English

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr Alison Lumsden

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Notes

Overview

Walter Scott is beyond doubt Scotland’s most significant and best-known writer of fiction. His significance lies beyond this, however, for his roles of poet, editor and collector as well as his lasting literary influence make him one of the most culturally significant of nineteenth century figures both in Scotland and internationally. This course aims to explore the full cultural, critical and historical backgrounds to Scott’s work and to set it alongside the writing of his contemporaries. Supported by the work of the Walter Scott Research Centre it will suggest a range of intellectual avenues by which students might develop postgraduate interests in Scott and explore his work in relation to writers such as Jane Austen, Susan Ferrier and James Hogg.

Structure

Teaching is 1 x 2-hour seminar per week, plus 6 x 1-hour workshop.

Assessment

2 oral presentations (10% each); 1 x 3000-3500 word essay (65%); 1 x 1000 word exercise (15%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr D> Wheatley

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Overview

The course engages students in a variety of activities designed to develop their creativity and originality, as well as in specific tasks to test and extend their skill in the writing of poetry. Students will attempt imitations of a variety of different poetic styles, will be provided with a number of specific 'stimulus' exercises and will develop and revise their poems both independently and in regular workshop sessions.

Candidates will be assessed on the basis of: a folio of 8 complete poems, each piece no longer than 40 lines, or a single poem (a self-contained extract from a longer work is also permissible) no shorter than 180 lines and no longer than 300 lines (80%) together with a with a reflective essay discussing the key technical and expressive challenges met with during the creative evolution of the folio (20%).

Structure

1 x 2-hour seminar per week, plus 3 x 1-hour workshops.

Assessment

Folio of original poetry (80%); fully scripted self-reflexive presentation (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Tarrin Wills

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students on related programmes.

Notes

Overview

Old Norse is the direct ancestor of modern Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic and Faroese. It was the lingua franca of Viking-Age Scandinavia, and had a lasting impact on the development of the English language. It was also the primary literary language of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, notably the Icelandic sagas and skaldic and eddic poems. It is, hence, the gateway to a fuller understanding of medieval Scandinavia, the "Latin" of the North. This course will provide the basic linguistic tools needed to read Old Norse texts, and some background about the history of the language and its links with other languages. No prior knowledge of Old Norse is assumed.

Medieval Scandinavia's most enduring contribution to world literature is represented by the Icelandic prose sagas and eddic poems. Terse, dramatic and brilliantly imaginative, the sagas tell stirring stories of legendary warriors, the kings of Norway, and events of the Viking Age including the settlement of Iceland and other migrations. The eddic poems, some of which may have been composed in the pre-Christian period, hark back to an earlier age of mythological and legendary history, recounting the Norse creation-myth and heroic exploits. Focusing on key texts in English translation, this course will introduce these various genres; no prior knowledge is assumed. It will also introduce the third major Old Norse literary form, skaldic verse, whose intricate patterns of mythological imagery conceal information about key events in the Viking Age.

Structure

10 x 1.5 hour seminars.

Assessment

3 in-class tests: 2 x 5%, 1 x 10%; 1 x 3000-word essay 80%.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor Cairns Craig

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Notes

Overview

This course explores the development in Ireland and Scotland of kinds of literature which came to be typical of the movement now classed as 'Romanticism'. Beginning from James Macpherson's Fragments of Ancient Poetry, it traces the changing relationship of art to nature and the emergence of an identification of the nation with the qualities of its natural environment. The development of specific modes of literature - pastoral, georgic, 'national tale', the Gothic and the historical novel - are traced in relation to developing constructions of national identity - British, Irish, Scottish, Celtic, Teutonic - to which they contribute. The course will plot the mutual influence of writers and texts from the two countries - Macpherson's Ossian on Charlotte Brooke's Reliques, Maria Edgeworth (Castle Rackrent) on Walter Scott (the Waverley novels) and Scott on Charles Maturin (Melmoth the Wanderer) - and the ways in which they stimulate each other to distinctive representations of the nation.

Structure

1 x 2-hour seminar, weekly, plus 6 x 1-hour training sessions.

Assessment

Essay (80%); presentation (20%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

TBC

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

Overview

The course covers vocal tract anatomy; basic principles of sound production and propagation; descriptive taxonomy of English sounds; segmental features of connected speech such as assimilation, weak forms, elision, linking, epenthesis, etc; suprasegmental aspects of speech such as stress, rhythm and intonation; and approaches to teaching pronunciation. Practical exercises and practice teaching will be arranged.

Structure

One 2-hour seminar and one 1-hour workshop per week

Assessment

Continuous assessment: 2 in-course exercises (35%); presentation (15%); annotation (15%); 2,000 word written project (35%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A. Lewis

Pre-requisites

Available only to students registered on taught Masters programmes, or by permission of the Head of School.

Notes

Overview

Novel Ideas: Reading Prose Fiction explores the many different voices of the novel from the eighteenth century to the present day, and considers how these voices are assimilated by readers and reading communities. It looks at how this literary form, sometimes regarded as trivial entertainment, has developed into a powerful and highly theorised literary genre, capable of handling complex cultural and psychological material, and of effecting profound social impact. The course considers three key approaches to the novel: construction, communication and community. It examines strategies for the creation of narrative voice, the relationship of that voice with the reader, and the ways in which novels exist within, and are shaped by, cultural and critical communities.

