RENAISSANCE WOMEN: HISTORY AND TEXTS
Module Leader:
No of Credits:
Level:
Semester available:
Pre-requisites:
Concurrent module:
Post-requisites:
Mandatory constraints:
Advisory constraints:
Professor Janet Clare / Dr Amanda Capern
20
M/7
Semester 2
BA or equivalent
not applicable
none
none
none
Module rationale:
Option on MA Medieval to Early Modern Culture (on-stream from 2008); Option on MA
European History (on-stream from 2008); Option on MA Women, Gender and Literature
(Current); Option on MA Women’s and Gender Studies (GEMMA; current); Option on MA in
Early-Modern History (coming on-stream 2009)
Aims and distinctive features:
The aim of the module is to examine female agency in the intellectual and literary
culture of the Northern Renaissance through the case study of England. The module
is distinctive because of its interdisciplinarity.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this module students will be able to
1. demonstrate knowledge and understanding of woman’s place in English humanist
culture;
2. critically evaluate the idea of ‘woman’ and knowledge of the cultural formation
and shifts in femininity in renaissance England;
3. Evaluate female agency in Reformation and religious culture and historical
processes involved in religious change;
4. Demonstrate Knowledge and understanding of women’s manuscript and textual
production in Renaissance England;
5. Analyse women’s participation, intervention and agency in intellectual history;
Transferable Skills
6. Communicate complex arguments in writing;
7. Think critically about gender in texts and text production
Teaching and Learning Strategies:
10 x 2 hour seminars
Assessment strategies:
1 x Text Analysis (1000) words
1 x Essay (4000 words)
Indicative content:
1. Woman in Context: Humanism and Gender Construction
2. Women’s Writing: Questions of Genre
3. Early Protestant Interventions: Ann Askewe and the Katherine Parr Circle
4. The Sidney Circle
5. Godly Mothers and Prophets
6. Rachel Speght and the Querelle des Femmes
7. Political Interventions during the Civil Wars
8. Women and Royalism: Cultural Production and Literary Change
9. Utopianism and Historical Writing
10. The World of Aphra Behn
Indicative reading:
Brant, Clare & Purkiss, Diane (eds.), Women, Texts and Histories (1992)
Clare, Janet, Drama of the English Republic 1649-1660 (2002)
Early English Books Online (eebo database of primary works)
Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works
English Broadside Ballad Archive
Farrell, Kirby et. al., Women in the Renaissance (1971)
Greer, Germaine, Slip-shod Sybils (1995)
Grundy, Isobel & Wiseman, Susan, Women, Writing, History 1640-1740 (1992)
Hobby, Elaine, Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing 1649-88 (1989)
Martin, Randall, Women Writers in Renaissance England (1997)
Morgan, Fidelis, The Female Wits (1981)
Pacheco, Anita (ed), Early Women Writers 1600-1720 (1998)
Salzman, Paul, Early Modern Women’s Writing (2000)
Smith, Hilda L., Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition
(1998)
Smith, Hilda L., Suzuki, Mihoko & Wiseman, Susan, Women’s Political Writings
1610-1740 (2007)
Suzuki, Mihoko, Subordinate Subjects: Gender, the Political Nation and Literary Form
in England 1588-1688 (2003)
Todd, Janet, The Secret Life of Aphra Behn (2000)
Wilcox, Helen, Women and Literature in Britain 1500-1700 (1996)
Wiseman, Susan, Conspiracy and Virtue: Women, Writing and Politics in
Seventeenth-Century England (2006)