Eighteenth-Century Women Writers

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Eighteenth-Century Women Writers

English and Feminist Studies 241 Winter 2016 Tu Th 3:00-4:50 Bldg 260-3

Professor Terry Castle

Office Margaret Jacks 313

Office Hours: xxxx and by apptmt.

Course Description:

The course will introduce a number of eighteenth-century English women writers--primarily novelists, but also poets, critics and playwrights. Authors to be studied in depth will include both relatively well-known writers such as Behn and Wollstonecraft, and lesser-known authors such as Sarah Scott, Elizabeth Inchbald and Anna Seward. Considerable attention will be paid to recent feminist scholarship on eighteenth-century women's writing, generic issues and the question of a "women's literary tradition," the material conditions of female authorship in the period, and the history of the eighteenth-century literary marketplace.

Texts:

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, "The Fair Jilt" and "The History of a Nun”

Mary Wortley Montagu, Selected Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Charlotte Charke (and Fidelis Morgan), The Well-Known Troublemaker:

A Narrative of the Life of Charlotte Charke (in course reader)

Roger Lonsdale (ed.), Eighteenth-Century Women Poets

Sarah Scott, Millenium Hall

Frances Burney, Evelina

Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary and Maria; or, the Wrong of Women and

AVindication of the Rights of Woman

Elizabeth Inchbald, A Simple Story

Requirements: Students will complete all readings for the course according to the schedule below. 100% attendance is required; casual absences are not acceptable. (Students absent for any reason are expected to notify the instructor in advance.) More than one absence will affect your grade adversely! All students should be prepared to participate fully in every class discussion. Classroom participation will account for 20% of your final grade. (***Note: no incompletes will be given in this course except in authentic cases of illness or emergency***)

As a courtesy to me and to your fellow students, may I also ask: 1) that you not arrive late; and 2) that you not peruse your mail, cellphone messages, etc. during class?

Reading Schedule:

Week 1 Tu Jan 5 Introduction

Th Jan 7 Behn, "The Fair Jilt" and short poems

Week 2 Tu Jan 12 Behn, "The History of the Nun" and

Oroonoko (1ST blog posted Monday night)

Th Jan 14 Behn, Oroonoko (concl.)

Week 3 Tu Jan 19 Montagu, poems in Lonsdale,18th-Century

Women Poets; Montagu Letters, (Halsband,

handout), pp. 1-51, 73-165 (2nd blog posted

Monday night)

Th Jan 21 Montagu, Letters, pp. 201-268

Week 4 Tu Jan 26 Charke, Life, pp. 1-154; Henry Fielding,

“The Female Husband" (handout)

(3rdblog post Monday night)

Th Jan 28 Charke, Life, pp. 155-224

Week 5 Tu Feb 2 NO CLASS: PROFESSOR CASTLE OUT OF TOWN!

Th Feb 4 Scott, Millenium Hall (entire.)

(No blog this week.)

Week 6 Tu Feb 9 Poems by Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift

(handout); Anon., “Reply to the Author of the

Ladies Dressing Room,” Elizabeth Thomas,

Mary Barber,Mary Collier, Mary Leapor,

Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Anna Seward, all in

Lonsdale, 18th-Century Women Poets)

(4thblog post Monday night)

Th Feb 11 Women’s poetry (cont.)

Week 7 Tu Feb 16 Burney, Evelina, pp. 1-240

(5thblog post Monday night)

Th Feb 18 Burney, Evelina, pp. 241-388

Week 8 Tu Feb 23 Wollstonecraft, Mary, and chapter 2-3 of

A Vindication (6thblog post Monday night)

Th Feb 25 Wollstonecraft, Maria, and chapter 5 of

A Vindication

Week 9 Tu Mar 1 Inchbald, A Simple Story, pp. 1-218

(7thblog post Monday night)

Th Mar 3 Inchbald, A Simple Story (pp. 219-275)

Week 10 Tu Mar 8 Inchbald, A Simple Story (finish)

(no more blog posts!)

