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In eighteenth-century Britain and North America, aspiring female authors were more than likely to encounter a formidable range of obstacles. These ranged from the lack of a classical education to assumptions about gender roles and limited access to the public sphere. Publishers were always ready to do business with female readers, but not with female writers.
One niche presenting opportunities for female authorship was provided by eighteenth-century periodicals. These published poetry written by women on a regular basis. In this seminar, we shall discuss poems that were mainly published in this way. These texts will be considered in the context of relevant developments in eighteenth-century culture in Britain and North America (gender roles, social history, history of everyday life, legal status of women, women and slavery in North America etc.).
Texts:
Roger Lonsdale, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Please buy this book well before the first week of the semester and read poems number 1, 2, 4, 16, 19, 20 and 23. Additional texts (for instance poems by Phyllis Wheatley, a black slave who lived in Boston) will be made available.
You will be required to write an essay for this course. |
