26029 - Critical Utopias

Learning outcomes

The student acquires historical and literary knowledge of women's popular culture with specific reference to travel literature and critical utopias, within a gender perspective.

Course contents

The course will explore the multi-layered meanings that utopia as a literary genre and utopianism as a form of thought. acquire for women’s access to writing and to the ‘public’ and contemporary debates.

Moving from the analysis of some emblematic texts written by male authors (Utopia, 1516, by Thomas More and New Atlantis, 1628, by Francis Bacon), the course will interrogate the way in which this hybrid genre takes up a dialogue with classical utopianism and the great tradition as well as it interweaves with other contemporary emergent literary genres (travel writing, romance, novel, closet drama, theatre and scientific treatises).

The course will then explore female forms of utopia from the 17th century until the 20th century to examine how female writers deals with the utopian paradigm and interpret it as a possible space for female agency and empowerment. The texts investigated during the course will be ‘unpacked’ through the use of gender as a method of analysis. This will enable the students to discuss the obstacles and possibilities in women’s private and public life and to question how women resist gender hierarchies and discriminations proposing social and political changes.

Readings/Bibliography

The course will focus on examples taken from the following primary sources

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko or the Royal Slave, (1688), The Widow Ranter or the History of Bacon in Virginia, 1688-89.

Margaret Cavendish, Bell in Campo, (1662), The Covent of Pleasure (1668), The Description of a New World Called the Blazing World (1666).

Mary Astell, A serious proposal to the Ladies, for the advancement of their true and greatest interest (1694-1697)

Sarah Scott, A Description of Millenium Hall (1762)

Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (1851-1853)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915)

Secondary sources:

NB:Other essays/articles may be added during the course:

R. Baccolini, R. Monticelli, Le cicle utopique de Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in Histoire transnationale de l’utopie littéraire et de l’utopisme, Paris, Honoré Champions 2008, pp, 923-928.

N. Pohl, B. Tooley, (ed. by), Gender and Utopia in the Eighteenth Century, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007.

G. Claeys, (ed. by), The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2010. (selected chapters)

R. Gregory, B. Kohlmann (eds), Utopian Spaces of Modernism: British Literature and Culture, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan 2011.

V. Fortunati, “L’Utopia come genere letterario”, in Dall’Utopia all’Utopismo. Percorsi tematici, a cura di Fortunati e Corrado, Napoli, CUEN. 2003, pp. 45-61

A. Reeve-Tucker, N. Waddell (eds), Utopianism, Modernism and Literature in the Twentieth Century, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan 2013.

R. Monticelli, “Utopia e Utopismo”, in Dall'utopia all'utopismo. Percorsi tematici. A cura di V. Fortunati, R. Trousson, A. Corrado. Napoli : CUEN. 2003, pp. 709-726.

R. Baccolini, “Il ruolo della donna in utopia.” Dall'utopia all'utopismo. Percorsi tematici. A cura di V. Fortunati, R. Trousson, A. Corrado. Napoli : CUEN. 2003. 693-707.

K. Lilley, “Blazing World: Seventeenth-Century Women’s Utopian Writing”, in Women, Texts and Histories. 1575-1760, Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss (eds), London-New York, Routledge, 1992, pp. 102-133.

Gilberta Golinelli, “Metodologie degli studi di genere: alcuni esempi nella letteratura inglese della prima età moderna tra letteratura di viaggio, teatro e utopia”, in Transpostcross, Vol.2, 2013.

Gilberta Golinelli, Gender Models, Alternative Communities and Women's Utopianism. Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn and Mary Astell, Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2018.

R. Trubowitz, “The Re-enchantment of Utopia and the Female Monarchical Self: Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World”, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 11, N° 2, 1992, pp. 229-245.

R. Rosenthal, Gaskell’s Feminist Utopia. The Cranfordians and the Reign of Goodwill in J. L. Donawerth and C. A. Kolmerten (eds), Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse 1994, pp. 73-92.

E. Lang Bonin, “Margaret Cavendish Dramatic Utopias and the Politics of Gender”, in SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 40, n. 2, 2000, pp. 339-354.

Bernice L. Hausman, "Sex before Gender: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Evolutionary Paradigm of Utopia", Feminist Studies, Vol. 24, 1998, pp. 488-510.

Dorice Williams Elliott, "Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall and Female Philanthropy, in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 35, 1995, pp. 535-553.

Lee Cullen Khanna, "Utopian Exchanges: Negotiating Difference in Utopia", in Nicole Pohl and Brenda Tootley (eds), Gender and Utopia in the Eighteenth Century. Essays in English and French Utopian Writing, Ashgate, Fernham, 2004, pp. 17-37.

Teaching methods

Lessons, seminars, discussion in class.

Assessment methods

Final oral exam. The submission of an essay may be agreed with the lecturer.

Attendance and class participation will also be assessed as a component of the final overall mark.

NB: Those students who are able to demonstrate a wide and systematic understanding of the issues covered during classes, are able to use these critically and who master the field-specific language of the discipline will be given a mark of excellence. Those students who demonstrate a mnemonic knowledge of the subject with a more superficial analytical ability and ability to synthesize, a correct command of the language but not always appropriate, will be given a satisfactory mark. A superficial knowledge and understanding of the material, a scarce analytical and expressive ability that is not always appropriate will be rewarded with a ‘pass' mark. Students who demonstrate gaps in their knowledge of the subject matter, inappropriate language use, lack of familiarity with the literature in the program bibliography will not be given a pass mark

Office hours

See the website of Gilberta Golinelli

See the website of Carlotta Farese