Course Texts

Here are the texts that have been ordered; they should be available soon at the UNBF Bookstore. It is acceptable to read other editions, and some plays are available online. However, much of the secondary material in these editions — specifically in the Broadview editions, which are particularly well done — are required reading.

Baillie, Joanna. Plays on the Passions. Ed. Peter Duthie. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2001.

Behn, Aphra. The Rover. Ed. Anne Russell. Second edition. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1999.

Burney, Frances. The Witlings and The Woman-Hater. Ed. Peter Sabor & Geoffrey Sill. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2002.

Cavendish, Margaret. Bell in Campo and The Sociable Companions. Ed. Alexandra G. Bennett. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2002.

Finberg, Melinda C., Ed. Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Three additional plays (Anon., The Female Wits [Women Writers Project]; Trotter's Love at a Loss; Haywood's A Wife to Lett) will be available on reserve, and one (Behn's The Rover Pt. II) online.

A series of critical articles will be made available on reserve or online.

Schedule

A note re. reading: In all cases, please pay particular attention to the prologues and other dedicatory materials. The items under the "Further Reading" heading are mainly for interest.

Sept. 11 — Brief history of, and attitudes toward, women on stage; introduction to course; signing up for blogs

Sept. 18 — Anonymous, The Female Wits (1696) (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve. Note: there are two versions on reserve; one is a facsimile and so more difficult to read, but it is included because it has a useful introduction. Also, you may want to use it to compare with the Women Writer's Project version, as they ask readers to contact them with any corrections to their edition.)

Articles:
Finke, Laura A. "The Satire of Women Writers in The Female Wits." Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 8.2 (Fall 1984): 64-71. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Day, Robert Adams. "Muses in the Mud: the Female Wits Anthropologically Considered." Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 7.3 (1980): 61-74. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Video: 'Tis Pity She's A Whore: The First Women on the London Stage
Excerpts from Stage Beauty

Sept. 25 — Margaret Cavendish, Bell in Campo and The Sociable Companions (1662; 1668)

Articles:
Gallagher, Catherine. "Embracing the Absolute: The Politics of the Female Subject in Seventeenth-Century England." Genders 1 (Spring 1988): 24-39. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Straznicky, Marta. "Reading the stage: Margaret Cavendish and Commonwealth closet drama." Criticism 37.3 (Summer 1995): 355ff. (available online through EBSCOhost Academic Search Elite)

Further reading:
Here is an online facsimile of Cavendish's Plays, never before printed which includes The Sociable Companions (1668) (on Early English Books Online [EEBO]. EEBO is a licensed database so you will need to log in through UNB).

Oct. 2 — Aphra Behn, The Rover, or The Banish'd Cavaliers (1677);
The Second Part of the Rover (1681); and
a small package of prologues and other material (available as PDF file via WebCT)

Articles:
Hobby, Elaine. "No Stolen Object, but Her Own: Aphra Behn’s Rover and Thomas Killigrew’s Thomaso." Women's Writing 6.1 (1999): 113-127. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Thompson, Peggy. "Closure and Subversion in Behn’s Comedies." Broken Boundaries: Women and Feminism in Restoration Drama. Ed. Katherine H. Quinsey. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1996. 72-88. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Further reading:
Two facsimiles of the first part, one from 1677 and one from 1697, and one of the second (1681), all on EEBO.

Oct. 9: — Thanksgiving: No classes.

Oct. 16 — Mary Pix, The Innocent Mistress (1697) (in Finberg)

Articles:
Gómez, Carlos. "Witty Women Masking Gender and Identity: The Comedies of Mary Pix in Context." Re-shaping the Genres: Restoration Women Writers. Zenón Luis-Martinez and Jorge Digueroa-Dorrego, eds. Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2003. 123-156. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

McLaren, Juliet. "Presumptuous Poetess, Pen-Feathered Muse: The Comedies of Mary Pix." Gender at Work: Four Women Writers of the Eighteenth Century. Ann Messenger, ed. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1990. 77-113. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve). Please note: I obtained this article through intra-library resource sharing and the lender neglected to copy the accompanying notes. I have put in another request but I doubt I will get them in time for our class. The notes are now available as a PDF file via WebCT.

