English with Creative Writing BA (Hons)

Modules

All modules are assessed by written essays, short critical responses, reading logs, oral presentations, extended essays, exams and examples of creative writing. The course is 82% assessed by coursework.

You'll have the choice of a Creative Writing module in poetry, performance writing or screen writing. You'll take two modules in literary criticism which encourage an understanding of the academic, theoretical and creative aspects of criticism. First-year topics also provide a broader historical overview of literature and include the study of medieval poetry, American Puritan poetry, Greek and Renaissance drama and nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction.

• The practice of literary criticism: 1
  You'll take an interactive approach to the study of literature and enhance your academic writing skills by integrating the practice of reading and the practice of writing. The module uses a selection of poetry, short prose narrative, drama and non-fiction and will focus on a stylistics-based identification of patterns of words, phrases and analyses of grammatical features. You'll be introduced to critical responses to specific works of literature and you'll also develop your written and oral engagement with examples of literary criticism and basic literary theory. Your own literary criticism and academic writing will reflect the detailed attention paid to the stylistic features of literary texts. You'll be encouraged to identify appropriate socio-historical features of literary texts and to discuss their significance.
• The practice of literary criticism: 2
  This module primary focus is the study of narrative and forms of prose narration including non-fiction prose writing. The module will also build on the core skills covered in Semester One focusing on close reading and critical analysis; the use of critical terminology; academic presentation; essay writing and group presentation skills.
• Literature in society: drama
  You'll gain an introduction to modern drama in English from around the world. Through the study of plays written in a variety of cultural contexts, you'll develop critical and analytical skills and a basic understanding of theoretical issues involved in studying dramatic literature by writers both within and outside the Anglo-American tradition.
• Understanding poetry
  This module focuses on poetry from a wide range of cultures and historical periods. The aim of the module is to introduce you to specific techniques used in the analysis of poetic form and content. You'll examine examples of the lyric; narrative poetry; the sonnet; forms of the ode, as well as other less common forms such as the villanelle and the terza rima.
• Introduction to creative writing; prose, drama and poetry

You'll take two Creative Writing modules, where the focus is on developing professional creative skills. The focus is on literature of a particular period, genre or region and topics include the study of the nineteenth-century novel, modernist literature and autobiographical writing.

• Critical approaches to literature
  This module introduces you to a range of terms and issues which aid critical analysis and which encourage you to build a vocabulary of analytical language to be used, as appropriate, in other modules on the degree.
• Tragedy to the English renaissance
  You'll focus on the Greek and Renaissance stages of tragic drama and explore original staging conditions. You'll develop your understanding of the relationship between space, architecture and meaning. You'll examine the original performance conditions of each period and analyse the relationship of form to meaning paying particular attention to changing concepts of dramatic tragedy. Many of the plays are quite short, however, the reading for this module is fairly heavy; you'll gain a representative variety of tragic drama in the periods under examination.

Plus optional modules from:

• Literature of the Romantic period
  This module focuses on the poetry and prose writing in England during this period. The period known as the 'Romantic' period is commonly defined by its poetry and by the major poetic figures, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Byron. The late eighteenth-century also produced canonical non-fictional texts by writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke and prose fiction by Anne Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis and Jane Austen. This module is an overview of selected work by these writers.
• Writing a life
  You'll focus on twentieth-century autobiographical writing and explore the way in which writers use, extend and subvert autobiographical conventions. You'll be introduced to a variety of writing, from canonical autobiography to less well-known women's, black and postcolonial autobiographical work. Each type of writing has generated its own body of criticism and textual genealogy and although we will not be looking at pre-twentieth-century work in detail, we will explore the histories and cultural contexts of a wide range of autobiographical texts.
• Writing the novel
  You'll develop new literary and critical skills through the study and production of fiction. The module concentrates on the Novel and teaches you to analyse such elements as theme, character, setting, dialogue and plot. You'll be introduced to a variety of critical approaches and writing strategies as well as to a wide selection of authors. You'll be encouraged to bring chapters of a novel or your own stories to workshops for reading and discussion by your peers. The module will also concentrate on other methods of evaluation and revision. You'll produce a portfolio of original prose for this module.
• Radio drama
  You'll be introduced to key concepts and approaches related to the construction of fiction-scripts for the radio and audio medium. You'll look at a variety of examples as a means of understanding the particular characteristics of radio as a medium, and explore the relationship between literature, drama and radio. You'll be asked to produce an original radio script of ten minutes duration, along with a critical analysis of your script.
• Research into writing
  You'll propose a research project, identifying your source material and explaining how you plan to access and draw on this to produce an original piece of writing. You'll experiment with form and structure and consider incorporating source material in your own writing. In your reflective essay you'll chart the relationship between the source material and the development and realisation of your own piece of writing.
• Interactive fiction
  This module will introduce key concepts and approaches to the construction of fiction-scripts for interactive media. We'll examine the potential and limitations of interactivity in relation to a variety of examples drawn from the fields of the hypertext novel, video game media and other forms of online fiction. Particular emphasis is given to the types of interactive fiction structure and their relationship to interactivity. You'll be assessed on the basis of a small-scale fiction project which utilises are ideas of interactivity.
• Representing gender in film

