the emergent feminism of late eighteenth-century radicalism to the rigid polarization of gender roles characteristic of the Victorian epoch. In this option we will be looking at the works of both male and female writers of the period to examine the manner in which such changes found expression in literary texts.
Content
The module will be taught by means of weekly two-hour seminars.
Seminar 1: Introductiory Session
-
General discussion of module and basic issues raised by the study of literature of the Romantic period.
PART A: Gender and Social Change (2 seminars)
Seminar 2: A Woman Alone
-
Text: Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark
Seminar 3: Free Love?
-
Texts: William Godwin, Memoirs of the Author of the Rights of Woman (included with the Penguin edition of Mary Wollstonecraft, A Short Residence: see below, Reading Lists); Mary Hays, The Memoirs of Emma Courtney
PART B: Feminine Genres and their Detractors (4 seminars)
Seminar 4: Sensibility and the Fictionalization of Feminism
-
Texts: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary and Maria (in Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary and Maria; and Mary Shelley, Mathilda)
Seminar 5: Anti-Sensibility
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Text: Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Seminar 6: Women and the Gothic
-
Text: Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest
Seminar 7: Mocking the Gothic
-
Text: Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey
PART C: Male Romanticism (3 seminars)
Seminar 8: Recasting Masculinity
-
Texts: Byron, 'Don Juan', or some other poem; Coleridge, `Christabel', `Fears in Solitude', 'This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison', 'To William Wordsworth' and extracts from the Notebooks.
Seminar 9: Negative Capabilities
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Texts: John Keats: `Ode to Psyche', `Ode on Melancholy', `Ode on Indolence', `Lamia' and `La Belle Dame Sans Merci'; extracts (provided) from the Letters; Shelley, `Adonais'.
Seminar 10: Masculinity Unbound?
-
Texts: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; and Matilda (in Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary and Maria; Mary Shelley, Mathilda)
See below for editions of the primary texts.
Reading Lists
Books
** Should Be Purchased
Mary Wollstonecraft (1987) Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark
Harmondsworth: Penguin
Mary Hays (1994) The Memoirs of Emma Courtney
Oxford: Oxford University Press
Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley (ed. Janet Todd) (1985) Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary and Maria; Mary Shelley, Mathilda
Harmondsworth: Penguin
Jane Austen (1985) Sense and Sensibility
Harmondsworth: Penguin
Ann Radcliffe (1994) The Romance of the Forest
Oxford: Oxford University Press
Jane Austen (1985) Northanger Abbey
Harmondsworth: Penguin
John Keats (ed. John Barnard) (1997) The Complete Poems
3rd edn, Harmondsworth: Penguin
Mary Shelley (1994) Frankenstein
Oxford: Oxford University Press
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 6