As part of our session on feminism, writing and power, we looked at Mary Wollstonecraft's seminal 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman', a 1792 treatise that argued for the importance of women's education during a period where it was habitually denied. Expected to be little more than delicate parlour ornaments, women were not seen as worthy recipients of the kind of education offered to men - a state of affairs which Wollstonecraft laments, while pointing out its idiocy (surely men would prefer a wife with whom they can hold a conversation). As a thought experiment, I asked my students: 'If you could write a modern-day "Vindication of the Rights of Woman", what feminist - or gender-related - issue would you focus on, and why?' Here are some of the responses - you can also see a word cloud of the most frequently used terms above. Click on it to read more.
Tag: education
English Literature (Taylor’s Version): Seminar 3
[By Birgit de Schrijver] In the third seminar we looked at the role of the author. More specifically the influence of the author when it comes to our interpretation of certain texts (or songs). When looking at “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, we came across many nonsense words which made it difficult to understand the poem. However, this gave us a lot of freedom in interpreting it since there didn’t seem to be a right or wrong meaning. Where Jabberwocky gave us a lot of freedom, part of this was taken away by Carroll's “Through the Looking Glass”. Here, Humpty Dumpty gives us (sometimes confusing) explanations for the nonsense words. Unfortunately, by telling us what something means, we are deprived of our own interpretation. We discussed that often the explicit interpretation of the author limits the interpretation of the reader. [Click above image to read more]
English Literature (Taylor’s Version): Seminar 2
In English Literature (Taylor's Version) seminar 2 - titled 'This Ain't a Fairytale: Chivalry and the Knight in Shining Armour' - we looked at the anonymous 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written in Middle English (though we used the excellent Simon Armitage poetic translation). Students had also watched the 2021 film The Green Knight - a very free adaptation of the poem by filmmaker David Lowery and starring Dev Patel - in advance of the seminar, and were asked to write either a short opinion piece on the film, or their thoughts on the idea of chivalry. [Click the above image to read more]
Swifterature 