Modules for course Q2W9 | MARTS/ELCW
MArts English Literature with Creative Writing

Compulsory Modules

Semester 1

• QXP-1001: Creative Writing: Prose (20)
  This module, compulsory for creative writing students, introduces you to a wide range of creative prose-writing, both fictional and documentary and you will examine creative techniques used in short stories, autobiography, memoir, travel-writing, critical essays/literary reviews and play-scripts. It will include practical sessions in which students will begin to produce their own work in these genres, and group discussion of students’ work in progress. We will discuss the ways in which these genres are distinct from one another and yet share certain features and may in fact be merged by deliberate techniques of hybridisation. We will ask such questions as how a writer of fiction handles the transformation of personal experience as compared to the writer of memoirs. Can imaginative, speculative biographies enhance rather than falsify our knowledge of their subjects? How do writers tackle the adaptation of their work from one medium to another? As well as examining, from the practitioner's point of view, texts by leading authors and critics, you will be encouraged to work independently on your own material, helped by writing-exercises and longer-term assignments designed to stimulate ideas and sharpen technique. You will be encouraged to present your work for class discussion and, by receiving and giving feedback in a supportive atmosphere, you will develop your skills as a close reader and an articulate critic.
• QXP-1003: Creative Writing: Poetry (20)
  This module, compulsory for creative writing students, introduces you to the range of forms available to the poet in the twenty-first century. You will read a variety of poetry and respond through producing your own poems. You will be asked to work in a variety of forms and to justify your reasons for choosing them. The module will demonstrate the ways in which poetry is an art form particularly well suited to expressing the experience of contemporary everyday life. We will also look at connections between poetry and music and the visual arts as well as the impact of digital technologies. Poetry will be presented both in the written and spoken form, and students will be encouraged to consider the performance of poetry both in class and by attending and reviewing recommended evening poetry readings by leading poets. .
• QXE-1013: Reading, Thinking, Writing (20)
  The course will include analytical reading of drama, prose, poetry and film in English from the medieval period to the present era; an introduction to critical and theoretical approaches to the reading of literature; integration of close textual study and critical/theoretical approaches, as the foundation for all other modules in the School; practical development of skills of literary commentary, essay writing, and critical discussion.

Semester 2

• QXP-1001: Creative Writing: Prose
  This module, compulsory for creative writing students, introduces you to a wide range of creative prose-writing, both fictional and documentary and you will examine creative techniques used in short stories, autobiography, memoir, travel-writing, critical essays/literary reviews and play-scripts. It will include practical sessions in which students will begin to produce their own work in these genres, and group discussion of students’ work in progress. We will discuss the ways in which these genres are distinct from one another and yet share certain features and may in fact be merged by deliberate techniques of hybridisation. We will ask such questions as how a writer of fiction handles the transformation of personal experience as compared to the writer of memoirs. Can imaginative, speculative biographies enhance rather than falsify our knowledge of their subjects? How do writers tackle the adaptation of their work from one medium to another? As well as examining, from the practitioner's point of view, texts by leading authors and critics, you will be encouraged to work independently on your own material, helped by writing-exercises and longer-term assignments designed to stimulate ideas and sharpen technique. You will be encouraged to present your work for class discussion and, by receiving and giving feedback in a supportive atmosphere, you will develop your skills as a close reader and an articulate critic.
• QXP-1003: Creative Writing: Poetry
  This module, compulsory for creative writing students, introduces you to the range of forms available to the poet in the twenty-first century. You will read a variety of poetry and respond through producing your own poems. You will be asked to work in a variety of forms and to justify your reasons for choosing them. The module will demonstrate the ways in which poetry is an art form particularly well suited to expressing the experience of contemporary everyday life. We will also look at connections between poetry and music and the visual arts as well as the impact of digital technologies. Poetry will be presented both in the written and spoken form, and students will be encouraged to consider the performance of poetry both in class and by attending and reviewing recommended evening poetry readings by leading poets. .

Optional Modules

60 credits from:

