BA (Hons) English with Creative Writing

What you'll study

Each level of the degree includes a single year-long creative writing module taught by creative writing practitioners and active researchers. Each of these modules must be passed in order to progress to the next level and (in the case of the final module) for you to be awarded the degree.

Year 1 (credit level 4)

You take five compulsory modules:

Year 1 compulsory modules Module title Credits. Explorations in Literature Explorations in Literature 30 credits

This module introduces a wide range of works covering the major literary genres and embodying significant interventions or influences in the history of literature. The emphasis is on reading primary texts and discovering (or rediscovering) writers and cultures so that you will be able to make informed choices among more specialised modules later in your degree.

30 credits. Approaches to Text Approaches to Text 30 credits

The module will introduce students to essential concepts in modern literary study, critical theory and literary criticism through a detailed engagement with literary texts, theoretical texts and literary criticism. Students will develop critical reading skills, gain a vocabulary for discussing and analyzing literary works, and through a close integration with the PASS programme, will build up their academic writing and research skills in a series of short, assessed exercises that will aid in the writing and revision of their course work in the first year and throughout the degree.

Principal texts might typically include Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Seamus Heaney's North, and Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba.

30 credits. Foundation Workshop in Creative Writing Foundation Workshop in Creative Writing 30 credits

This workshop combines the study and practice of poetry and fiction in order to give you the opportunity to explore both genres, to develop your knowledge of form and technique and to lay the foundations of your own creative writing practice. The workshop, led by a creative-writing practitioner, will combine writing exercises with critical analysis of literary works from a broad range of cultures and eras, in addition to providing the opportunity to discuss your own work.

A pass in this module is compulsory for progression to the next level.

30 credits. Introduction to Literature of the Victorian Period Introduction to Literature of the Victorian Period 15 credits

This module is based on writing in Britain between 1830 and 1870. Perhaps no period of literary history has been so subject to stereotyping as the Victorian, yet, as its chronological span alone suggests, Victorian literature is marked above all by its diversity. The literature of the Victorian period contains both the legacy of romanticism and the origins of modernism; its aesthetic and moral ideals are powerful, varied, and unstable. Most crucially, it is the site of debate: about morals, politics, religion, science, sexuality, gender, nationhood, empire, and, at its very basis, about the nature and function of literature itself. The texts featured on this module will represent the early Victorian period as well as a range of its genres, including poetry, novels and essays.

15 credits. Introduction to Poetry Introduction to Poetry 15 credits

This module subdivides into two five-week sections, on ‘practice’ and ‘close readings’. The first concentrates on pivotal and innovative figures and movements in poetry from the early modern period to the present day, and the second explores fundamental issues in poetry through the lens of individual poems. Both sections are presented with the support of the department’s creative practitioners.

15 credits. Year 2 (credit level 5)

You take one compulsory module:

Module title Credits. Creative Writing Workshop Creative Writing Workshop 30 credits

After a first term in which you will build on the knowledge and skills, creative and literary, acquired through the Foundation Workshop by continuing to explore creative writing forms, in the second term you choose between a workshop in prose fiction and a workshop in poetry. You are advised on your choice, and the focus will be increasingly on developing your own body of creative work. A pass in this module is compulsory for progression to the next level.

30 credits.

You also choose three modules (totalling 90 credits) from a range characterised by wide literary, historical and contextual scope, of which at least one must encompass pre-1800 literature.

Modules may vary from year to year, but recent examples have included:

Year 2 option modules Module title Credits. Drama and Transgression: From Prometheus to Faust Drama and Transgression: From Prometheus to Faust 30 credits

This module explores a range of approaches to conflicts between divine or political authority and human claims to self-assertion and freedom; submission to orthodoxy; co-existence of orthodoxy and humanism; reconciliation of autonomy and theonomy; and the demise of divine law. The module introduces you to epoch-specific types of overlaps and tensions between religious and positive law, divine and human reason, feeling and understanding. The module also aims to increase your awareness of issues of gender and power, and investigates the nature of female revolt and violence in the light of the Aristotelian theories and traditional male academic and religious discourses.

30 credits. European Cinema European Cinema 30 credits

This module Providing an overview of significant trends in European cinema since 1945, this module considers a number of specific films which reflect changing attitudes to contemporary European society and shifting notions of European identity. The first half explores the emergence of the various new cinemas in Europe after 1945 and the second examines a number of key films in order to explore how European identities have been projected and dramatised.

