Course Description:
You may think the eighteenth century if full of domineering men and well-behaved women, but it wasn’t all tea and needlework! Women were becoming important figures in literature and culture: they were actresses, celebrities, authors, cross-dressers, and trendsetters. This course will look at eighteenth-century literature by and about rebellious, subversive, queer, and all around kick-butt women. As we read and write about these fabulous ladies, we’ll continue to ask, “What did it mean to be a woman in eighteenth-century England?” We’ll likely find that many of the struggles and triumphs of eighteenth-century women are surprisingly relevant to our twenty-first-century society. In our class, we’ll read a variety of genres including court transcripts, letters, plays, poems, and novels such as Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, and Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina.
Required Texts:
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Vintage); ISBN: 978-0307386885
- Zofloya, or The Moor by Charlotte Dacre (Oxford World Classics); ISBN: 978-0199549733
- Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (Penguin Classics); 978-0140433135
- Belinda by Maria Edgeworth (Oxford World Classics); ISBN: 978-0199554683
- Fantomina by Eliza Haywood; ISBN: 978-1551115245