ENG 255 O2 TAINTED OR TEMPTING: WOMEN IN LITERATURE

“History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts,” according to Ian Fleming. This course will examine how the construction of female heroes and villains intersect in a variety of short stories, television shows, and novels. We will ground our study by looking at a few familiar figures from fairy tales and folklore (perfect maidens and wretched witches), and then move forward to more complicated portraits of female literary figures. Our readings are likely to include work by Hans Christian Anderson, William Shakespeare, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, and Jennifer Egan, among others. We will pay close attention to how age and class inflect female figures from creation myths to contemporary narratives. This course fulfills the Core Curriculum requirement in Literature.