During the eighteenth century, British critics applied terms of gender to literature according to the belief that masculine values represented the best literature and feminine terms signified less important works or authors. Laura Runge contends however that the meaning of gendered terms like 'manly' or 'effeminate' changes over time, and that the language of eighteenth-century criticism cannot be fully understood without careful analysis of the gendered language of the era. She examines conventions in various fields of critical language - Dryden's prose, the early novel, criticism by women, and the developing aesthetic - to show how gendered epistemology shaped critical 'truths'. Her exploration of critical commonplaces, such as regarding the heroic and the sublime as masculine modes and the novel as a feminine genre, addresses issues central to eighteenth-century studies.
Although the availability of classroom texts and scholarship on 18th century British women writers has grown substantially in the past 20 years, little has been written about the classroom experience. This essay surveys the questions and materials that shape the teaching of female authors from Behn to Barbauld (roughly 1660–1800). Beginning with the arguments on recovery and esthetic or cultural appreciation, the essay reviews available texts (paper and digital sources), organization and methods of teaching, and further resources for the instructor. Throughout, the essay includes strategies for recursive critical reading and achieving general education learning objectives, thus demonstrating how the classroom can be used as a critical space for feminist recovery of early women writers.
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