Wendy Furman-Adams
English 410, Spring 1999
Whittier College
wfurman@mail.whittier.edu

Senior Seminar: Writing Renaissance Women

The title of this course is ambiguous--even slightly "punny"--in that it refers to two things at once. Most obviously, this is a course about women writers working in England between about 1550 and 1700. But you will notice that a number of important male writers are represented as well. That is not because there are not enough women's works to fill a whole semester; on the contrary, texts have so proliferated over the past decade that I have had to be very selective. I have included such important male writers as Petrarch, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton because they are central to the story of writing women in the Renaissance.

Why are these men so central? They are central because of the way literature both reflects and, in turn, influences--even re-invents--life. Due in part to social factors, in part to the power of their vision, these male poets have indelibly shaped the way men have imagined and represented women, as well as the way countless female readers have imagined and represented themselves. Thus, even when writing for others of their own sex, women must write in response to male voices, male pens, male images of female identity.

Some recent critics have argued, in fact, that if people write history, they are also "written" by it. Each of our lives, they say, is a kind of fiction, written in collaboration with the social forces that shape our lives. And, especially in the early modern period, those forces tended to privilege the male perspective. The Renaissance was a period of enormous change and upheaval, in which a relatively unified and stable medieval world-view gave way to what would become the Enlightenment. It was a period in which men (at least an elite of outstanding and privileged men) were involved actively in a reconstruction of identity, a reconstruction Stephen Greenblatt has called "Renaissance self-fashioning."

Women, too, were engaged in this "self-fashioning" enterprise--but with a difference. Less free to begin the enquiry from "scratch," they engaged in the process under the jealous eye of a patriarchal society which saw them, essentially, as passive members--valued above all, as Suzanne Hull has noted, for three traditional virtues: chastity, obedience, and silence. Even as they wrote, then (and many did write), they were also "being written"--by male writers, and yet more profoundly by the social conventions that shaped both male and female roles.

Thus we will need to keep two key questions in mind in our reading (and writing) this semester. First, we need to keep asking ourselves about the context of the literature we read: what were the social conditions under which it was produced? (These social conditions finally take into account every branch of history--social, intellectual, and economic--as well as theology and its manifold nuances.) But we also need to read each text--closely and with open minds--in order to see the extent to which Renaissance writers, male and female, were "written" by the context in which they wrote; and to see, conversely, the extent to which they managed to "re-write," or "refashion" themselves and one another.

All semester we will see both phenomena--the writing and "being written"--occurring again and again. But the best criticism, to my mind, uses theory to illuminate texts--not to reduce them to evidence for a particular point of view or ammunition for a particular agenda. Thus, our story will not be a "neat" one. Different writers will reveal a different mix of freedom and constraint, originality and conventionality, patriarchal bias and impulse toward gender equality. Our verdict will differ, I suspect, from writer to writer, from text to text--and from person to person.

But, whatever our conclusions (and however tentative those conclusions may be) each of us, by the end of the course, will also have "written" Renaissance women to some extent. In fact, if things go really well, we may end up writing a corporate history that does not now exist. In any case, you should know at the outset that the questions we engage this semester are live questions for me--not questions to which I have clear and settled answers. I too want to know how women were written in the Renaissance--and how they in turn rewrote it.

Required Texts

• Laura Anna Stortoni, ed., Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Italica, 1997).
• Hugh Maclean, ed., Edmund Spenser 's Poetry (New York: Norton Critical Editions, 1992).
• Josephine Roberts, ed., The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1992).
• Anna Weamys, A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, ed. Patrick Colborn Cullen (New York: Oxford UP, 1994).
• Suzanne Woods, ed., The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer (New York: Oxford UP, 1993).
• William Shakespeare, As You Like It (New York: Pelican, 1987).
• John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays (New York: Oxford UP, 1998).
• Elizabeth Cary, the Lady Falkland, The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry, ed. Barry Weller and Margaret W. Ferguson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1994).
• Merritt Y. Hughes, ed., John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose (Indianapolis: Odyssey, 1976).
• Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, ed., The Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght (New York: Oxford UP, 1996).
• A small packet of readings, seen in the schedule as Renaissance Writings (RW).
• Several essays on reserve in Wardman Library. (See below in schedule.)

Recommended Text

• Suzanne W. Hull, Women According to Men: The World of Tudor-Stuart Women (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira, 1996).

Required Work

1. Reading assignments to be completed before the day for which they are assigned (i.e. in time for class discussion), and attendance at all class sessions (including two evening films--Feb. 18 and Mar. 11--and one evening dinner lecture on April 22).

2. A portfolio, which by the end of the course will include the following:

1. Six short response papers (2-3 pages) dealing with some aspect of the reading for each week. (Twelve due dates are included in the schedule below. You may write and submit any six of the twelve.)
2. One 2-3 page introduction to a woman writer in the course--to be submitted in advance, then revised and duplicated in time for class discussion of that writer.
3. One longer paper (7-10 pages), placing the work of that writer (or another chosen from a list of options) in a larger historical context.
4. An oral report (about 10-15 minutes, accompanied by an annotated bibliography and appropriate hand-out) summarizing your research for the longer paper.

