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Postgraduate English 2014-2015

EL5072: CREATIVE WRITING I: POETRY

30 credits

Level 5

First Term

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.
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EL5089: NOVEL IDEAS: READING PROSE FICTION

30 credits

Level 5

First Term

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. 
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EL5092: APPROACHING LITERATURE

30 credits

Level 5

First Term

This course examines some of the main critical approaches and theories that have shaped modern literary inquiry. An organising theme of the course is different notions of ‘text’, ranging from historicist definitions of the ‘material text’ to poststructuralist theories of intertextuality and the practice of modern textual editing. The relevance to literature of different types of context is also explored, as are the interpretative possibilities of various forms of ideological critique, including feminism and post-colonialism. Throughout the course students are exposed to a wide variety of primary and secondary texts from a range of historical periods and geographical locations. 

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EL5093: UNBURIED MEMORIES: DEATH, TRAUMA AND MOURNING IN LITERATURE

30 credits

Level 5

First Term

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’. Students will focus on a variety of themes and arguments, including: the traumatic nature of grief; 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.

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EL5095: CREATIVE WRITING III: NON-FICTION

30 credits

Level 5

First Term

This course is devoted to the development of non-fiction creative prose. Among the themes and genres engaged with will be: travel writing, psychogeography, non-academic critical writing, prose poetry, diary, memoir, and the fragment. Students will study examples across the genre and build up a portfolio of work, discussion of which will form the basis of weekly workshops.  

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EL5567: CREATIVE WRITING II: PROSE FICTION

30 credits

Level 5

Second Term

Taught by experienced, award-winning writers, this course 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 course tutors.
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EL5588: POETRY: TRADITION AND INNOVATION

30 credits

Level 5

Second Term

The main focus of this course 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.
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EL5590: LOCATIONS AND DISLOCATIONS: THE ROLE OF PLACE IN LITERATURE

30 credits

Level 5

Second Term

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.
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EL5591: DISSERTATION PREPARATION

30 credits

Level 5

Second Term

This core course will assist students to develop the topic which will later form the subject of their dissertation.  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.
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EL5904: ENGLISH LITERARY STUDIES: DISSERTATION

60 credits

Level 5

Second Term

Candidates will be required to research and write a 15,000 dissertation on a subject and in an area approved by the supervisor and the Head of School.
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EL5906: CREATIVE WRITING PORTFOLIO (DISSERTATION)

60 credits

Level 5

Second Term

This course will provide students with the opportunity to write an extended folio of creative work in either poetry or prose. It will provide students with the opportunity to explore and extend their creative ambitions in writing and, through the reflective commentary element, enable them to contextualise their own creative achievements in relation to works by established writers. Throughout the evolution of the folio, the student will develop a thorough practical awareness of some of the key stylistic, formal and expressive possibilities available to the skilled creative writer.
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