30 credits. Hollywood Cinema Hollywood Cinema 30 credits

This module provides an analytical overview of some of the major areas of Hollywood cinema and its connection to the wider cultural landscape of the United States. Topics include:

• The rise of cinema and modernity
• Narrative cinema
• Definitions of melodrama
• Noir
• Westerns
• Psychoanalysis
• Femininity and masculinity
30 credits. Inventing the Nation: American Literature in the mid-19th Century Inventing the Nation: American Literature in the mid-19th Century 30 credits

This examines a cluster of major American writers from the 1830s to the 1880s, all of which are engaged in shaping, describing, criticising and contesting the emerging American nation. We will examine literature’s role in the definition of national identity by exploring individual writers. We will also address the key ways in which the American literary tradition differs from its English counterpart. The writers of the so-called ‘American Renaissance’ – Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman – will be central to the module, as their writings are at the heart of the project of national self invention. However, the module will look at this project from alternative perspectives, including those of region, race and gender. It includes the study of film as well as texts.

30 credits. Literary London Literary London 30 credits

During the 19th century, London easily outstripped all other contenders as the largest and most vibrant metropolis in the world. Inevitably, the city, with its extraordinary contradictions, was intimately involved with some of the century’s most major literary developments.

This module focuses on representations of the metropolis by a range of writers living and working in London across the period, and in so doing covers a range of genres (poetry, biography, essay, novel, crime writing) and subjects (everyday life, government, poverty, religion, law, empire).

30 credits. Literature of the English Renaissance Literature of the English Renaissance 30 credits

You examine the literature and ideas of the 16th and 17th centuries, principally in poetry and drama. The major texts might typically include Marlowe, 'Doctor Faustus'; Shakespeare, 'Henry IV' and 'King Lear'; the poetry of Donne; Spenser, 'The Faerie Queene' (Canto 1); Milton, 'Paradise Lost' (Book 1); Webster, 'The Duchess of Malfi'.

30 credits. Literature of the Later Middle Ages: Society and the Individual Literature of the Later Middle Ages: Society and the Individual 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. You study English writing in the 14th and 15th centuries, especially social satire, the comic tale, varieties of romance, and autobiography. You study texts in relation to genre; society and morality; gender; dissent and individual consciousness. Texts might typically include Chaucer, 'The Canterbury Tales' (selection); romances such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and 'The Book of Margery Kempe'; the ‘Lais of Marie de France'.

30 credits. Moderns Moderns 30 credits

You study modernist writing in Britain, Ireland and internationally from the 1920s, including such works as Eliot, 'The Waste Land'; Woolf, 'Mrs Dalloway'; Joyce, 'Ulysses'; Brecht, 'Mother Courage'; poems of Yeats, Auden, Stevens and others.

30 credits. Old English Old English 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. An introduction to the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons, with consideration of a variety of themes and genres, including history, lyric, mythology, poetic elegy and romance. Some texts are read in translation. Major texts might typically include selections such as the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle', 'Beowulf', works by King Alfred, Ælfric, and Bede.

30 credits. Post-Victorian English Literature Post-Victorian English Literature 30 credits

This module examines selected literary works across several genres in the period 1901-36, concentrating upon English-based writings in the non-modernist tradition. Topics for consideration include responses to social change and warfare, and new conceptions of Englishness and modern sexuality. Authors typically include Hardy, Shaw, Forster, Strachey, Brooke, Owen, Graves, Mansfield, Lawrence, Waugh, Holtby, and Orwell.

30 credits. Restoration and 18th-Century Literature Restoration and 18th-Century Literature 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. You study English verse and prose satire 1660–1760; the Restoration comic stage; the rise of the novel; landscape and poetry. The principal texts might typically include selections from: Paul Hammond (ed.), 'Restoration Literature: An Anthology'; Behn, 'Oroonoko'; Defoe, 'Robinson Crusoe';Swift, 'Gulliver’s Travels'; Richardson, 'Pamela'; Fielding, 'Tom Jones'; Sterne, 'Tristram Shandy'; and works by Burney and Johnson.

