English Literature BA

Core modules:

Renaissance to Revolution

This module surveys the poetry and prose from the early modern period in England, i.e., that written between the beginnings of the sixteenth century through the seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century. We will look at different genres, from court complaint to sonnets, prose fiction, erotic verse, restoration drama and the works of writers such as Donne, Herbert, Spenser, Marlowe, Dyrden, Milton and Pope. The texts studied will be related to critical methods that help us understand the relationships between literature and the culture, society, and politics of the period in which it was produced.

40 credits

Optional modules:

Foundations in Literary Study: Biblical and Classical Sources in English Literature

This module provides foundational knowledge about the treatment of Biblical and Classical sources in English Literature. It is an important unit for the study of literature and the Humanities, preparing students for work at higher levels. Typically a Biblical or Classical source and a literary text will be discussed together, to expose a range of meanings and to prepare participants for their own research about both the Bible and Classical material as literature and the treatment of Bible and Classical material in Literature. It will also prepare students for independent research. It is recommended that all students of English take this module.

20 credits

Contemporary Literature

This module introduces students to a diverse range of texts in English (prose, poetry, and film) with a focus on texts published since 2000. Texts will be chosen to provoke thinking and debate on urgent and controversial topics that might include: globalisation and neoliberalism; ecology and animal lives; artificial intelligence and the posthuman; political activism and social justice; migration and displacement; state violence and armed conflict. We will discuss formally and conceptually challenging works, raise ethical and philosophical questions and begin to discover how current critical and theoretical approaches can help us to engage with contemporary texts.

20 credits

Studying Theatre: A History of Dramatic Texts in Performance

Covering classical, contemporary and popular texts, Studying Theatre; A History of Dramatic Text in Performance aims to turn an interest in theatre and theatre-going into a more thorough appreciation of the ways in which playwriting, acting, design and performance have shaped theatre's development. Each week students will study a particular play and the historical context that informed its first performances and its theatrical afterlife. The course emphasis is on theatre as a social practice and practical discipline. Seminars and lectures will focus on the play in performance, and the processes that underlie production. Students do not need previous knowledge or experience, but should be prepared to try some new approaches to texts, for example through practical workshops.

20 credits

Early Englishes

Early Englishes works backward over a whole millennium of English, 1600 to 600. Each week's lectures and seminar focus on one century and one text representative of that century (for example, Beowulf and Piers Plowman). We will use a variety of techniques , literary, linguistic, anthropological, cultural historical, to analyse each text, thereby opening up discussion of the issues that preoccupied the English of the time, from glorious monster-slaying to the slow surrender of pagan belief to terror at the imminent arrival of Antichrist and on to the first expressions of love and desire. Texts will initially be studied in translation so no prior knowledge of Old or Middle English is necessary, but students will also be given the opportunity to examine texts in the original language.

20 credits

Introduction to Creative Writing

The aim of this unit is to help students to develop their expressive and technical skills in writing poetry and prose and to improve their abilities as an editor and critic of their own and other people's writing. Students will be guided in the production of new work and encouraged to develop an analytical awareness of both the craft elements and the wider cultural and theoretical contexts of writing. This module explores poetic techniques for creating new poems and narrative techniques for generating some prose work through the critical study of published examples, imaginative exercises, discussion and feedback on students' own writing. This exploration will help students to develop their own creative work while sharpening critical appreciation of published poetry and modern and contemporary fiction. The course is designed to give students the expereince of being workshopped as well as to establish basic creative writing techniques on Level 1 to preparing students for the challenges of Creative Writing Level 2.

20 credits

Shakespeare

This unit introduces students to the plays and poetry of William Shakespeare. Students will read a wide range of his works and will analyse them in the context of the cultural and historical energies of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. We will consider the range of dramatic styles and genres that he engages, alongside the conditions of performance, kinds of publication, and the characteristics of the language in which he worked. We shall also relate the texts to critical methods that help illuminate the relationships between drama and the culture, politics, and religion of the period.