Further reading:
Facsimile of 1697 printing on EEBO.

Due date: Proposals for Wikipedia entries due.

Oct. 23 — Catherine Trotter, Love at a Loss (1700) (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Critical reading:
From Anne Kelley, Catherine Trotter: An early modern writer in the feminist vanguard (Ashgate, 2002): intro., Chs. 1, 3, 4. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Presentation: Jesse F.

Oct. 30 — Susanna Centlivre, The Busybody (1709) (in Finberg)

Articles:
Collins, Margo. "Centlivre v. Hardwicke: Susannah Centlivre's plays and the Marriage Act of 1753." Comparative Drama 33.2 (1999):179-199. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Frushell, Richard C. "Marriage and Marrying in Susanna Centlivre's Plays." Papers on Language & Literature 22.1 (Winter 1986:16ff. (available online via EBSCOhost Academic Search Elite).

Presentation: Andrea D.

Nov. 6 — Eliza Haywood, A Wife to be Let (1724) (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Articles:
Fields, Polly Stevens. "Manly Vigor and Woman's Wit: Dialoguing Gender in the Plays of Eliza Haywood." Compendious Conversations: The Method of Dialogue in the Early Enlightenment. Kevin L. Cope, ed. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1992. 257-266. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Wilputte, Earla A. "Wife pandering in three eighteenth-century plays." Studies in English Literature 38.3 (Summer 1998): 447ff. (available online via EBSCOhost Academic Search Elite).

Presentation: Susie B.

Due date: Abstracts for papers are due.

Nov. 13 — Elizabeth Griffith, The Times (1779) (in Finberg)

Articles:
Rizzo, Betty. "'Depressa Resurgam': Elizabeth Griffith's Playwriting Career." Curtain Calls: British and American Women and the Theater, 1660-1820. Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski, eds. Athens: Ohio UP, 1991. 120-142. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Smallwood, Angela J. "Women and the Theatre." Women and Literature in Britain, 1700-1800. Vivien Jones, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 238-262. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Presentation: Brenna C. G.

Nov. 20 — Hannah Cowley, The Belle's Stratagem (1780) (in Finberg)

Articles:
Isikoff, Erin. "Masquerade, Modesty, and Comedy in Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem." Look Who's Laughing: Gender and Comedy. Gail Finney, ed. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994. 99-117. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Wallace, Elizabeth Kowaleski. "Theatricality and Cosmopolitanism in Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem." Comparative Drama 35.3/4 (2001): 415-434. (available as PDF file via WebCT; on reserve)

Presentation: Patrick T.

Nov. 27 — Joanna Baillie, Plays on the Passions (1798)

Articles:
Burroughs, Catherine B. "'A Reasonable Woman’s Desire’: The Private Theatrical and Joanna Baillie's The Tryal." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 38.3/4 (1996): 265-285. (available as PDF file via WebCT; soon to be on reserve)

Purinton, Marjean D. "Joanna Baillie's Count Basil and De Monfort: the unveiling of gender issues." Romantic Ideology Unmasked: The Mentally Constructed Tyrannies in Dramas of William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Joanna Baillie. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994. 125-162, 187-189. (available as PDF file via WebCT; soon to be on reserve)

Presentation: Kari T.

Dec. 4 — Frances Burney, The Witlings and The Woman-Hater (1779; 1796-1801)

Articles:
Darby, Barbara. "Censored Women: The Witlings." Frances Burney, Dramatist: Gender, Performance, and the Late-Eighteenth-Century Stage. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997. 22-42. (available as PDF file via WebCT; soon to be on reserve)

Saggini, Francesca. "From Evelina to The Woman Hater: Frances Burney and the "Joyce" of Dramatic (Re)writing." Studi settecenteschi 20 (2000):315-332. (available online: HTML and PDF)

Further reading:
The Witlings had its world premiere in 1998 [UNB login required].

Presentation: Kirstie M.

Due date: Papers are due.

Assignments

Here is a tentative list of the course assignments. More detail to follow, but in brief:

Biographical assignment — 20%
Presentation — 20%
Paper — 35%
Participation/Weblog — 25%