English 185A - Winter, 2014

Women's Writing I

Class Information

Instructor: Johns, Alessa
Time: TR 12:10-1:30
Location: 217 Olson

Description

In this course we will begin with Jane Austen and then study the British women writers who were her precursors, including Mary Astell, Eliza Haywood, Mary Wortley Montagu, and Mary Wollstonecraft. We will consider a number of genres—short and long prose fiction, poetry, letters, travel writing, criticism, polemic—and we will address issues arising at a time of huge increases in women’s participation in the literary marketplace. How did women contribute to the “rise of the novel”? How can we compare men’s and women’s literary production in this period? Can we talk about a women’s aesthetic? Which writers were early feminists, which ones were not, and what forms did their political views take? What did Victorian women writers learn from them? What, in general, was the social, cultural, economic, and historical impact of their work?

Grading

Grades will be based on quizzes and in-class assignments (15%), two papers (40%), a midterm (15%), a final (15%), and attendance/participation (15%).

Texts

Emma, Jane Austen
A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Mary Astell
Fantomina, Eliza Haywood
Turkish Embassy Letters, Mary Wortley Montagu
Millenium Hall, Sarah Scott
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman , Mary Wollstonecraft
Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, Anna Jameson
Lady Susan, Jane Austen
Eighteenth-Century Women Poets, Roger Lonsdale, ed.