3. A comprehensive final exam.

Projected Schedule (subject to change as necessary)

I. Introduction: Renaissance self-fashioning and the fashioning of woman.

Feb. 11
Introduction to the course, to the period, and to some images of women in art--allegorical, erotic, political, and theological.

Feb. 16
Petrarchanism and the male gaze: sonnets of Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), selection in RW.

Feb. 18
Petrarchanism and the female predicament: sonnets of Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547) and Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554), Stortoni, 54-74, 134-59. Also read pp. ix-xxvi. Response paper #1.
7:30 p.m. Film: Dangerous Beauty. Hoover Lautrup.

II. Elizabethan England: The virgin queen and the romance of chastity.

Feb. 23
(A) The Sonnet: Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Astrophel and Stella (1591), selection in RW; and Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), the Amoretti (1595), Maclean, 587-623. Response paper # 2. On reserve: Clark Hulse, "Stella's Wit: Penelope Rich as Reader of Sidney's Sonnets," in Rewriting the Renaissance, ed. Margaret Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers.

Feb. 25
Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthes (1623), 85-145, and biographical introduction, Roberts, 1-40. On reserve: Nona Fienberg, "Mary Wroth and the Invention of Female Poetic Subjectivity"; and Jeff Masten, "'Shall I turne blabb?': Circulation, Gender, and Subjectivity in Wroth's Sonnets," in Reading Mary Wroth, ed. Naomi Miller and Gary Waller.

Mar. 2
Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthes. Response paper # 3.

Mar. 4
(B) Romance: Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book III, cantos I-IV, Maclean, 231-92. On reserve: Lauren Silberman, "Singing Unsung Heroines: Androgynous Discourse in Book III of The Faerie Queene," in Rewriting the Renaissance, ed. Ferguson, Quilligan, and Vickers.

Mar. 9
Spenser, Faerie Queene, Book III, cantos V-VIII, Maclean, 293-347.

Mar. 11
Spenser, Faerie Queene, Book III, cantos IX-XII, including alternate endings, Maclean, 347-400. Response paper # 4.
7:30 p.m. Film: Elizabeth. Hoover Lautrup.

Mar. 16
Anna Weamys, A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia (1651). Read Cullen's introduction, xvii-lxxiii, and modernized edition, 1-105.

Mar. 18
Weamys, Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia (1651). Response paper # 5.

III. Jacobean England: Gendering the lyric muse.

Mar. 23
(A) Patriarchy, patronage, and retreat: Ben Jonson (1573-1637), "To Penhurst" (RW), and Aemilia Lanyer (1569-1645), "The Description of Cooke-ham," Woods, 130-38; also read biographical introduction, xv-xvi, and selection from Ann Clifford's Diary (RW). On reserve: Barbara K. Lewalski, "Re-writing Patriarchy and Patronage," in Silent But for the Word, ed. Margaret Hannay; and Elaine Beilin, "The Feminization of Praise: Aemilia Lanyer," in Redeeming Eve.

Mar. 25
Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. UCLA Faculty Center (through Sunday, March 28). A once-in-a-decade opportunity for scholars of the Renaissance. Student registration $40. before Feb. 25; $50. after Feb. 25.

Spring Break, March 27-April 4.

Apr. 6
(B) Varieties of devotion: Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611), Woods, 3-129; and John Donne (1572-1631), selected devotional lyrics (RW).
On reserve: Lewalski, "Of God and Good Women," in Silent But for theWord. Response paper # 6.

IV. Renaissance drama: Re-writing the heroine.

Apr. 8
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), As you Like It (1599/1600). Reponse paper # 7.

Apr. 13
John Webster (1580?-1625), The Duchess of Malfi. (1614).

Apr.15
The Duchess of Malfi. On reserve: Mary Beth Rose, "A Waste of Shame: The Heroics of Marriage in English Renaissance Tragedy," in The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama. Response paper # 8.

Apr. 20
Elizabeth Cary (1585/86-1639), The Tragedy of Mariam the Fair, Queen of Jewry (1613). Also read Weller and Ferguson's Introduction, 1-59.

Apr. 22
The Tragedy of Mariam. On reserve: Sandra Fischer, "Elizabeth Cary and Tyranny, Domestic and Religious," in Silent But for the Word., ed. Hannay. Response paper# 9.
6:00 p.m. Dinner and Fireside with Professor Eunice Howe (University of Southern California) on the representation of women in Renaissance art. Hartley House.

V. The Problem of Eve: the Bible, Milton, and female subjectivity.

Apr. 27
Read Genesis 1-3. Then read Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, ll. 1-26; Books IV and VIII.

Apr. 29
Paradise Lost, Books IX and X; Book XII, ll. 375-649. Response paper # 10.

May 4
Rachel Speght, A Movzell for Melastomvs, The Cynicall Bayter of, and foule mouthed Barker against Evahs Sex, in The Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght, 1-27. Also read Lewalski's introduction, xi-xxxvi. Response paper # 11.

VI.Writing women: Women poets of the later Renaissance and Restoration

May 6
Katherine Philips (1631-1664), selections in RW.

May 11
Anne Kingsmal Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720), selections in RW. Response paper # 12.

May 13
Seminar reports. Annotated bibliography and hand-out due.

May 18
Last day of class. Seminar reports. Review of the course. Final paper and revised portfolio due.