20 credits

Introduction to Cinema

This module aims to study a cross-section of the most important American films up to the present day and to develop both a formalist and an institutional analysis of these works. Its intention is to study the growth of the classical Hollywood style, a matter of a sophisticated range of technical stratagems as well as of a genre-based cinema, and of the institution of Hollywood itself, the most significant force in cinema to-day.

20 credits

Practical Stylistics

How are literary effects created through language? How can we describe these effects? This course will aim to provide literature students with a gentle introduction to language, and provide language students with experience of applying linguistic analysis to literary texts. The emphasis will be upon a practical hands-on approach, and topics covered will include sentence structure, lexical choice, cohesion, narrative structure, discourse analysis (with reference to drama and dialogue) and point of view in narrative fiction. The texts studied will be predominantly literary and twentieth century, and will include extracts from novels, plays, poetry and short stories.

20 credits

Theatre 1: Staging Texts

This module will explore the processes through which texts written for theatrical performance ('plays') may be effectively interrogated, interpreted, and translated into performances. This will involve seeing one or more productions and analysing the relationship between the written and the performance texts, but the main emphasis will be on the first-hand, studio-based practical exploration of text(s). Though some consideration may be given to the perspectives of designers, directors and others, students will engage with text(s) primarily as imaginative, inventive and creative performers and interpreters of text(s).

20 credits

Climate Crisis: Culture, Politics, Science

Climate Crisis is an all-encompassing global challenge that must be understood as simultaneously a scientific, political and cultural issue. We understand the processes and impacts of climate change through science; we address climate change (or fail to address it) through political structures; we experience climate change and become involved with climate change activism through culture (climate fiction and film for example). By the end of the module students will have a sense of the inter-connection and tension between scientific, political and cultural approaches and a deepening appreciation of the kinds of steps that will be necessary for a sustainable future.

20 credits

History of English

This module traces the history of the English language of the Fifth century AD through to the present day. Students will learn about the development of English over this period, looking at the factors which have shaped the language, and learning a variety of techniques for studying the language. The module will also introduce students to the range and variety of the English language at all periods, and to the ways in which English influences, and is influenced by, other languages.

20 credits

Core modules:

Romanticism to Modernism (a)

This module focuses on a diverse range of texts (including poetry, prose, drama and film) produced between the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century. It pays detailed attention to the varied styles, issues, and movements produced by the rapid technological, political and cultural shifts that characterise these two centuries. Drawing on the expertise of the teaching team, the module introduces cutting-edge research carried out within the department in areas such as romanticism, the Gothic and science fiction, experimental literature, colonial and postcolonial contexts, war studies, and animal studies

40 credits

Literature and Critical Thought (a)

This course introduces writers, concepts and approaches fundamental to contemporary literary theory, and explores their application to diverse relevant texts. Students will engage in a transhistorical study of the formal, literary and cultural functions of genre (e.g. in the forms of comedy and tragedy). They will also encounter theorists such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Michael Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan and Jean Baudrillard. Lectures will introduce and explain this material, and seminars will discuss and apply it to the study of literature.

40 credits

Optional modules:

Theatre 2: Making Contemporary Performance

This module engages with contemporary radical/experimental modes of performance-making beyond the literary dramatic tradition with research and analysis of the contexts which gave rise to these modes, and encourages students to apply these modes in new creative practice.

20 credits

Victorian Women Poets: Stressing Sex

This module introduces students to a range of Victorian women poets and the critical and ideological debates that surround their work. Reading the poetry of canonical writers, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti alongside less familiar works by, for example Mathilde Blind and Amy Levy, students will be encouraged to engage with questions of gender and genre and to think about how women employed different poetic forms and voices to respond to the political, scientific and religious upheavals of the nineteenth century. The module also explores the gender politics of the literary canon and encourages students to consider how a focus on women writers from diverse class, national and ethnic backgrounds might resist powerful narratives about Victorian literature and culture.

