19th C English and Irish Women Writers

Catalog description

This course will examine literature produced by English and Irish women, respectively, during the 19th C. In particular, we will attend to the ways in which issues of particular concern to women from these respective yet interconnected nations are engaged in similar but also divergent ways. The course will not seek to apply some universal standard applicable to women from both nations, nor is its intent to substantiate any false binaries. Rather, the interest is to consider how aesthetic and narrative differences reflect differing social contexts; how the close interactions between these nations inflect the respective literary canons; how women from these nations represent one another; and how gendered issues may or may not affect, and be affected by, wider national views.