You'll have the option of writing a substantial creative project or an independent dissertation. There is an emphasis on contemporary literature including postcolonial literatures in English, film adaptations of literary texts and twentieth-century popular culture. The degree includes the study of drama as text and performance, and takes advantage of live literary performances and plays showing in London.

• Shakespeare, text and performance
  This is an advanced level single author course which will consider in detail a representative sample of Shakespearean drama. We will make use of a variety of theoretical approaches to Shakespeare, focusing in particular on the plays as performed in both Renaissance and modern theatrical contexts and as they have been adapted to film. We will also examine the theme of performance (of kingship, of social identity, of sexuality) as it is treated in the plays themselves.
• Single author study: postcolonial writers
  This unit takes a postcolonial theoretical approach to the work of four postcolonial novelists. The texts chosen this year are from India, Africa and the Caribbean: this selection takes into account the shared and overlapping colonial pasts of these regions. The unit will begin with an examination of key concepts in postcolonial literary theory such as: hybridity; liminality; traditions of resistance and opposition; creolization; 'writing back'; culture, class and gender.

Plus optional modules from:

• Adaptation and dramatisation
  This module introduces key concepts and approaches to adapting works of fiction into other media. We'll examine key issues related to the transfer of structure, plot, character and dialogue from source material such as novels, short stories, comic books, graphic novels and theatre plays into other media such as film, television and video games. As well as the process of adaptation, the transference of prose into dramatic form also implicates the process of dramatisation, and much of this module will be concerned with that process too.
• Modern and Contemporary Poetry
  You'll examine developments in poetry written in English from the early twentieth-century to the present day. The module identifies significant trends in post WW2 poetry: e.g. the "confessional poetry" of 1950s and '60s America; the "Movement" poets of Britain in the 1950s; the challenge to Standard English in post-colonial poetry and poetry written in minority British dialects; the voices of contemporary poetry. You'll give particular attention to the treatment of subjectivity and cultural location in the poetry studied. A key aspect of this module is consideration of poetry as a living cultural medium. The class is taught principally through the use of poetry anthologies, so you'll be encouraged to read poets' work in the context of their contemporaries while keeping in mind the historical and social background.
• Literature into film
  This advanced module gives students the opportunity to examine the transition from the written to the visual text, and includes a range of literary and filmic periods and genres. The module focuses on the ways in which written and visual texts share a background in narrative theory. Students learn how to apply narrative and film theory, as well as theorizing the relationship between the written and the visual.
• Single author study: contemporary fiction
  In this module you'll examine in detail a selection of novels by novelists writing in the latter half of the twentieth century. An important focus of the module is the study of critical and cultural theory that includes or reflects the influence of poststructuralism and postmodernism. You'll be asked to appraise texts which engage with these theoretical approaches and concerns, at times resisting and at other times incorporating them. You'll also be required to study an individual author in depth, focusing on the characteristic literary style and preoccupations of and individual author.
• Literary magazine
  This module will give students experience of furthering work begun in the semester one Professional Writing Practice module. The brief will require students to work with one or more specific narrative and/or poetic forms, to keep a writer's journal regarding their work in progress, and to participate in a series of small group seminars and individual tutorials focused on the work in progress.

Throughout the course you will examine key practitioners in all these areas, from novelists, short story writers and stage writers, through to comic book writers, video game story designers, radio dramatists and screenwriters.

The English Studies component of my degree was really enjoyable. The course has a tough reading list, but you get a full and historical sense of the development of English literature… I've developed new reading skills, ways of reading not only between the lines of a text, but between the words, the letters and between texts too. This is a thoroughly rewarding degree– I wish I could do it all over again!

Sandra Springer