20 credits

The History of Persuasion

In all areas of life language plays a crucial role in defining what kind of event is taking place, who is in a position of authority and whose assertions should be trusted and believed. The aim of this module is to explore the nature of texts produced within four different areas: science, religion, the mass-media, and the market place. We shall consider the linguistic characteristics of each discourse and discuss how authority is constructed and persuasion achieved within each area. We shall also examine the emergence of each discourse from a historical angle and explore the controversies which surround communication in all four contexts. Students will have the opportunity to use stylistic techniques in the analysis of both historical and contemporary texts and to explore the social and cultural history of communication. Where appropriate, comparisons will be drawn with more literary genres with the aim of investigating (and problematising) the distinction between literary and non-literary discourse.

20 credits

The Novella and the Uncanny

This course will explore novellas from across the last 150 years which represent uncanny experiences of haunting, madness, obsession, and psychological and political disorientation, with these intense experiences often refracted through the consciousness of a central character. We will consider whether the particularities of this literary form lend themselves to representing experiences at the 'limits of reason'. Texts will include works by Kafka, Camus, George Eliot, Ayn Rand, Pynchon and others. The course will encompass the study of some relevant theory, including Freud's essay 'The Uncanny' - which itself contains an analysis of Hoffman's bizarre short story 'The Sandman'.

20 credits

John Donne

This module focuses on the work of one of the most charismatic, provocative, and intellectually challenging poets and preachers of the early modern period, John Donne. Ranging across Donne¿s writings, we will consider his erotic and religious poetry, political satires, letters, and sermons. The module will examine the social and literary circles in which Donne¿s work was written and read, with a particular emphasis on contemporary cultures of print and manuscript, and also seek to locate Donne¿s work in the wider context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century society, exploring, for example, his engagement with court politics, religious controversy, debates about marriage, and the exploration of the New World. The module will conclude with an examination of the critical reception of Donne¿s work and, in particular, the ways in which his biography has been constructed from the seventeenth-century to the present day.

20 credits

Good Books: Intertextual Approaches to Literature and the Bible

Literature, film and television constantly return to the Bible as a source of narrative, character and image. Biblical texts are translated, rewritten, transposed and radically challenged by literature from the medieval period to the present day and so intertextual readings of the Bible and literature provide insight into the ways authors engage with politics, philosophy, and tradition. Our module explores a range of intertextual relationships, from medieval dream poetry through to contemporary writing and cultural representation, including a range of genres and approaches. We will analyse film, TV and visual media as well as literary forms, to explore the ways in which creative writers interpret and re-imagine biblical narratives and tropes.

20 credits

Creative Writing Prose Fiction 2

The aim of this unit is to help students to develop their expressive and technical skills in writing prose fiction at Level 2 and to improve their abilities as an editor and critic of their own and other people's writing. Students will be guided in the production of new work and encouraged to develop an analytical awareness of both the craft elements and the wider cultural and theoretical contexts of writing. The emphasis throughout will be on reading as a writer and writing as a reader.

20 credits

The Postcolonial Bildungsroman

This module considers the bildungsroman as a global form that, having emerged in tandem with Western imperialism, remains a vital means of constructing the self and (re)imagining social and political relations in postcolonial literatures. We will focus on the representation of growth, development and community in novels from South Asia, Nigeria, South Africa and the Caribbean, paying attention to features that are, arguably, anti-developmental, including primitivism, animality, violence, illness and disability. We will investigate how 'postcolonial' or 'global' novels stretch, resist or overhaul, an inherited form and ask how contemporary concerns with race, gender and religious conflict play out for protagonists in whose lives the local and the global meet.

