Margaret Thickstun
English 425, Spring 1999
Hamilton College
mthickst@hamilton.edu
Participation: This class will be conducted as a seminar, which means that each person must not only have read the assigned material, but should have considered it carefully enough to raise questions, to point out interesting issues, to listen attentively, and to respond productively to others' observations. Absences should be reserved for true emergencies.
To help facilitate preparedness, students will be expected to participate in a bulletin board forum, via our class website. I will suggest topics to address on a weekly basis, but I hope that we will not limit ourselves to my areas of interest. You should consider this discussion list a forum through which to raise questions--from the cosmic to the minute--as you are reading. If your question is factual, I will respond as promptly as possible.
For every woman author whom we read, you should read the biographical headnotes in any and all editions assigned; a critical response to those headnotes should provide a useful beginning place for our list discussions. Responses should be posted no later than 10PM on the evening before class so that the rest of us will be able to read and consider your ideas and concerns before we meet for discussion.
Each student will write a critical introduction to the work of one of the women authors whom we will be reading. These 4-5 page introductions will provide your classmates with a preliminary introduction to her work. We will handle the logistics of exchange once we have accustomed ourselves to the website.
Each student will be responsible for commenting in writing on each introduction so that the introduction can be revised and to be resubmitted for final evaluation.
Each student will write two 7-10 page papers on a topic of her choice. These topics will develop most likely from response papers and class discussion. Tutorial drafts will be due in class March 3rd for the essay due March 10th and April 26th for the essay due April 30th. We will meet in tutorial groups to discuss drafts for each essay; I encourage you also to consult your peers, to visit the Writing Center, or to pursue any other critical response to your paper in order to improve its quality and incisiveness. In order to conform to the Honor Code, please indicate with whom you have discussed your work and the nature of that input.
Essays are due in my box in Root 116 before the office closes (4:30PM) on the assigned dates. In order to allow you the flexibility necessary to organize your time sensibly, each student will receive four "grace days." This means that you may hand in one paper four days late, each paper one day late, some papers on time and others two days late, etc., without consulting me. Other extensions may be negotiated well in advance of the deadline if you have a particularly obdurate conflict, or after the fact for serious circumstances, such as hospitalization or a death in the family. I have instituted this policy in the interest of fairness to everyone, including me.
There will be a cumulative final examination, on which I will present you with passages to analyze and compare. I will provide the title, author, and date of each entry, so you needn't memorize such things. You may take this exam at your convenience during normally scheduled times in the exam week.
Jan. 18
Introduction: women's literature, women's literacy, women's history Spenser, The Faerie Queene, proem to Book 3 and 4:10.49-52; Woodbridge on Bradstreet; Cowley on Philips (handouts)
Jan. 20
Rowton, from The Female Poets of Great Britain (1848); Bethune, from Pearls from the British Femal Poets (1875 Greer, et. al, from Kissing the Rod (1988); frontmatter (reserve); Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929), chapters 1-3;
Ezell, Writing Women's Literary History (1993), Introduction and chapter 1
Jan. 25
Mary Sidney, "Doleful Lay of Clorinda," "Even now that care," "To thee pure sprite" (handout); Aemilia Lanyer, dedicatory poems and epistles, "To Cookeham"; Ann Clifford, from the Diary (in Hobby)
from Grossman, Amelia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon (e-reserve)
Jan. 27
Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611)
Feb. 1
Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedie of Mariam (1613)
Feb. 3
Cary, The Tragedie of Mariam
Feb. 8
Sidney, from Astrophel and Stella; Spenser, from the Amoretti; Jonson, poems on the Sidney circle (handout)
Feb.10
Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthes (1621)
Feb. 15
Pamphilia to Amphilanthes; articles to be assigned (reserve)
Feb.17
Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 3, Cantos 1-4
Feb. 22
The Faerie Queene, Book 3, Cantos 5-6, 9:1-31; 10-12
Feb.24
Mary Wroth, The Countess of Montgomeries Urania (handout and Fitzmaurice)
Mar. 1
Urania (Fitzmaurice); articles to be assigned (reserve)
Mar. 3
Mary Wroth, "Love's Victory" (1621) (e-reserve); Tutorial drafts due
Mar. 8
Elizabeth Clinton, The Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie (1622); Elizabeth Joceline, The Mothers Legacie to her unborn Childe (1624); Cotton Mather, Elizabeth in her Holy Retirement (handouts); Thickstun, "Professing Women and Nursing Mothers: Feminist Uses of Scripture in the Seventeenth Century" (e-reserve); Beilin, pp. 271-75, 280-82 in Redeeming Eve (reserve)
Mar. 10
Bradstreet, personal poems and meditations (handout); Schweitzer (e-reserve); Ezell, Writing Women's Literary History, chapter 3; Essay due
Mar. 31
Cavendish, Matrimonial Troubles (handout); Elizabeth Brackley and Jane Cavendish, "The Concealed Fancies" (1645) (e-reserve)
Apr. 5
Ezell, Writing Women's Literary History, chapter 3; Cowley, "Ode" (handout)
Apr. 7
Anne, Lady Halkett, from Memoirs (e-reserve)
Apr. 12
Susanna Parr, Susanna's Apologie Against the Elders 1667) and Anne Wentworth, A Vindication of Anne Wentworth (1677) (in Hobby); Margaret Fell, Womens Speaking Justified (1667) (reserve);
Thickstun, "Dissenting Women and Religious Freedom: Arguments for the Authority to Speak" (handout)
Apr. 14
Katherine Philips, from Poems (1664) (in Fitzmaurice; Ferguson--reserve; Donne, poems (handout)
Apr. 19
Philips, Poems; Ezell, Writing Women's Literary History, chapter 4
Apr. 21
Ezell, Writing Women's Literary History, chapter 2
Apr. 26
Aphra Behn, The Rover (1677) in Fitzmaurice; Tutorial drafts due
Apr. 28
Behn, The Rover ; Essay due
May 3
Mary Carleton, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton (1663) (in Hobby)
May 5
Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (1673); Mary Astell, from A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694), from Some Reflections Upon Marriage (1704) (handout)