LIT 4385 Fall 2024 - Roberts

Ever since Enheduanna, a Mesopotamian princess and priestess of the Moon who lived and wrote 4500 years ago, women writers have used the supernatural and the mythic to express their power. The medieval abbess Marie de France slyly subverted courtly convention with her fairies and werewolves, Mary Shelley raised the dead in Frankenstein, the Brontes filled their novels with ghosts, and Eudora Welty populated Mississippi with fertility goddesses. We’ll explore how women use the magical to claim a measure of freedom.