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In this seminar we will first read and discuss a Victorian classic, Charlotte Brontë’s female ‘Bildungsroman’ Jane Eyre (1847), that famously inspired Charles Dickens to write his autobiographical novel David Copperfield. It is particularly the character of Mr. Rochester’s Creole first wife Bertha, the marginalised “madwoman in the attic” (Gilbert/Gubar), that has provoked various re-writings of the novel. We will thus study critical responses to and re-writings of Jane Eyre by postcolonial authors and critics including Jean Rhys, Gayatri Spivak and Caryl Phillips.
Students need to read the texts listed below before the beginning of the semester (will be tested within the first three weeks of the semester!).
In order to receive credit points, participants will have to write an exam in the final session.
Texts:
- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Penguin classics ed.)
- Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin)
- Caryl Phillips, Cambridge (Picador)
- A course reader containing a selection of further texts, primary as well as secondary, will be available at Kopiersysteme Priebe, Segerothstr. 81 from 10 October 2011.
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