20 credits

New Realisms: Contemporary British Cinema

This module will explore the ways in which contemporary British directors working within the broad traditions of British realist cinema have responded to and sought to represent the contemporary period. Students will study films by directors such as Andrea Arnold, Shane Meadows, Andrew Haigh, Clio Barnard, Duane Hopkins, Joanna Hogg, Steve McQueen, and Francis Lee and will consider these works in a range of theoretical, formal, and institutional contexts.

20 credits

Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer is not only the most famous medieval English writer, he is also one of the most varied, controversial, and gritty writers at the time. This course aims to introduce students to a wide range of Chaucer's writings, including the Canterbury Tales, while situating Chaucerian writing in its medieval context, which will also allow us to assess the commonly held notion of Chaucer as the father of English literature. We will explore literary, linguistic, material, cultural, religious, and political aspects of his fascinatingly rich body of texts to gauge Chaucer's status as a medieval poet, and interrogate questions of society, gender, tradition and philosophy that his work continues to inspire.

20 credits

Crime Writing: from the fin de siècle to the Golden Age

How did the genre of crime writing become so influential? This module will examine the cultural history of crime writing from 1890-1950, in a range of genres including detective novels, short stories, plays and films, and true crime writing or reportage. By focusing on a number of narratives of crime, the module will invite an analysis of how this genre is engaged with and subverted by writers wrestling with a modernity that included developments including two World Wars, imperialism and anticolonial movements, women’s suffrage and presence in the workplace and a hugely increased use of technology, alongside the rise of criminology and psychoanalysis.

20 credits

Sex and Decadence in Restoration Theatre

The period between the Restoration of Charles II and the death of Queen Anne, witnessed an astonishing development of theatrical practice and culture; the professional Restoration stage, unlike its Renaissance predecessor, used actresses rather than cross-dressed boys to play female parts and the introduction of moveable scenery to these theatres brought with it different styles of acting, plotting and realism. On this module, we will consider how this new kind of theatre enabled the emergence of two key Restoration theatrical types, the rake and the courtesan. We will analyse what these new roles might tell us about changing attitudes towards sex - as leisure activity, moral behaviour, easy (or hard) work - in the later seventeenth century. A key question we'll be considering, too, is the degree to which the theatricalisation of sex (or sex talk) might be thought to be political in a period still haunted by the period of civil-war and Cromwellian interregnum. Was Restoration drama, sexually adventurous at every turn, as decadent and morally bankrupt as many outraged contemporaries thought? Was it really as politically and socially conservative as some modern day commentators suggest? Or was the Restoration propensity to talk sex on stage emblematic of the most revolutionary of cultural shifts, heralding the advent of core Enlightenment values such as equality, privacy and individual freedom? Did Restoration theatre, in other words, help make sex modern?In order to answer suc

20 credits

Writing the Real

This module explores the often problematic relationship between literature and 'the real world', using a range of theoretical and stylistic approaches. We will consider why 'realism' is such a difficult term to get to grips with; why describing a text or film as 'realistic' can be a very politically charged act; how ideas of 'the real' have changed over time; and what effects the inclusion of 'real' materials into fictional works may have. We will explore 'the real' in a wide range literary texts and films, including works by Elizabeth Gaskell, Ken Loach and Harold Pinter.

20 credits

Exiles and Monsters: Reading Old English

This module explores the language and literature of Anglo-Saxon England, enabling you to read and understand the earliest English literature. You will learn how to read Old English, developing a good understanding of Old English grammar and gaining familiarity with the language and literature through translating a range of texts. We will examine the historical background and cultural contexts of these texts, introducing you to the breadth and variety of Old English literature, and to differing critical approaches to them.

20 credits

European Gothic

What were the historical circumstances which led to the rise of the Gothic in Europe? This course will interrogate the Gothic through this and many other questions which will place emphasis upon its historical and political contexts. We will examine a variety of Gothic texts from 1764 to the present day, and locate and critique them historically through a variety of contemporary reviews and critical essays. Gothic art and architecture will also be examined in relation to the texts with a scheduled slide show, examining work by 'Gothic' artists such as Goya and Piranesi.

