Literary women of the eighteenth century
H Thomson
8 points
* 2.5 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton
Objectives Students taking this subject should develop the capacity to read a range of eighteenth-century texts written by women and about women with an enlarged understanding of both the historical period and gender issues, with special reference to shaping ideologies and genre distinctions.
Synopsis The subject provides an opportunity for students to extend their study both of women's writing and literature of the eighteenth century. Topics discussed will include male representations of fictional women, the epistolary novel, the diary and memoir, class and female autonomy, conduct literature, the courtship novel, didactic strategies, the moral etiquette novel, women and capitalism, and the female Gothic novel.
Assessment second year Essay (2500 words): 40%
* Examination (3
hours): 50%
* Class presentation: 10%
Assessment third year Essay (2500 words): 40%
* Examination (3
hours): 50%
* Class presentation: 10%
* Third-year students should
demonstrate wider reading on the topic, a greater sophistication in the use of
theoretical concepts and a more accomplished exercise of writing skills.
Prescribed texts
Austen J Emma OUP
Burney F Evelina OUP
Defoe D Roxana Penguin
Jones V (ed.) Women in the eighteenth century Routledge
Lennox C The female quixote OUP
Lonsdale R (ed.) Eighteenth-century women poets OUP
Radcliffe A The romance of the forest OUP
Richardson S Pamela vol. 1 Penguin
Todd J (ed.) Aphra Behn: Oroonoko, The rover and other works Penguin
Wollstonecraft M Mary and The wrongs of woman OUP
Recommended texts
Austen J Sense and sensibility OUP
Butler M Romantics, rebels and reactionaries: English literature and its background 1760-1830 OUP
Spencer J The rise of the woman novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen Allen and Unwin
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