Dangerous Women: Sirens, Sibyls, Poets and Singers from Sappho through Elena Ferrante

Undergraduate

Was Sappho a feminist? This course tries to answer that question by analyzing how women’s voices have been appropriated by the literary and cultural canon of the west–and how in turn women writers and readers have reappropriated those voices. Students read a generous amount of literary (and in some cases, musical) works, along with a variety of contemporary theoretical approaches so as to engage in conversation about authorship, classical reception, and materiality. Following an introduction to Greek and Roman texts key for problematic female figures such as sirens and sibyls, we turn to two later historical moments to explore how women artists have both broken out of and used the western canon, redefining genre, content, and style in literary creation writ large. How did Renaissance women such as Laura Cereta, Gaspara Stampa, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz fashion themselves as authors in light of the classical sources they had at hand? And once we arrive in the 20th and 21st centuries, how do Sibilla Aleramo, Elsa Morante, Anna Maria Ortese, and Elena Ferrante forge a new, feminist writing via classical, queer and/or animal viewpoints? HU HTBA