Our theme this semester is the examination of the role of women as writers and subjects of writing, and their relationship to money and wealth (or the lack thereof). Our readings in and out of the British canon will examine various works including poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction as a means of questioning class and privilege from feminist and Marxist lenses (among others). Our authors include Bernard Mandeville, Jane Austen, Fanny Trollope, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf.
As a result of this course, students will: describe the development of British literature from 1660-1914; employ close reading to explain the characteristic elements of British prose, drama, and poetry, 1660-1914; identify major British authors from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; use key themes from British literature to examine their own values and beliefs; associate specific literary styles, themes, and genres with the period and authors that produced them; explain how critical theory and other cultural forces shape the literary canon; and describe the contribution of female, working class, and colonial/colonized voices to the development of British (and, by extension, American) national identity.
Required Textbooks: The following required textbooks are available for purchase at the college bookstore.
Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Edited by Ros Ballaster. Penguin, 2003.
Mandeville, Bernard. The Fable of the Bees and Other Writings. Edited by E. J. Hundert. Hackett, 1997.
Trollope, Fanny. Domestic Manners of the Americans. Edited by Pamela Neville-Sington. Penguin, 1997.
Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays. Edited by Peter Raby. Oxford U P,
2008.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of Ones Own. Harcourt, 1929.