Gwybodaeth Modiwlau

This module aims:

1. to develop an ability to think critically about the way in which literature has traditionally been categorised and to foreground the role of gender in the formation of literary histories;

2. to provide a detailed knowledge of texts which are evidence of alternatives or additions to the accepted canon of eighteenth-century literature;

3. to relate feminist theoretical method directly to literary texts and also to question the assumptions displayed in the theoretical propositions presented.

Seminar Programme

1. Feminist literary history: an introduction
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929)

2. Representing the woman writer
A selection of poetry by male and female writers which present images of the woman writer and female authorship.

3. Staging Women
Aphra Behn, The Feigned Courtesans (1679); The Lucky Chance (1686)

4. Constructing a Self I
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World (1666)

5. Constructing a Self II
Delariviere Manley, The Adventures of Rivella (1714)

6. Politics, Sex and Scandal I
Aphra Behn, The History of the Nun (1689) and Delariviere Manley, The Secret History of Queen Zarah (1705)

7. Politics, Sex and Scandal II
Eliza Haywood, The Adventures of Eovaai (1736)

8-10. Women and Fiction
Eliza Haywood, The British Recluse (1722) and Fantomina; or, Love in a Maze (1725); Jane Barker, Love Intrigues (1713); Penelope Aubin, The Strange Adventures of the Count de Vinevil (1721); Mary Davys, The Reform'd Coquet (1724); Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Friendship in Death (1728).

Feminist literary history presents a major challenge to traditional accounts of Restoration and early eighteenth-century literature, but what other questions are raised by a study of women's writing in this period? Is it possible (or desirable) to construct a female literary tradition that is separate from male writing? How do conceptions of femininity and female literary authority change through history? How do women writers construct their authorial identities and how does this self-fashioning shape the work they produce? What relation do women writers have to the genres they employ? To investigate these questions we will study a range of writing from poetry, drama, romance and the novel to political satire, autobiography and letter writing. In addition, the module will examine some of the key theoretical propositions of feminist theory and consider whether current models of feminist criticism and literary history help to explain the constructions of female authorship and women's writing under scrutiny.

The module will be taught in two-hour weekly seminars, which will be introduced by seminar papers. The final choice of texts will be subject to their availability.