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MLitt Module

EN51017: Studying Writing

Module Organisers: Jim Stewart & Kirsty Gunn

Credits: 40

The module takes literary texts (drama, fiction and non-fictional prose) from all periods of writing in English since the start of the Early Modern and provides advanced instruction in the theory and practice of close reading. This is the fundamental requisite for academic assessment of literary texts; as well as instruction in the historical development of literary rhetoric. This is undertaken across a range of writing styles, forms and genres in order not only to develop students’ analytical skills in relation to texts written by others but also in relation to their own creative writing practice. The module will provide students with a selection of core texts and through close analysis and interpretation, students will be asked to respond critically, formulate independent judgements, and articulate reasoned arguments through reflection, review and evaluation.

The following non-literary texts on the literary will be used to establish the academic background and research context of this course:

• William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930)
• Daniel R. Schwarz, In Defence of Reading (2008)
• Terry Eagleton, How to Read a Poem (2007)
• James Wood, How Fiction Works (2008)

Breakdown of Topics

LOVE. 2 hours. Indicative Texts:

• Thomas Wyatt (1503-42), ‘They Flee from Me’;
• Edmund Waller, ‘Song: Go, Lovely Rose!’ (1645);
• Thomas Hardy, ‘The Voice’ (1914)

LOVE. 2 hours. Indicative Texts:

• T.S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1915);
• Carol Anne Duffy, ‘Valentine’, ‘Adultery’ (1993)

IDENTITY. 2 hours. Indicative Texts:

• Tennyson, ‘Tithonus’ (1860);
• Samuel Beckett, Not I (1973)

GENDER. 2 hours. Indicative Texts:

• Wollstonecraft, ‘A Vindication of The Rights of Woman’ (1792);
• Robert Browning, ‘A Likeness’ (1864);
• Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (1979)

TRAGEDY. 2 hours. Indicative Text:

• John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1613)

POLITICAL RHETORIC. 2 hours. Indicative Texts:

• Queen Elizabeth 1, ‘Speech to the Troops at Tilbury’ (1588);
• Alexander Pope, Essay on Man (1733);
• Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (1791);
• Winston Churchill, ‘We Shall Fight Them on the Beaches’ (1940)

SATIRE. 2 hours. Indicative Texts:

• Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729);
• Dryden, Mac Flecknoe (1682)

COMEDY. 2 hours. Indicative Text:

• Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

RELIGION. 2 hours. Indicative Texts:

• I Corinthians 13 in Tyndale, Geneva, Douay-Rheims, King James Bibles;
• Donne, ‘Batter my heart, three-personed God’ (1633);
• William Blake, ‘Holy Thursday’ in Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794)

SCEPTICISM. 2 hours. Indicative Texts:

• Tennyson, ‘The Lotus Eaters’ (1842);
• Robert Browning, ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’ (1855);
• Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’ (1867)

NATURE. 2 hours. Indicative Texts:

• Wordsworth, ‘Tintern Abbey’ (1798);
• Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850), sections 3, 34, 35, 56;
• Ted Hughes, ‘Wodwo’ (1967)

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