English 114EM: Women and Literature, Women Writers 1650-1760
Undergraduate course offered by Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, UC Santa Barbara, Department of English
The first anthologies of writing by English women were published in the
mid-eighteenth century, suggesting that the recognition of literature by women
as a distinct category has its own history. This course will explore that history
in relation to the rise of an early modern print market and notions about publicity,
domesticity, making a living, and educational privilege that are still be with
us today.
We will read
poetry, fiction, prose, drama, and letters by such authors as Astell, Behn,
Finch, Montagu, Philips, and Scott, along with current scholarship on these
writers and their contexts.
Individual seminars will take up the "separate spheres" debate; erotic
and pathetic codings of the female body; female communities and utopias; satiric
representations of women; debates on female education and authorship; the "consumer
revolution"; and literary canon formation then and now.
Historical
Contexts for Women Writers, 1650-1760s
18th-Century
Links and Resources
UCSB
English Department Home Page
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This page has been designed by Denee Pescarmona, edited by Tassie Gniady for English 114EM: Women Writers, 1650-1760, taught by Professor Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook.
This page last updated on September 21, 2008.