Th Mar 10 Conclusion

a) Weekly Blog Entries

We will have a Course Blog on Coursework (look under Forums), to which each student will be asked to contribute one or two well-honed paragraphs of writing in advance of each Tuesday colloquium session. Weekly Blog Entries should be submitted online by 8 pm on the Monday before each Tuesday class; so I can xerox some or all for the next day's class discussion. These contributions will be critical 'responses' to the reading for the day, though the student will have considerable latitude as to topic and emphasis. You may devote your paragraphs to unrelated topics; or one two-paragraph response on a single topic. Please no more than 350-400 words total!

All blog entries will be shared with one’s classmates, and students will be asked to keep up with one another’s entries. In class we will use these glosses as our discussion ‘prompts.’ Not only will they help us identify key themes and topics in the works under study, we’ll consider each gloss itself as a piece of concise critical rhetoric to be analyzed.

Your responses should emphasize close and detailed reading. One model that works very well for this kind of venture: choose a passage from the reading, reproduce it for the blog, then follow

up with your commentary or gloss. If you would like to follow this model for every entry you make, that would be absolutely fine. Again, you may reproduce two separate passages, each with its own single paragraph-commentary, or a single passage with a longer two-paragraph commentary. Be prepared to read your blog entry aloud in class and entertain comments and questions about it.

b) Final Essay: Due Date TBA

Undergraduate students will prepare a 10-12 page final critical essay on a topic of his or her choice. Graduate students will submit a 12-14 page seminar essay. (Please, grads, no longer than 14 pp.!) Graduate papers should be prepared and formatted in a manner suitable for scholarly publication. Late papers will not be accepted.

Addendum: The Fine Print

Instructor Advisory: Just to be clear: all students taking the class realize that they will be obliged to share their writing assignments (blog posts) with other students in the class, as well as the instructor. However, your writing will not be shared without your permission with anyone other than classmates and me. Our Course Blog site will be private.

For Undergraduate students: Learning Outcomes:

This course fulfills the Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing requirement in "Aesthetic and Interpretive Inquiry." With the requisite effort, students may expect to improve and extend their skills in several broad areas. In particular students should be better able--

to appreciate the nature of human responses to meaningful cultural objects, and distinguish among the different methods to interpret those responses;

to acquire and assess techniques of interpretation (including close reading techniques), criticism, and analysis of cultural texts, artifacts, and practices;

to demonstrate facility with the analysis of arguments for and against different theories and interpretations;

to recognize the frameworks for thought and action implicit in human practices, and analyze the different assumptions underpinning those frameworks;

to understand diverse artistic, literary, and theoretical traditions, their characteristic forms of production, and/or their development across historical time;

to understand how expressive works articulate responses to fundamental human problems and convey important values.

Relevant University Coursework Policies:

Students with Documented Disabilities

Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the Office of AccessibleEducation (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, andprepare an Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is being made. Students should contact the OAE assoon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk (phone: 723-1066,URL:

Honor Code

The Honor Code is the University's statement on academic integrity written by students in 1921. It articulates University expectations of studentsand faculty in establishing and maintaining the highest standards in academic work:

The Honor Code is an undertaking of the students, individually and collectively:

1. that they will not give or receive aid in examinations; that they will not give or receive unpermitted aid in class work, in the preparation ofreports, or in any other work that is to be used by the instructor as the basis of grading;

2. that they will do their share and take an active part in seeing to it that others as well as themselves uphold the spirit and letter of the HonorCode.

3. The faculty on its part manifests its confidence in the honor of its students by refraining from proctoring examinations and from takingunusual and unreasonable precautions to prevent the forms of dishonesty mentioned above. The faculty will also avoid, as far as practicable,academic procedures that create temptations to violate the Honor Code.

4. While the faculty alone has the right and obligation to set academic requirements, the students and faculty will work together to establishoptimal conditions for honorable academic work.