Module Information

This is a new option developed to fill a gap in the portfolio of modules currently available for the literary studies MA. Focusing on the period 1683-1796 the module will explore a range of texts which represent groups or communities of women. Students will be asked to consider women as the writers, readers and subjects of drama, poetry and prose fiction and the extent to which female communities are celebrated and/or vilified in these texts. During the course of the module students will engage with recent scholarship and theoretical debate regarding communitarianism and the literary representation of community during the period.

Literary scholars and historians have defined women's normative roles during the Restoration and Eighteenth Century in terms of their relationships with men. However, a survey of texts from this period suggests a fascination with groups or categories of women who are devolved of direct patriarchal control. This module will consider a selection of texts written by both men and women that represent a range of female communities; nuns, prostitutes, coquettes, readers and writers. Such communities were open to a dualistic interpretation as simultaneously threatening to social stability and a staple of erotic fantasy. Both of these interpretations are driven by ides of otherness, images of unnaturalness and perceived transgressions of moral, social and religious codes of conduct. These women's communities stood not only in opposition to women's accepted domestic roles but were also directly opposed to parallel masculine institutions such as parliament and the Royal Society and students will be encouraged to consider the vilification of women's collectives alongside these authorised men's cabals. The image of the female community has been utilised as powerful rhetoric by feminist critics who have struggled to ascribe to these communities a progressive radical agenda. Women's writing in particular has been a focus for scholars who have identified in poetry, drama and prose fiction of the period recurrent images of collective support between women writers and by extension the women readers of such texts. Although this notion is compelling the module will questions such interpretations by requiring student to engage with a range of texts which complicate this overly simplified model. Has the search for historical echoes of modern feminist ideology in early modern women's writing inadvertently re-inscribed women's texts in a domestic and feminised sphere? Are texts from this period as much about women's disconnection as they are about women's friendship and unity? Further to such questioning of this feminist agenda the module will examine the literary representation of female communities in the light of current theories of communitarianism and recent scholarly work on nationalism and identity during the period. Many of the texts considered create in microcosm an image of national unity which scholars have identified as central to the rhetoric of post-1707 politics. Is the political fantasy of a unified national identity evident in these female communities or do these texts pose a challenge to notions of national harmony?