English Literature with Creative Writing BA(Hons)

You will be introduced to a number of techniques of composition and will be given guided opportunities to develop your own forms of expression. You will be expected to read widely from modern and contemporary short stories. This module enables you to experiment with form and expression in story writing and to be constructively critical of their work. You will be introduced to a number of types of short story and will be given guided opportunities to develop your own forms of expression.

Gothic emerged as the dark twin of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and has remained perennially popular ever since. Gothic novels, ghost stories and horror films offer scintillating and often scandalous popular entertainment, while counterbalancing the values of modernity and order celebrated in realism and rational philosophy. This module will explore the origins and development of the Gothic, from its emergence in the age of revolutions and Regency decadence, through nineteenth-century parodies and re-appropriations, to its manifold transformations within the cultural industries of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

You will be expected either to complete a graduate or professional level work placement – or, as an alternative an enterprise or citizenship project with a tangible end product (e.g. feasibility study for turning hobby/idea into a personal business or setting up campaign group/developing volunteering/charity initiative) plus associated documentation – plus a self-reflective evaluation of the process. In preparation for this you will undertake career planning and placement research, supported by workshops and tutorial meetings.

This module takes a tour through modern and contemporary American poetry. We’ll explore history, politics, identity, and competing ideas of what is means to be ‘American’, by studying the work of 10 extraordinary poets. We’ll be exploring American poetry from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, looking at significant poetic movements and sociopolitical contexts. The module explores a range of poets which may include Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Claudia Rankine, and Robert Lowell.

The nineteenth century was the period in which the novel was the dominant literary form, in the wake of the heyday of Romantic poetry and before the advent of cinema. In this module we will study and analyse a selection of novels that represent some of the most significant developments in the genre during the Victorian age. We will explore the ways in which the Victorian novel reflected the most important issues of the day, from industrialisation and political reform to women’s rights and class conflict. The module will also investigate the significance of novelistic subgenres such as Sensation fiction and the late gothic novel during the second half of the nineteenth century, mapping these onto shifting attitudes towards the politics of gender, race and empire.

This module gives you the chance to study some of the most exciting and experimental novels ever written. Beginning at the start of the twentieth century, with ground breaking works of modernist fiction by the likes of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, you will study innovative new developments in form, style, and technique, as well as the historical context behind these transformative texts. The module then introduces you to the postmodernist experimentation of the later twentieth century. Together, we will explore new departures in narrative, style and language; the relationship between fiction, history and text; and the breakthrough novels that shaped the twentieth century.

World Literature is a module that invites you to look beyond the “Englishness” of English Literature. Your reading list will take you on a voyage of discovery around different cultures, countries, and continents, which you will explore through their literary texts. These texts will reflect both the global reach of the English language and the enthralling experience of reading works in translation. Besides embracing the challenges posed by studying works from unfamiliar cultures and traditions, this module will consider some of the important questions raised by the study of world literature, such as the nature of hybridity, the limitations of the canon, and the globalisation of literature.

This module aims to develop skills enabling you to communicate the value and importance of literary study to a non-specialist audience. More broadly, you'll be encouraged to think about the real-world applications of a degree in English Literature, and about the role of the humanities in challenging and changing society. The module is based around, and explores numerous strategies for community and public engagement, with an emphasis on considering different ways in which literary study can be taken outside the academy and into society.

This module is intended to explore the boundaries of genre: the hazy area between fiction and non-fiction. Through study of exemplary texts, you will become acquainted with a variety of experimental narrative and poetic possibilities which they can apply to their own writing practice. You will produce a portfolio of work—narrative fiction, poetry or hybrid/experimental forms to demonstrate different approaches to innovative writing. A self-reflective commentary on intentions and the creative process will accompany the portfolio.

The twentieth century saw a golden age of experimental playwriting, to rival any since ancient Greece. From the pathos of Arthur Miller’s resurrection of tragedy to the hilarity of Dario Fo’s farces; from the politically motivated criticism of Bertolt Brecht’s plays to the bafflingly enigmatic absurdities of Samuel Beckett’s; from the witty repartee of Tom Stoppard’s dialogue to the grotesque brutality of Sarah Kane’s in-yer-face theatre – this is a unit in which no two weeks are even remotely the same. Besides embarking on an odyssey of innovation and controversy in modern drama, this module will also take you far beyond the English-speaking world, giving you a chance to study playwrights from a range of countries who changed the face of the western tradition of dramatic literature.

This module explores British poetry produced in the twentieth century. We may study poets from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. There will be a consideration of political events and their impact on poetry. This may include The Troubles in Ireland and the Thatcher government in Britain. There will also be an exploration of sociopolitical and minority identities which may include gender, race, sexuality, and disability. We will go on a journey, exploring different poetic movements and the development of poetry from the early to late twentieth century.

On this module we will study the Holocaust through the words of those who survived and/or bore witness to it. Bringing together both literary and historical perspectives, we will approach this bleak yet defining episode of human history in a unique interdisciplinary fashion, focusing on non-fictional texts such as memoirs, diaries, and verbatim theatre. By studying how those who witnessed the events of the Holocaust chose to put the experience into words, we will attempt to understand these events neither in terms of traditional history textbooks nor in terms of their representation in our culture, but in terms of some of the individual stories behind it. This will allow us better to grasp issues such as trauma, memorialisation, the relationship between testimony and truth, and the difficulties involved in putting the events of the Holocaust into words.