Structure

11 two-hour seminars (one per week) and six one-hour workshops.

Assessment

2 x 1000 word response papers (10% each), 1x 4500 –word essay (70%), presentation (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

To be confirmed.

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Overview

Students will be introduced to a range of conceptions and perspectives on discourse, drawn from disciplines such as linguistics, social psychology, sociology, and communication studies. They will examine what the study of discourse reveals about the nature of language, social interaction, power relations, and the construction of meaning. They will learn the basic principles of four analytical methods for discourse analysis:
• text linguistics
• narrative analysis
• conversation analysis
• critical discourse analysis

They will gain practical experience in applying these approaches to a variety of discourses, including conversations, interviews, the media, academic writing, literary texts, and advertisements.

Structure

One 2-hour seminar and one 1-hour workshop per week

Assessment

2 x 3000 word essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Prof Barbara Fennell and Dr Michal Krzyzanowski

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate taught students

Overview

Theories of communication from transmission and reception to the co-construction of meaning. Basic relevant principles of pragmatics, semiotics, language use and social psychology. Techniques of communication analysis with particular reference to the language of their own professional context.

Structure

1 x 2 hour lectures per week

Assessment

2 x 3000 word essays.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr Timothy C. Baker

Pre-requisites

Available only to students registered on taught MLitt programmes or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

How do we understand what we read, and what stories do we tell about works of literature? What historical, political, and cultural circumstances shape the way we think about literature? This course will introduce students to a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to literary analysis. Through study of the diverse contexts and methodologies by which literary research can be undertaken in the twenty-first century, students will develop the ability to apply these ideas and approaches to their own scholarly interests. In the first part of the course, students will explore significant approaches to literary study, ranging from large topics such as psychoanalysis, feminism, historicism, postcolonialism, poststructuralism, and political theory to sessions on questions of intertextuality and the turn to religion. In the course’s second part, the focus will be on primary texts, as students evaluate the interpretive possibilities offered by these various methodologies. Throughout the course students will be exposed to a variety of primary and secondary texts, including a wide range of geographical and historical contexts and both canonical and non-canonical texts.

Structure

11 two-hour seminars (one per week) and six one-hour workshops.

Assessment

4 x 1,000-word response papers (10% each); 1x 3,500-word essay (60%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

To be confirmed.

Pre-requisites

Available only to students registered on taught MLitt programmes or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

A loved one may be interred within an earthen grave, but they live on in the memories of those that survive their passing. This course explores the personal and social constructions of that ‘passing’, and examines the ways in which writers have figured grief and loss in literature as they strive for a language that would bear and sustain the lost ‘other’. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories of mourning and melancholia, analysing the functions and effects of mortuary/funerary practices, and engaging with the history of scientific and medical approaches to trauma, the course engages with different cultural conceptions of memory and how they are encoded in literary texts. Some sessions may look in depth at nineteenth-century conceptions of memory and mourning or at Early Modern conceptions of death and mourning. Students will focus on a variety of themes and arguments, including: the relations between death and art; debates concerning mourning and its admissibility in different cultural contexts; elegiac practice, particularly the psychological propensity of poetic elegy to translate grief into consolation; cultural memory and death, namely how death can be viewed as foundational for community; the relationship between mourning and writing and on how the death of a person can serve as a catalyst for self-reflection, and how writing can function as a form of grief-work; the traumatic nature of grief and how such trauma can be detected in literary works.

Structure

11 two-hour seminars (one per week) and six one-hour workshops.

Assessment

2x1000-word response papers (10% each), 1x 4,500-word essay (70%), presentation (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Prof Patrick Crotty

Pre-requisites

Available only to students registered on taught Masters programmes, or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

Poetry is a self-conscious art that develops by way of departure from previous practice. Aesthetic departures are most successful when made on the basis of a thorough appreciation of what is being departed from. One of the supporting texts on this course will be T.S. Eliot’s 1921 essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, a work in which a major modernist innovator offers a strikingly conservative and authoritarian view of continuity and canonicity. The main focus of the course, however, will be on poems and on the occasions of ‘aesthetic bliss’ (Vladimir Nabokov’s term) they offer the reader. Some of the poems will be from earlier times and some from the last hundred years. All will be presented in a fully contextualised and historicised manner and the question of how modern and contemporary poets use work by earlier writers will be pursued in relation to such issues as the changing of critical interpretation and of value judgements over time. The course will be organised thematically. Though details of themes and texts will vary from year to year in response to the exigencies of staffing, sample themes will include the Poetry of Political Crisis; Modernists and the Early Moderns; the Persistence of Romanticism; Tradition and Innovation in Poetry by Women.

Structure

11 two-hour seminars (one per week) and six one-hour workshops.

Assessment

2x1000-word response papers (10% each), 1 4,500-word essay (70%), presentation (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr Wayne Price

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students.

