CMLT C340 3055
Women in World Literature
~ Satisfies COAS A & H requirement and carries cultural studies
credit ~

MW 1:00-2:15 BH  Adriana Varga

	This course will study the nature of femininity by examining
women’s visions in world literature. The term “vision” here includes
views and insights as well as visional and visual features of
women’s literature. How have women envisioned their lives, the
world, and the act of writing? How have they re-presented life they
imagined? How does visuality function in women’s imagination? Are
there some universal elements in the way women are portrayed? Are
there cultural differences in the way they perceive their
femininity? Why is it that women authors are particularly self-
conscious about their self-image as well as about writing? This
course will examine these questions on the basis of women’s prose
fiction in eastern and western literature, classical and modern.
Readings will include Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji, Madame de
Lafayette’s The Princess of Cléves, Jane Austen’s Persuasion,
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper, Marguerite Duras’ The
Lover, Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone, and a number of short stories and
essays. On women’s views of their roles as writer, we will examine
essays by Virginia Woolf, Helene Cixous and others.
	The topics of lectures and discussions will include women’s
sensitivity in relation to the aesthetic and literary concerns of
the time as well as the relationship of these often
secluded “women’s worlds” and the “larger” worlds of political,
economic, and cultural systems. Some of the novels studied in this
course have been made into films. A few will be shown in parts in
class, but two will be shown in full outside class sessions.
Attendance at these film showings in the evening will be required.
There will be a midterm and a final exam, both of which will include
brief essay components. In addition, two short essays will be
assigned on some of the texts studied in the course.