20 credits

Creative Writing Poetry 2

We learn by example: a creative writer is first and foremost a creative reader and a critical reader of his/her own work. This module explores poetic form and techniques for creating new poems through the critical study of published examples, imaginative exercises, discussion and feeback on students' own writing. This exploration will help students to develop their own creative work while sharpening critical appreciation of the formal aspects of poetry. Subjects covered will include: metre, rhythm and free verse; rhyme and verbal patterning; traditional forms such as sonnet and terza rima; new ways with form.

20 credits

Representing the Holocaust

This course will examine fictional and non-fictional, literary and filmic, representations of the Holocaust, and considers the use and extension of conventional textual forms to do so, including documentary film, memoir, short story and cartoon. Texts covered will include Elie Wiesel's 'Night', Claude Lanzmann's film 'Shoah', Martin Sherman's 'Bent', Martin Amis's 'Time's Arrow' and Ida Fink's stories in 'A Scrap of Time'.

20 credits

Road Journeys in American Culture: 1930-2000

This module analyses the development of road narratives from the 1930s to the present, looking at the ways in which this narrative trope tells the story of American culture and society throughout the twentieth-century. The module aims to address some or all of the following questions. Do road journeys reflect or run away from political realities 'at home'? To what extent is the road journey a gendered space predominantly occupied by men? Are certain groups of people allowed to travel and other groups not? Is the road journey a metaphor for American colonization and expansion, or something else more ambiguous? Texts to be studied include films such as 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Bonnie and Clyde', The Straight Strory', and 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' novels such as 'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac, 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov, and 'The Music of Chance' by Paul Auster, and poems by Elizabeth Bishop and Amy Clampitt.

20 credits

Radical Theory

The premise of this course is the necessity to re-interpret the university as a site for philosophical speculation and theory-based intervention. Run collectively, the course will address, to use Walter Benjamin's terms, the catastrophe of the status quo, and is structured around three aims, which are: 1) to address `moments' of crisis such as, for example, climate change; the neoliberal, market-driven higher education system; the state of exception; the myth of the human; 2) to theorize these crises, and 3) to explore the relationship between theory and practice: in particular to explore theorized agency as enabling political activism.

20 credits

Literature, Ecology, Capital

Fredric Jameson famously noted that it `seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism¿. This module explores how literature represents the relationships between ecological crisis and the crises of capitalism. We will consider texts concerned with (for example) petroculture, habitat loss, biotechnology, meat and tourism. Chronologically, we will move from the late nineteenth century to the present. Given the global nature of the topic, we will be concerned with a diverse range of national literatures.

20 credits

Satire and Print in the Eighteenth Century

Against a background of political, religious and cultural ferment, new ideas of the individual's relationship to the state emerged in the early-eighteenth century. New kinds of readers, authors, and an increasingly powerful book trade reshaped the literary map of Britain. Those fraught relationships are captured in the prose and poetry of the satirists upon this course. The political, religious and economic satires of writers including Defoe, Pope, Swift, Ramsay, Finch, Gay, Leapor, Montagu, Addison and Steele will be read as a new and troubled relationship between the individual and the state emerged alongside a vigorously contested idea of 'Britain' in literature.

20 credits

Queer and Now: Contemporary Queer Texts

This module introduces students to a range of contemporary queer texts and considers how they respond to key debates and conversations regarding gender, sexuality, identity and community. Students will explore a variety of exemplary texts and artworks from the late 20th century up to the present day, together with the social, political, cultural and theoretical contexts which inform them. Considering how queer texts and theories might expand, challenge or stand in opposition to notions of canon, students will read works by queer novelists, poets and writers and will watch plays, films and drag performances to examine the opportunities of queer work and its relationship to activism and social change.

