Unit name | Twentieth-Century Women Writers |
---|---|
Unit code | ENGL30105 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Dr. Jones |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of English |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This course explores the work of a range of female twentieth-century poets, novelists, essayists, theorists and others. Topics may include autobiographical writing, androgyny, sexuality, ‘madness’, motherhood, dystopian and utopian fiction, racial identity, spirituality, food. Literary texts are considered within different social, cultural and historical contexts (for example World War 1) and some theoretical essays are brought into relation with them. Authors may include both the familiar and mainstream (for example Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop), and some less well-known (for example Radclyffe Hall, Stevie Smith, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Jennings). The structure of the unit is broadly chronological, and students will be given the opportunity to make a brief presentation on one of the topics or texts.
The Aims of this course are to enable students:
By the end of the course students should:
1 x 2 hour seminar per week in one teaching block, plus 1-to-1 discussion in Consultation Hours where desired.
Texts studied may include the following:
Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman, The Handmaid’s Tale
Catherine Belsey, The Feminist Reader
Elizabeth Bishop, Complete Poems
Barbara Gelpi (ed), Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose
Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems, The Bell Jar
Deryn Rees-Jones, Modern Women Poets
Stevie Smith, Collected Poems
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, Mrs Dalloway
The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (Third Edition) is useful for reference and for wider reading. It contains some of the texts we study.