English 248 - Winter, 2014

18th Century Literature

Class Information

Instructor: Johns, Alessa
CRN: 84148
Time: W 12:10-3:00
Location: 120 Voorhies
Breadth: Earlier British
Focus: ID, Interdiscipline, Method

Description

This course will consider the Bluestockings as part of synchronic and diachronic networks of the long eighteenth century. We will begin with the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour and determine its advantages and disadvantages for work in women’s and feminist history and criticism. As Nicole Pohl and Betty Schellenberg have written, the Bluestockings participated in “intellectual and religious exchange, political discourse, literary publishing, commercial enterprises, philanthropic projects, social experiments, friendship, and same-sex love” (Reconsidering the Bluestockings, 6). We will look extensively at the writings of authors from Mary Astell to Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen to Anna Jameson, taking up a different theme each week and tracing the networks and associations created and sustained to promote the Bluestocking ethos: utopianism, education, friendship, sexual politics and the marriage market, religion and philosophy, criticism, environmentalism, abolition, and feminism. The goal will be to determine the full socio-cultural and political impact of the Bluestockings and to define more precisely the extent of their influence on nineteenth-century culture and first-wave feminism.
Primary readings will be from Mary Astell, Mary Wortley Montagu, Sarah Scott, Frances Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft, Priscilla Wakefield, and Jane Austen, as well as short excerpts from such authors as Maria Edgeworth, Mary Hays, Frances Wright, Jane Austen, Sydney Owenson, Joanna Baillie, Mary Berry, Felicia Hemans, Letitia Landon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Marguerite Blessington, Harriet Martineau, Margaret Fuller, and Anna Jameson. Secondary readings (Eger, O'Brien, Kelly, Hawley, Mellor, Curran, Behrendt, Waters, Schmid, Shteir, Major, Heller, etc.) will be made available on Smartsite as well.

Grading

Short writing assignments, presentations, and a research paper.

Texts

Readings on Smartsite
Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social
Mary Astell, Serious Proposal to the Ladies
Mary Wortley Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters
Sarah Scott, Millenium Hall
Frances Burney, Evelina
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Anna Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada