The module introduces students to the history of women’s writing. It offers an opportunity to explore a range of female-authored texts in different genres including (for example) autobiography, devotional writing, plays, poetry, non-fictional prose, short stories, and novels. Moving from the medieval period to the present, students will encounter a diverse range of voices and literary styles, showing women writers engaged in issues of religion, politics, society, and race as well as concerned with subjective experience, relationships, love, rivalry, and revenge. The module will also introduce various contextual and critical frameworks: we will think about questions of tradition, literary heritage, and canonicity; explore some limitations associated with professional authorship and reception; and interrogate what we understand by the term ‘women’s writing’. Writers studied on the module may include Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Cary, Phillis Wheatley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Gwendolyn Brookes.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
Analyse and discuss a range of female-authored texted from different literary periods;
Evaluate women’s writing in relation to socio-historical conditions of production and/or reception;
Show knowledge and understanding of critical, theoretical, and material frameworks for reading women’s writing;
Evaluate issues of tradition and canonicity with respect to women’s writing.
Assessment
37161-01 : Research Poster -1 : Coursework (50%)
37161-02 : 1500 Word Essay -2 : Coursework (50%)