20 credits

The Invention of Romanticism: Pride, Persuasion and the Modern Mind
Stories at the End of the World: From the Beginning of the End to Apocalypse Now
What it Means Not to be Human: Animals, Ecology, Technology, Literature
Creative, Experimental, Destructive (Writing)
Chivalry and Romance in the Middle Ages
Middlemarch
Power, Knowledge and Sexuality on Stage, 1580 -1700
Literature of the Black Atlantic
ModCons: Exploring the Long Twentieth Century
Renaissance Literature, Modern Crisis
Life After Death? Romantic Poets Write the Afterlife

Theatre Practice: Research Project

In this module students will participate in a staff-led practical research project. Projects will reflect staff interests, and may include applied theatre, site specific performance, contemporary avant garde forms, community theatre, theatre in education, physical theatre, and so on. Students will be expected to participate in both practical work on a given form, and to experiment with possible ways of recording, analysing and reflecting on their practice. This may require them to explore how we can use technologies to help us create more permanent artefacts for performance research.

20 credits

The Invention of Romanticism

This module is about the birth and legacy of romantic writing. You’ll write a critical essay over Christmas, and over Easter you’ll write a proposal for an oral paper. You’ll be invited to present that paper to our undergraduate conference after Easter. Your conference paper will be converted into a final essay. All told, you’ll understand the modern world better, and will have had lots of support towards enhancing your presentation skills.

40 credits

Renaissance Literature, Modern Crisis

This module considers early modern and Renaissance literature in relation to some of the pressing concerns of the modern world, e.g. the climate emergency, decolonisation, and gender identity (topics may vary from year to year depending on staff expertise and current events). You’ll write a critical essay and work on a project such as an edited collection of texts with a shared theme.

40 credits

Research Topics in Theatre and Film

This module introduces students to significant research topics in the areas of theatre studies and film studies, through examination of diverse historical and contemporary examples. The module’s topics and themes will investigate theatre and film texts in terms of their creation, production and reception, explore them via relevant formal, practical and critical approaches, and interrogate and integrate them within complex, creative and theoretically-informed scholarly work.

40 credits

Middlemarch

Virginia Woolf famously described Middlemarch as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.” Spanning eight books, it is widely regarded as George Eliot’s masterpiece. Eliot described and defied her society; she scrutinised her Victorian moment. She lived and worked at odds with nineteenth-century religious institutions: for more than twenty years, she was the partner of George Henry Lewes, a married man, and in her writing she sought to portray life “as it was”, to represent and celebrate everyday life, to resist its injustices. She is also one of the few pseudonymous women to retain their pen name in posterity. This module focuses on Middlemarch’s eight books, exploring a range of historical and thematic issues including: serialisation; gender and marriage; class, religion and politics; Victorian science; art and ethics.

20 credits

Mod Cons: Exploring the Long 20th Century

This module introduces students to current research in the study of literary and related forms of cultural text and practice, focusing on the modern and contemporary periods from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. With a curriculum adapted each year in response to the current research interests of available academic staff, the module focuses on the ways in which literary and related works can be understood in terms of important aesthetic, cultural and socio-political concerns in the period.

40 credits

Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer is not only the most famous medieval English writer, he is also one of the most varied, controversial, and gritty writers at the time. This course aims to introduce you to a wide range of Chaucer’s writings, including the Canterbury Tales, while situating Chaucerian writing in its medieval context. We will explore literary, linguistic, material, cultural, religious, and political aspects of his fascinatingly rich body of texts to gauge Chaucer’s status as a medieval poet, and interrogate questions of society, gender, and philosophy that his work continues to inspire.

20 credits

Dissertation

The Dissertation is a long essay of between 8-10,000 words, the result of a sustained period of independent study across both semesters at Level 3. This module provides final year undergraduate students with an opportunity to build on work done in previous modules, or study a topic that has not been included in the degree. Students taking this module are expected to demonstrate a capacity both for independent research and for organising a long piece of work.

