The course will open with a brief discussion of (a) basic concepts of literary theory and narratology, such as story, narrative, genre, character, hero & anti-hero, opening and closure of a literary text, narrator & point of view, theory and practice in interpretation, the literary canon; (b) basic concepts of gender theory, such as sexuality and gender identity, social gender construction, binary gender stereotypes, gender bound socialization and interpellation, inclusion, exclusion and marginalization. These two sets of concepts will be joined and matched to view several possible interfaces of literature as a canonic form of art, with special social privileges and cultural power, and gender, as a basic defining identity category of men and women authors, readers, interpreters.  

The course will proceed to examine several literary prose fiction works, written by women, historical and current. The nexus of gender and literature will be viewed regarding women as writers, readers and interpreters. Among the themes the course will problematize are the connection between hegemonic control and the personal and cultural asset of writing and reading; the illusion of universalistic concepts of agency regarding literary heroes and dominant literary plots; methods of reading and interpreting, both standard and subversive; concepts of 'a room of her own' and 'écriture feminine'; feminist critique of the absence of women from literary history and the evolving of alternative literary history. The literary works which the course shall review will be examined to learn of their significance regarding questions of conventionality vs. resistance to literary tradition: narratives of bildung and initiation, of awakening, family plots, mother and daughter stories, travel narratives, romance and popular literature.