30 credits. Sensibility and Romanticism: Revolutions in Writing and Society Sensibility and Romanticism: Revolutions in Writing and Society 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. The module covers aspects of mid to late 18th century and early 19th century literature including ‘sensibility’, ‘pre-romanticism’, the Gothic novel and the emergence of the Romantic movement. Principal texts might typically include Sterne, 'A Sentimental Journey'; Goldsmith, 'The Vicar of Wakefield'; Austen, 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Mansfield Park'; Lewis, 'The Monk'; Scott, 'Waverley'; Brontë, 'Wuthering Heights'; selected poems of Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats and Wordsworth.

30 credits. Shakespeare Shakespeare 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. The module covers the literary and cultural analysis of Shakespeare’s work in its chronological development; his poetic language and dramatic art. You read most of Shakespeare’s plays and poems.

30 credits. Varieties of English Varieties of English 30 credits

This module explores how and why language is used differently in a range of contexts. We will examine language variation in relation to region, gender, ethnicity, age and social class; we will see that individuals are able to shift their style of speaking from one situation to the next and we will explore the attitudes that people have towards different varieties of English. The topics/issues that will be studied may include the following: Do women and men speak differently? What is slang? How and why do adolescents speak differently from adults? What are the public stereotypes about speakers with 'non-standard' accents? What is Standard English? In our discussion of these issues we will study various examples of spoken and written language and examine the role of literature and the media in representing language variation.

30 credits. Aspects of the Novel Aspects of the Novel 15 credits

You'll explore key developments and trends in the novel form the early eighteenth century to the present day. Beginning with Defoe’s Moll Flanders, the module goes on to look at representative landmarks of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ‘realism’ and of later modernist and postmodernist fiction.

As well as attending to the distinctive features of the individual novels, we will investigate critical and theoretical accounts of the genre, paying particular attention to debates about mimesis, character, narrative voice and plot.

15 credits. Contemporary Arab Migrant Writing Contemporary Arab Migrant Writing 15 credits

You’ll examine the transcultural and transnational spaces imaginatively created in the works of Arab writers who are originally from North Africa and the Middle East and migrated to European and North American countries.

The core module texts are novels, memoirs, as well as short stories that cross boundaries spatially but also socio-culturally and linguistically. These works confront the waves of political repression, socio-economic crises, conflicts and geopolitical upheavals in the Arab world, as well as unprecedented rates of illegal migration, especially to Europe. The module texts are mostly Anglophone Arab literature and translations from Arabic and French, since 1999.

We will approach the texts as both specific to particular political and cultural geographies and also reflective of people’s physical and intellectual itineraries in a world where borders are alternately opened and closed. We will mainly look at place, memory, identity, home, diaspora, exile, refugee status, clandestine migration, surveillance, human rights, conflict, resistance, postcolonialism, nationalism, transnationalism, multiculturalism, assimilation dynamics and integration policies, gender, religious diversity and extremism, life-writing, as well as language, translation and the transcultural imagination.

15 credits. Work Placement (English) Work Placement (English) 15 credits
• The central objective is to enable you to take up a workplace learning experience which will benefit your studies, your skillset and your CV.
• The work placement will take place on one day per week over 10 weeks.
• Assistance will be given in sourcing a suitable placement.
• You will gain an understanding of key issues within the organisation and have access to data which will be invaluable in developing your research report.
• You will be supported in preparing the assignments through workshops and individual discussions.
• You will have the opportunity to relate your degree subject to real-life situations, develop a range of transferable skills and gain sector-specific experience, thereby enhancing your employment prospects.

Students who pursue this module are required to undertake 10 days of unpaid work at a host institution. The work is normally carried out over 1 day per week, although there is the possibility of working more than 1 day per week, depending on the student's and the host institution's availability. The type of work students would be expected to do should have some relevance to their academic studies. There is no expectation that the student should expect any sort of extensive or designated training such as that which might be offered to a professional working on a long-term basis at the institution. The student will be given guidance, however. The type of work which students might undertake on their placement may include (but not be limited to), for example, cataloguing, archive work, helping organise publicity for events or educational programmes, or shadowing a specialist in his/her work in a mostly observatory way.

15 credits. Year 3 (credit level 6)

You take one compulsory creative-writing module:

Project Development (30 credits)
This focuses on the development of your own writing skills in the context of a critical awareness of recent writing, recent literary concerns and cultural theory, and knowledge about writing and publishing issues. You are encouraged to interact within a community of writers supportive of the development of your work, small-group work in the first term leading into one-to-one surgeries to address concerns of writing practice as you prepare your portfolio of work in the second term.