This course will focus on four women writers whose biographies have little in common, except for gender: George Eliot, Toni Morrison, Ama Atta Aidoo, and Nadine Gordinmer.

For the most part, their writing will be studied chronologically. But attempts will also be made to analyse the texts as thematic units with overarching “feminist” concerns.

This course will raise such questions as the following: is there a distinctively feminine sensibility manifested in the creative process, in the choice of subject, in style,

in narrative point of view or, in the characterization of hero and heroine? What critical tools are appropriate for the study of women writers and images of the “feminine”?