Issues of Gender in the Eighteenth-Century: A Syllabi Exchange
The Aphra Behn Society at ASECS, 1998

English 423b, "British Men and Women of Letters, 1660-1750"

Jill Campbell
Spring, 1998
Department of English
Yale University

Seminar description:

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf famously posits a separate female literary tradition, commenting that "we think back through our mothers if we are women." Woolf locates the origins of that tradition in the period we will study in this course, saying that it was then that women first began to "speak their minds" in print--and to make a living doing so. This course provides an opportunity to study the pioneering literary professionals Woolf cites (such as Aphra Behn) as well as other women who wrote and published in Britain between the Restoration and the mid-eighteenth century. But it also provides an opportunity to study some of the male writers alongside whom these women lived and wrote. Deeply concerned with their female literary forebears, many of these women writers also wrote in collaboration, dialogue, or direct, angry contention with their male peers. What features of their historical moment did these women writers share with their better-remembered male contemporaries? In what ways did their sex set them apart? The course proceeds roughly chronologically, moving through several distinct literary periods as well as among several genres as they were practiced in those periods (the libertine poetry associated with the Restoration court; the plays performed in the Restoration and early eighteenth-century theaters; the satiric poetry of the Augustan age; the periodical literature that shaped "coffee-house" culture and social mores in the era of Addison, Steele, and Haywood; the early novel as it developed dramatically in the course of this period).

British Men and Women of Letters, 1660-1750

Texts:

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, The Rover, and Other Works (Penguin)
Paula Backsheider and John Richetti, eds., Popular Fiction by Women, 1660-1730 (Oxford)
William Congreve, The Way of the World (University of Nebraska)
Alexander Pope, Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope (Riverside, Houghton Mifflin)
Samuel Richardson, Pamela (Riverside, Houghton Mifflin)
Robert Uphaus and Gretchen Foster, eds., The Other Eighteenth Century: English Women of Letters, 1660-1800 (Colleagues Press)
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, The Complete Works (Penguin)
William Wycherley, The Country Wife (New Mermaids, Norton)
*photocopy packets, available through the Yale Coop -- as are all texts

Assignments

Requirements
Regular attendance and participation are essential. You will also, with a partner, plan a portion (15-20 minutes) of one class session, whether in the form of a presentation, questions for discussion, a dramatic scene, or a musical performance. Writing assignments include a short (3-page), ungraded exercise; a short (2-page) report or some equivalent to enrich our readings for one class (see list of suggested topics below); and a substantial final project (about 20 pages), with topic description and brief bibliography submitted in advance. Those students not taking the course for senior seminar credit in the English department should discuss writing requirements with me early in the term.

Suggested topics for class reports

For classes on Restoration poetry:
• the Restoration Court
• poetry in manuscript--in Restoration culture, and at the Beinecke Library
• recent accounts of the history of "sexuality" in 17th-18th century England
• pastoral--its place in literature and at court
• musical settings of verse by Philips, Rochester, Behn, or Dryden
• (potentially in connection with a performance at the Beinecke)
For classes on Restoration drama:
• the introduction of actresses to the English stage
• Restoration stage conventions, or audiences at the Restoration theater
• marriage customs and laws
• critical review of Catherine Gallagher (in Nobody's Story) on Aphra Behn
• critical review of anthology on Restoration drama
• directing and staging a scene
For classes on Augustan forms:
• Grub Street and the "hack" author
• the development of "print culture" (Elizabeth Eisenstein and others)
• satire and farce on the stage: a report on or staging of a play by Fielding or others
• "coffee-house culture" and the early English periodical
• critical review of Jurgen Habermas or Terry Eagleton
For classes on early eighteenth-century fiction:
• biography or criticism of Eliza Haywood
• critical review of Watt's Rise of the Novel or McKeon's Origins of the English Novel
• critical review of William Beatty Warner on the early novel
• the circle of women readers and writers around Richardson

Note: you are welcome to invent your own topic or activity