Literature by Women: Vision and Revision

Catalog description

This study of transatlantic, post-1800 literature by women will adopt Virginia Woolf's notion that "books continue each other." The course will be anchored in such touchstone texts as Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth. Each touchstone work will be grouped with a number of subsequent literary texts responding to and/or revising the earlier work. Readings will reach across centuries and continents. Topics include the social constructions of race, sexuality, gender, class, and beauty, intertextuality, influence, and canon formation.