40 credits

Afro-American Literature 1: Beginnings to the Harlem Renaissance

This course examines Afro-American Literature from early slave narratives and poems to the explosion of creativity after the first world war in the Harlem Renaissance, with its mixture of jazz, art, writing and politics. Writers considered include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W.E. Du Bois, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Huston, Langston Hughes, Paul Dunbar. Music, art, and the cartoonist George Herriman will be discussed. We will also consider some later texts which reflect on this history, including Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Toni Morrison's Jazz.

20 credits

America and the Avant-Garde, 1950's-1990's

We require a situation like it really is - no rules at all. Only when we make them do it in our labs do crystals win our games. Do they? I wonder? (John Cage). In this module we will be looking at a range of avant-garde experiments in poetry, prose and performance that have been carried out by contemporary American writers and artists. As well as discussing the innovations of performance poetry, happenings and assemblages, we will also be comparing the work of different movements such as the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, FLUXUS, and Mail Art.

20 credits

No Animals were Harmed in the Making of this Module: Animals in Film

This course examines Afro-American Literature from early slave narratives and poems to the explosion of creativity after the first world war in the Harlem Renaissance, with its mixture of jazz, art, writing and politics. Writers considered include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W.E. Du Bois, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Huston, Langston Hughes, Paul Dunbar. Music, art, and the cartoonist George Herriman will be discussed. We will also consider some later texts which reflect on this history, including Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Toni Morrison's Jazz.

20 credits

Creative Writing Poetry 3

The aim of this unit is to help students to develop their expressive and technical skills in writing poetry at Level 3 and to improve their abilities as an editor and critic of their own and other people's writing. Students will be guided in the production of new work and encouraged to develop an analytical awareness of both the craft elements and the wider cultural and theoretical contexts of writing poetry. The emphasis throughout will be on reading as a writer and writing as a reader.

20 credits

Theatre Practice: Performance Essay

The module focus will be a student led practical research project. The Performance Essay will offer students the opportunity to work independently in an area of theatre which they find interesting and stimulating. The project will focus on a clearly defined research question, which will be explored through practical work, drawing on the range of practical knowledge and skills developed through the course. Projects will be negotiated with staff, and will be supervised by them. The Performance Essay represents the theatre equivalent of the literature dissertation.

20 credits

Creating Worlds in Performance and Literature

This optional module will explore different understandings of world(s) along with practices of world-making in fiction and performance. Students will encounter diverse strategies for creative writing and theatre-making that seek to create story-based worlds that audiences/readers can step into and inhabit metaphorically (in literature) and literally (in performance). This will involve a combination of lectures/seminar discussions and a number of practical workshops where students would be able to engage with different materials such as text, light, sound, performance and spatial design, experimenting with the making of ‘worlds’, immersive environments and atmospheres. Students will work towards developing (in small groups or alone) and presenting their own creative storyworld.
• No previous experience in theatre or writing is necessary and there will be plenty of opportunities to participate in the module in non-acting forms.

20 credits

Life After Death? Romantic Poets and Writing the Afterlife

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason held that there were only two real questions: Is there a God and is there eternal life? Poets and philosophers (and for Coleridge, ‘no man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher’) have sought to imagine, conjure, or deny the idea of a life after death. This module will explore the versions of eternity written by Romantic poets. From Keats’s denial of eternity, Byron’s questioning, Shelley’s agnostic yearning, and Hemans’s feminist redress of the issue, we will consider the idea of life after death in poetry. Starting with a grounding in key philosophical ideas from Plato’s assertion of the soul’s immortality and Lucretius’ denial of any life after death, this module will look at the hell, purgatory, heaven, and nothingness of life after death as written by Romantic poets.

