In this seminar, we will study selected poems by Jonathan Swift as well as poems by women who either knew him personally or whose works show an awareness of him as a role model of poetic self-presentation. The text corpus will include his comic and touching birthday poems to Stella, his morbidly flirtatious poems to the married Anne Acheson, and at least one of his 'antifeminist' satires to be compared with women's poetic reactions to it. In addition, we are going to trace Swift's influence on women's poetry written in the middle and later eighteenth century, address questions of canon formation, and explore the historical, social, literary, and cultural contexts in which women "attempted the pen."
- Lehrende/r: Kirsten Juhas
Semester: ST 2023