Course Catalogue

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As a counter to what Medieval and Renaissance male writers often referred to as "the secrets of women" in the search to unpack women's bodies and women's interiority, this course takes women writers themselves as a starting point, to explore women's agency in constructing knowledge both of themselves and of their wide-ranging creative interests and ambitions. Women were active as poets and dramatists, writers of science and fiction, diarists, translators, recipe keepers and medical experts, contributing in new and dynamic ways to the cultural and intellectual growth of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This course will follow the vibrant role of early modern women writers through the writings they produced and the efforts they engaged in giving voice to their own ambitions, embodiments, and interiorities during the early modern period.

2hr seminar per week over 10 weeks as scheduled on MyCampus.

This is one of the Honours options in English Literature and may not run every year. The options that are running this session are available on MyCampus.

Successful completion of Junior Honours English Literature, and by arrangement to visiting students or students of other Honours programmes who qualify under the University's 25% regulation.

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The standard assessments for this course are: 

■ Portfolio (4500 words): 90%  

■ Seminar contribution: 10% 

If required, for instance where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, the following alternatives are available: 

■ There are no alternatives to the Portfolio (4500 words), but flexible deadlines can be offered as reasonable adjustment (Students should follow the usual process for extensions). 

■ Written self-evaluation reflecting on seminar contribution or written response to seminar material in advance or after seminar as alternative to seminar contribution.

Further reasonable adjustments may be provided where necessary. Students are encouraged to consult with the course convenor.  

This course aims to:

■ Illustrate the importance of women's writing in early modern literary and textual cultures.

■ Familiarise students with a range of female authors working in a variety of literary and textual forms.

■ Encourage students to read literary and historical texts of the period to interrogate constructions of gender, power and representation.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Evaluate a range of critical approaches to the historical, cultural and formal study of early modern women's writing.

2. Create a critical edition of a selection of early modern women's texts.

3. Justify editorial choices for reading, interpreting and editing early modern women's writings.

4. Develop a coherent, sustained, and well-evidenced literary argument analysing early modern texts.

5. Synthesise further research in any of the issues of gender, power and representation raised by early modern women's writing.

6. Reflect critically on their engagement with and approaches to women's writings from the course.