In this course we will examine the various literary incarnations of the eighteenth-century "Woman": virgin, harlot, matron, monster, feminist. In the first half of the course, students will explore representations of women in the 18th-c. satiric tradition--in the poetry of Pope and Swift, and visual works such as Hogarth's Harlot's Progress and Marriage à la Mode. In the second, emphasis will be on fictional representations, and the complex revolutionary (?) heroines of Richardson, Cleland, Burney and Wollstonecraft. General topics of discussion will include the role of sexuality in 18th-c. visions of femininity, the link between erotic experience and contemporary plots of female destiny, the cultural and philosophical reasons for the preeminence of "Woman" in classic 18th-c. literary discourse.
