Women's Writing 1680-1830

Overview

This module considers how women writers have been constrained by but have also exploited literary traditions and traces the indexes of conformity and subversion in their writing by placing them in contexts of prevailing discourses on femininity. In order to situate women's writing of this period, we will also examine constructions of femininity in visual art and conduct writings. Key texts will include fiction by Eliza Haywood, Mary Wollstonecroft Jane Austen, poetry by Aphra Behn, Anne Finch, Anna Laetitia Barbauld and labouring women poets such as Mary Leapor and Ann Yearsley, the 'Turkish Embassy' letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and scandal memoirs by Margaret Leeson.

Learning Objectives

Students should be able to address the ways in which literary productions by women have been marginalised by traditional syllabi and to redress the balance, so that the importance of women's writing in literary history can be examined and understood; to examine both the ways in which women writers have adopted literary traditions and the cultural meanings of femininity in the eighteenth century; to situate women's writing in a range of contexts - the material contexts of patronage and publishing, political and discursive contexts concerning class, gender and nationality.

Skills

In taking this module, students should acquire a knowledge of major concerns in eighteenth-century women's writing and will be expected to communicate their understanding of the relationships between literary form and production and the social and political issues of proper femininity, class and nationality. Seminars and assessments should require students to address specific issues and to articulate conclusions from their reading clearly and confidently, demonstrating an awareness of the critical debates surrounding women's writing of this period and independent engagement with these debates.

Assessment

None