ENG 379 Earlier Women Writers

Professor Lucinda Cole

415 Luther Bonney, 780-4093

lcole@maine.rr.com

In this semester's version of ENG 379, we will be focusing on the Restoration, Enlightenment, and Romantic periods-roughly, from 1660-1730. These years brought with them many radical changes--the emergence of a banking industry, of modern science, of what one historian calls "companionate marriage"-and such phenomena will serve as the backdrop for our discussions of women's writing. The course is designed to allow students to bring their own interests and training to the assigned works, but our methods of reading will be decidedly "literary." In others words, we will focus fairly closely on the words these writers use and will discuss, in addition to the above historical changes, how writers such as Behn, Radcliffe and Austen appropriate traditional genres, sometimes using them to very different ends than do their male counterparts.

Link to LION [Literature Online]

Required Texts:

Backscheider and Richetti, Popular Fiction by Women 1660-1730

Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote

Ann Radcliffe, The Italian

Jennifer Breen, Women Romantic Poets 1785-1832

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Some short texts not available in the above anthologies will be distributed in class. Longer ones are available online. (Go to my home page, click on LION, then type in the name of the text you're trying to find.)

Assignments and Policies:

Your grade will be based primarily upon three criteria: three short papers of 4-6 pages; an oral report; and intermittent in-class and impromptu writing assignments. Class participation will determine borderline cases.

Short Essays: The short essays are directed assignments designed to reinforce important concepts and to provide a measure of your analytical, interpretive, and writing skills. General topics, which should be shaped to your own interests, will be provided at least one week before the assignment is due. There are pedagogical reasons for not providing topics earlier, among them the desire to thwart any impulse on the part of busy students to "read for the topic." First readings of a literary text should be as undirected as possible. All papers must be typed and in my hands at the beginning of the class period during which they are due. Should you miss that class, the papers should be mailed, with a postmark on the due date. Please do not e-mail long papers.

In grading your essays, I will be commenting upon organization, syntax, and content: usually, in the latter case, upon how clearly you explain or support your thesis, and how clearly it illuminates an aspect of eighteenth-century culture. Early in the semester, I will occasionally assign a NG (no grade) for papers that are grammatically or mechanically inadequate or for ones whose approach, given the assignment, is misconceived. NGs must be rewritten.

In-class papers: The in-class and impromptu papers are designed primarily to offer writing practice, to allow you to monitor your own understanding, and to serve as a basis for in-class discussion.

Oral report: The oral report is meant to two things: to familiarize you with recent trends in criticism on eighteenth-century women's writing, and to offer practice in locating secondary sources. You may choose any assigned writer or work as the subject of your report, or may you could choose a subject of general interest-say, marriage laws in the eighteenth century, women and education, cross-dressing women, conduct books for women. The article you present, however, must have been written within the past twenty years, and it must be drawn from a major journal in the field of literary studies. Appropriate journals for this assignment include, for example, PMLA, ELH, Representations, Criticism, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Eighteenth-Century Life, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, and Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. Note and Queries is not acceptable. You may instead report on a book or part of a book published by a university press whose topic seems relevant to this class. As soon as you are assigned a presentation date, you should go to the MLA data base, order several articles, and begin reading the material. The presentation should be written as an outline for the rest of the class and should last no more than 20 minutes.

Class participation will help determine the grade of borderline cases--usually, about one quarter of the class. In evaluating "participation" I will look less at the frequency of comments than I will at their quality. Do they, for example, clearly derive from an attempt to engage with the material and to explore its implications? This approach is meant to encourage, rather than discourage, quality discussion, and under no circumstances,should students fear being penalized for asking general questions, or for asking me to clarify a given concept or connection. Questions are essential to the success of an upper-division course, and essential to an active learning process. And, above all, please do not assume that you are the only one who "doesn't get it."

Students successfully completing this course should be able to demonstrate:

•The ability to read eighteenth-century texts in the provided historical context and in relation to each other
•The ability to use the MLA database to locate, order, read, understand, and present a recent critical article
•The ability to incorporate some aspects of theory and criticism into literary analyses of eighteenth-century texts
•The ability to construct solid, well-supported arguments, drawing upon specific passages within the primary and secondary sources

Other Matters:

Reading: Students are expected to come to class having read and worked through the assigned material. Some of the readings are online, so access to the internet is important.

Paper Style: All papers should employ MLA-style citation form. See the MLA Handbook in the Library's Reference Section.

Attendance: Since much of this knowledge is cumulative, subtle, and generated through lecture, example, and discussion, every one is expected to be in class every period. No one missing more than three class periods--one quarter of the semester-- can pass the course.

Late papers: If you are compelled to miss a class session on the day that a paper is due, you should send the paper through the mail. Papers postmarked on their due date will not be counted as late. All others will be marked down one half letter grade for every day they are overdue.

Incompletes: I make every effort to structure my courses so that students are encouraged to think about their assignments well in advance of the due date. Correspondingly, except under the most unusual and documented of circumstances--for example, a sudden and unpredictable hospital stay--I no longer give "Incompletes." Please take this into account as you are planning your semester.

Schedule of Readings

Please note the syllabus is always subject to change.

January 20 Introduction

January 27 Behn, "To the Fair Clarinda" (distributed in class); Behn, The Lucky Chance (online)

February 3 Behn, The History of the Nun (PFW); Behn, The Rover (online)

February 10 Manley, The Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zarazians (PFW); Manley, The Royal Mischief (online)

vacation

February 24 First Paper Due

Swift, "The Lady's Dressing Room" (distributed in class); Pope, "Epistle To A Lady" (distributed in class)

March 2 Barker, Love Intrigues (PFW); Aubin, The Strange Adventures of the Count de Vinevil and His Family (PFW)

March 9 Haywood,, The British Recluse and Fantomina (PFW)

March 16 Davys, The Reformed Coquet (PFW); Lennox, The Female Quixote

vacation

March 30 Lennox, The Female Quixote continued

April 6 Second Paper Due

Selections from Burke and Wollstonecraft (distributed in class)

April 13 Radcliffe, The Italian

April 20 Selections from Helen Maria Williams (WRP)

April 27 Selections from Hannah More (WRP)

May 4 Austen, Northanger Abbey

Third Paper Due Date TBA