Shawn Maurer
Fall 2o02

Course Description and Goals:

Although as novelists, women gained increasing prominence in the course of the eighteenth century, the period's female poets have remained relatively obscure-relegated to minor status or known primarily for their work in other genres. In this course, we will examine women's broad and significant contribution to the Restoration and eighteenth-century poetic tradition. Reading a wide range of poetry by women of vastly different backgrounds, we will consider their work both in relation to that of their better-known male contemporaries (including Dryden, Rochester, Pope, and Swift) and in the context of the period's vigorous debates concerning women's education, talent, and place in society. We will also raise important questions about print culture, canon formation, and the development of a literary tradition as we investigate these works and the various methods by which they were disseminated and received.

Required Texts:

--Roger Lonsdale, ed., Eighteenth-Century Women Poets [Oxford]
--Robert Uphaus and Gretchen Fosters, eds., The "Other" Eighteenth Century: English Women of Letters
1660-1800 [Colleagues Press]
--xeroxed packet of materials-on reserve in Dinand

Course Requirements:

1) Three short (3-4 pp.) close reading analyses, one for each of the first three sections of the course. Although relatively brief, these papers should be thoughtfully conceived and well-written essays, containing both a specific thesis and close attention to a particular passage or passages. [Each paper worth 10% of final grade; 30% total]

2) An analytic essay (7 pp.) comparing an image or motif (for example, the mirror or the dressing table), a theme or issue (examples might include marriage, pastoral retreat, female beauty, or the slave trade), a formal structure (such as the use of the rhymed couplet or the Pindaric Ode) in works by two or more writers on the course syllabus. [20%]

3) A presentation and final research paper (10 pp. minimum), preferably on a woman poet not covered extensively in the course. Although I will certainly make exceptions should inspiration strike, ideally I would like you to explore poets other than Aphra Behn, Katherine Philips, Lady Mary Chudleigh, Anne Finch, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Leapor, Mary Collier, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld, about whom more is known and more has been written. The Lonsdale anthology (as well as the other anthologies listed in the Bibliography) should be helpful in locating a poet to work on; your research, which should include at least five bibliographic sources, will be presented to the class at the end of the course. [Preliminary work and presentation 5%; paper 25%]

4) Engaged and active class participation. Although this class is not formally a seminar, the nature of the material makes your participation critical to its success. To make the discussions most beneficial to all of us, I would like each of you to come to class not only having carefully read and thought about the material, but also having prepared at least two questions designed to stimulate class discussion. [20%]