20 credits

The Beginning of the End of the World

It is impossible to make sense of our world of pandemics, the climate crisis, economic instability, and violent, divisive rhetoric without an understanding of apocalyptic literature. While recent contributions to apocalyptic literature, such as McCarthy’s The Road, are far ranging in their examination of what the end of the world looks and feels like, they all have their origins in ancient notions of catastrophic ends and the hope for a new beginning. This module will explore the apocalypse’s origins in texts left out of the Biblical canon, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as those that are more well known, such as Revelation. Students will have the opportunity to apply their knowledge about apocalypses to their own choice of text.

20 credits

The Invention of Romanticism

This module is about the birth and legacy of romantic writing. You’ll write a critical essay over Christmas, and over Easter you’ll write a proposal for an oral paper. You’ll be invited to present that paper to our undergraduate conference after Easter. Your conference paper will be converted into a final essay. All told, you’ll understand the modern world better, and will have had lots of support towards enhancing your presentation skills.

40 credits

Radical Theory

The premise of this course is the necessity to re-interpret the university as a site for philosophical speculation and theory-based intervention. Run collectively, the course will address, to use Walter Benjamin's terms, the catastrophe of the status quo, and is structured around three aims, which are: 1) to address `moments' of crisis such as, for example, climate change; the neoliberal, market-driven higher education system; the state of exception; the myth of the human; 2) to theorize these crises, and 3) to explore the relationship between theory and practice: in particular to explore theorized agency as enabling political activism.

20 credits

The Idea of America

From the time of the earliest settlers, the New World was as much a conceptual as a topographical location, a land whose identity was structured on preconception and assumption as well as through actual discovery. This was reflected in the writings of travellers, immigrants, and, later, Americal nationals, all of whose responses to the country where characterised by dichotomy or ambivalence - a simultaneous awareness of America as the 'Dream' and America as the site of disillusionment and failed promise. This course will look at a variety of texts from the 18th century to the present, examining the ways in which the idea of America was negotiated and the extent to which early expectations were modified in accordance with changing conditions.

20 credits

Writing Fiction 3

This module explores techniques and strategies for creating fiction through the critical study of short excerpts from a wide range of novels and short stories, imaginative exercises, discussion and feedback on students own writing. This exploration will help students develop their own creative work while sharpening critical appreciation of both classic and contemporary fiction. Subjects covered will include: narrative voice, character, dialogue, plot, mood, pace and style. Examples will include work by Laurence Sterne, Dickens, Joyce and Anthony Burgess, JG Ballard, Martin Amis, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk and Michael Houellebecq.

20 credits

Women Playwrights on the International Stage: 1880s-1930s

This module introduces plays from the 1880-1930s to demonstrate the contribution of women writers to modern drama. Studying plays in the 'Social Realist' tradition, by Elizabeth Robins and others, we examine the tensions attached to being a woman writing in a period marked by dramatic increase in women's activism. We also address plays within Symbolist and Expressionist modes by Rachilde and others who aligned themselves with the primarily male avant-garde, where representations of 'the feminine' are typically highly ambivalent. Plays are studied in conjunction with non-dramatic documents, including texts of pro- and anti-suffrage speeches and examples from the visual arts.

20 credits

Fin de siècle Gothic

This course examines Afro-American Literature from early slave narratives and poems to the explosion of creativity after the first world war in the Harlem Renaissance, with its mixture of jazz, art, writing and politics. Writers considered include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W.E. Du Bois, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Huston, Langston Hughes, Paul Dunbar. Music, art, and the cartoonist George Herriman will be discussed. We will also consider some later texts which reflect on this history, including Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Toni Morrison's Jazz.

20 credits

Imagining the North

This course examines Afro-American Literature from early slave narratives and poems to the explosion of creativity after the first world war in the Harlem Renaissance, with its mixture of jazz, art, writing and politics. Writers considered include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W.E. Du Bois, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Huston, Langston Hughes, Paul Dunbar. Music, art, and the cartoonist George Herriman will be discussed. We will also consider some later texts which reflect on this history, including Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Toni Morrison's Jazz.

20 credits