The Curious Case of Mary Sidney: The Representation of Women in the Teaching of Early Modern Literature
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2019-07-06
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en
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This study examines to what extent the scholarship on women writers, and Mary Sidney the Countess of Pembroke in particular, is applied in early modern literature courses at West European universities. The research uses Mary Sidney as a case study, considering her in her own time and looking at the image that remains and/or is created of her in contemporary scholarship. Subsequently, it is examined which parts of this image are then again materialised in early modern literature courses, by conducting a survey among lecturers at a selection of British, Irish, and Dutch universities. The results of this survey show that both the representation of Mary Sidney and of women in general varies greatly between courses. From the obtained responses it is observed that this variety is due to a combination of practical reasons, but most of all to an underlying bias towards original writing in the formulation of course syllabi. This suggests that for a significant improvement in female representation not only the syllabi themselves should change, the process of formulating a syllabus should change too.
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Faculteit der Letteren