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Early Modern Feminism ENGL212 SP

This course is designed to introduce students to a broad range of texts from the late fourteenth to the early seventeenth centuries surrounding what is known to literary history as the questione della donna or querelle des femmes. Its primary aim will be to encourage critical thought about the history of concepts and categories that continue to define the boundaries of feminist inquiry in the present. The term "feminist" will thus serve not as a guiding principle or presupposition, but as an object of critical and historical inquiry. We will first situate the medieval framework for the debate by glancing at the long tradition of antifeminist literature and its roots in classical and Biblical narratives and then consider the oppositional strategies of Chaucer's "Wife of Bath" and Christine de Pizan. Next, we will look at the tradition of rhetorical praise and dispraise of women during the Renaissance. The ideal of the chaste, silent and obedient woman portrayed in female conduct and courtesy manuals (de Pisan's LIVRE DES TROIS VIRTUES and Castiglione's BOOK OF THE COURTIER) will be analyzed in light of women's real social, political and economic role in early modern society. This role will be discussed with reference to several highly contentious subjects of debate during the period: female rule, cross-dressing, women's legal status, prostitution, and the regulation of female speech. Having established this historical and theoretical framework, we will then examine issues of gender and sexuality as they were played out on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. We will look at canonical works by Shakespeare (THE TAMING OF THE SHREW and AS YOU LIKE IT), Jonson (EPICOENE, or THE SILENT WOMAN) and Middleton and Dekker (THE ROARING GIRL) as well as several more obscure, non-canonical plays. Among these are Beaumont and Fletcher's LOVE'S CURE, or THE MARTIAL MAID, which tells the story of a girl who is raised to be a boy by her father, and of her brother, who is raised to be a girl by their mother, and of society's attempts to "cure" their gender confusion; the anonymous SWETNAM THE WOMAN-HATER ARRAIGNED BY WOMEN, written in response to a popular misogynist pamphlet by Joseph Swetnam; Elizabeth Cary's THE TRAGEDIE OF MARIAM, FAIR QUEEN OF JEWRY, the first original, published play written by a woman in England, and finally, Shakerly Marmion's HOLLANDS LEAGUER, which tells the history of Elizabeth Holland's famous brothel in Southwark, located near the Globe and Swan playhouses.

MAJOR READINGS

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

COURSE FORMAT: Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UG Credit: 1.00 Gen Ed Area & Dept: HA ENGL

Prerequisites: ENGL201

Last Updated on MAR-03-1998