Overview

This core course is compulsory for students enrolled on the M.Litt in Creative Writing. It will engage students in a variety of activities designed to develop their creativity and originality, as well as in specific tasks to test and extend their technical skill in the writing of prose fiction. Students will be encouraged to develop an awareness of the centrality of narrative voice, to experiment with a variety of different narrative styles and to develop and revise their work in the context of workshop discussion and individually targeted feedback from staff. The course will also offer workshops on preparing for professional publication and preparing for the folio dissertation.

Structure

12 x two-hour seminars per week, plus 6 x one-hour workshops.

Assessment

Folio of original prose fiction, up to 4,000 words (80%); 1 x reflective essay discussing the origins and development of the creative work.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr Catherine Jones

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Notes

Overview

This course explores the development of the novel as aesthetic form and exemplary genre of modern life in the nineteenth century, focusing on the wok of major British and American authors. It aims to compare and contrast the ideas and contexts that shaped British and American fiction in this period; to address the question of transatlantic influence and exchange; to establish the rivalrous nature of literary reception; and to develop critical perspectives on methodologies of comparative literary study. Authors to be studied include William Godwin, Charles Brockden Brown, Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Madame de Stael, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week, plus 6 x one-hour workshops.

Assessment

Exercise (15%); Essay (65%); 2 x oral presentation (10% each).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Prof B. Fennell

Pre-requisites

Available only to students registered on the Taught Postgraduate Masters programme

Overview

An individualized programme of readings in the student's own practical professional domain. Individual and group discussions of communication in specific professional domains. Interactive seminars on communication in students' own professional context.

Structure

3 x 2 hour lectures (1 per month)
2 x .5 hour individual small group sessions per student

Assessment

Essay on guided reading 40%; description of communicative practices within students' specific professional domain (60%)

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A Gordon

Pre-requisites

Available only to students registered on MLitt taught programmes or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

It is said that a map is a convenient fiction, a representation of the shape a place might take if only one could see it; the co-ordinates of places such as ‘Scotland’, ‘Ireland’, England’ and ‘Australia’, their imaginative latitudes and longitudes, have been in a constant state of flux throughout the ages, refusing to yield an essential, authentic image. Place is often seen as something to be both embraced and abandoned, but it always remains central in any discussion of individual and communal identities. This course examines the social, political and cultural construction of places in literary texts. Key themes and issues to be discussed include: the idea of ‘home’; the rural and urban divide; the intersection of novel and nation; the role of nostalgia and longing in literature; the nature of community; the significance of emigration and displacement; utopian and dystopian communities; diasporic communities and the transatlantic imagination. This course examines how the writer’s sense of place can influence both the choice of subject matter as well as determine his or her approach to it.

Structure

11 two-hour seminars (one per week) and six one-hour workshops.

Assessment

2x1000-word response papers (10% each), 1 x 4,500-word essay (70%), presentation (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

To be confirmed.

Pre-requisites

Available only to students registered on MLitt taught programmes or by permission of the Head of School.

Overview

The aim of this core course is to assist students to develop the topic which will later form the subject of their dissertation. Initially, there will be classes and workshops helping students to develop and structure a working research proposal. In the later stages of the course students will have one-to-one supervision from a relevant member of staff with the aim of reading in and around their subject, as well as putting their subject into cultural and intellectual contexts. Those contexts may include the originating context and the context of reception, or may involve theoretical issues and problems regarding the works of literature under consideration. At the end of the course students will participate in a conference at which they will present papers and receive feedback on their work. Overall, the course will provide a framework of support for the dissertation that will be written over the summer.

Structure

3 x 2-hour (workshops/classes), 3 x 1 hour supervisions and a 3-hour conference.

Assessment

500-word research proposal (10%); annotated bibliography (20%); 2000-word thesis synopsis (40%); report and presentation (30%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

To be confirmed.

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered taught postgraduate students

Overview

The course will begin with an overview of organizational and institutional communication as reported in the literature. Students will then go on to consider communication within their own and selected other organizations and institutions considering the relationship between institutional roles and communicative behaviour and developing a sample communication plan in the context of the strategic plan of their organization or institution.

Structure

6 x 2 hour lectures (1 x 2 hour lecture per fortnight)
2 x .5 hour individual/small group tutorials per semester

Assessment

2 x 3000 word essays.

Credit Points

60

Course Coordinator

Dr S. Alcobia-Murphy

Pre-requisites

By permission of the Head of School and successful completion of the 120 credits constituting the diploma.

Overview

Each candidate will be required to research and write a 15,000 dissertation on a subject and in an area approved by the Head of School.

Structure

There will be no teaching, but a supervisory meeting will be held at approximately fortnightly intervals (allowing for holidays etc.) at a mutually convenient hour.

Assessment

Dissertation

Credit Points

60

Course Coordinator

Dr Wayne Price

Pre-requisites

Available only to students registered on the Masters programme in Creative Writing

Overview

Students will be directed by their supervisor and will prepare a single work or a portfolio of works of around 12,000 words in length (prose), or 20 pages of poetry (this must be accompanied by a short reflective essay of 3,000 words.

Structure

Six hours (approx) of individual advising sessions

Assessment

12,000 word dissertation 100%