• QXE-1003: Intro. to Medieval Literature (20) (Semester 1)
  Introduction to Medieval Literature offers students the opportunity to study a variety of Old English literature that is evocative of the intricate decoration on the Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon hoard; riddles, Old English battle poetry and The Dream of The Rood (taught in translation). In the second part of the module students will encounter Middle English drama, romance poetry and Chaucerian verse in its original language. The transition between the Old to the Middle English period will be analysed in terms of specific themes and motifs, such as the development from pagan Germanic heroism to Christian values. Chivalry, the comic and bawdy, and piety will be the main foci in the Middle English part of the course, explored through a range of poetry, prose, drama and life writing. This module is an ideal ‘taster’ for the medieval literature modules available at levels two and three.
• QXE-1004: The Literature of Laughter (20) (Semester 2)
  The module is organised on a chronological basis, moving from Chaucer to Monty Python and beyond, taking in on the way a selection of texts by Shakespeare, Wycherley, Pope, Swift, Austen, Dickens, Twain, as well as Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum and an anthology of comic verse. The lectures place the texts in their historical and cultural contexts, while the seminars and study groups focus on the week’s specified text for close reading and discussion. Both the lectures and the smaller groups are consistently concerned with the module’s over-riding questions about the nature of literary laughter. Concepts such as wit and satire are analysed, along with some of the recurring topics of humorous writing: religion, politics, sex and gender. The major functions of laughter – for stereotyping, for self-defence, for reform, rebellion, or release of tension – are highlighted for both their continuity and their difference in specific literary and cultural contexts.
• QXE-1014: The Gothic in Literature/Film (20) (Semester 2)
  This introductory course focuses mainly on Gothic writing from the late eighteenth century onwards, although it begins by looking at examples of the medieval and early-modern grotesque that help to set early Gothic novels in context. Organized in a loosely chronological way, this module is particularly sensitive to the ways in which Gothic texts have been used to represent contemporary cultural anxieties (such as the New Woman in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, or New Technology in the early years of the twenty-first), but it will also examine how the Gothic has been used to articulate political resistance, for example in anti-imperialist, post-colonial, and feminist works. It will also pay particular attention to the Gothic as a visual form, both analysing the representation of Gothic spaces in eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature and art, and investigating the importance of the genre to the development of cinema, from silent-era German expressionism to the present. While the precise topics covered by the module will vary from year to year, themes will include some of the following: Terror and the Sublime; Monstrosity and Deviance; Doubles and Doppelgängers; Vampires and Sexualities; Parody and Pastiche; Domesticity and ‘The Uncanny’; Cybergothic and the Post-human; Feminist and Postcolonial Rewritings; Gothic and the Young Adult Novel. Students will situate texts within their historical and political contexts, and will also gain an awareness of a range of important theories (from Freud’s notion of the Uncanny to Derrida’s theories of hauntology) that will be important to the study of literature in the rest of their degree.
• QXE-1015: Landmarks in Literature (20) (Semester 1)
  The specific texts studied will vary from year to year, but the module will include nineteenth-century works (e.g. Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle); English ‘classical’ stories of the early twentieth century (e.g. Agatha Christie); American ‘hard boiled’ versions (e.g. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler), and modernist, postmodernist and other variants (e.g. Jorge Luis Borges, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley, Paul Auster). Film and television adaptations may also be included. The module will also situate the texts in relevant historical and cultural contexts, and explore them via key concepts in literary theory.
• QXP-1016: Children's Fiction (Creative) (20) (Semester 2)
• QXL-1112: Language, Literature & Culture (20) (Semester 2)
  1. the relationship between language, culture and thought processes, 2. the relationship between language and identity, 3. the structures of bilingual societies, 4. the different manifestations of multilingualism, particularly in relation to the concepts of bilingualism and diglossia, 5. the cultural, political, and anthropological issues surrounding minority languages & language policy.
• Students may take up to 20 credits in another School

Compulsory Modules

40 credits from:

• QXP-2001: C/Writing: Poetry & Short Fict (20) (Semester 2)
  This double-thin module is designed to help solve the problem that inexperienced writers have of writing in ways that are too abstract and general. You will be set exercises that sharpen dialogue and assist with the depiction of place in fiction, and exercises that demonstrate how images are most effectively evoked in poems. These ‘showing’ devices will then be placed in context by the use of models that indicate the importance of ‘telling’, that indicate how scenic devices in fiction are framed by direct authorial intervention, and how images in poems are linked to statements that further define and complicate them. Students are required to attend and review three evening poetry-readings to be given by leading poets during the course.
• QXP-2004: Creative Writing: The Novel (20) (Semester 1)
  Creative Writing: The Novel will guide you through the ways and means of writing a novel. You will be taught methods of composition and creation of novels, including practical and analytical consideration of novelistic structure and design, viewpoint, voice and role-play, and developing style and tone. It also includes, with reference to the practical application and consideration of these elements, consideration of the variety of forms relevant to the contemporary novel, comparing and contrasting novels, present and past, with other forms of creative writing.
• QXP-2005: Transformative Writing (20) (Semester 1)
  Some of today's well known works of literature were produced by writers 'writing back' to and transforming certain source materials. Examples include Peter Carey's prize-winning tnrsformation of Dickens' 'Great Expectations' in 'Jack Maggs' (1997), and Gregory Maguire's transformation of Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' in 'Wicked: The Life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West' (1995). This module examines the ideas and chanllenges of transformative writing, how such writing differs from adaptation, and how professional writers have employed it in their works. Students will be introduced to the practice of responding through creative writing, and given the chance to select their own source material (of whatever kind) in order to experiment and 'write back' to it. Students will also have the opportunity to experience and reflect upon the nature of a negotiated writing project through the use of an initial writing contract (in weeks one and two)
• QXP-2019: Contemporary Writing (CW) (20) (Semester 2)

80 credits from:

• QXE-2003: Jonson to Johnson (20) (Semester 2)
• QXE-2005: Victorian Literature (20) (Semester 2)
  The Victorians lived in an era of change and contradictions: a culture in which some reaped immense rewards from mechanised industry, but feared the idea of 'mechanism'; a period which saw the growth of cities and democracy, but was attracted to images of medieval feudalism. These themes will be examined, along with: realism in the Victorian novel; the narrators of the Victorian novel; ideas of truth in art and fiction; the figure of the intellectual or 'sage'; the domestic sphere; children and orphans; women as writers and members of Victorian society; the important relationship between notions of scientific 'truth' and religious 'faith', and ideas of nationality and race as expressed in the work of Irish, Scottish and Welsh authors working within concepts associated with the British empire. This course looks at a broad range of texts including novels, poetry and essays. Authors studied may include Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, John Ruskin, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Robert Stevenson, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde.
• QXE-2013: Renaissance and Reformation (20) (Semester 1)
  This course offers an introduction to the `Golden Age¿ of English literature, an exciting period of cultural change which encompasses the Reformation, the rise of a culture of individualism, and the English Revolution of the 1640s and 1650s. Among the modes of writing produced in these turbulent circumstances are poetic forms such as songs, sonnets, epigrams and pastoral epic; dramatic genres such as revenge tragedy and city comedy; and prose works such as autobiographical confessions, pamphlets and fiery sermons. Texts week 1. William Shakespeare, Henry V 2. Philip Sidney, Apology for poetry and all sonnets in Norton from Astrophil and Stella 3. Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta 4. Edmund Spenser, book 1 of The Faerie Queene (in Norton) 5. William Shakespeare, Othello 6. John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (in Norton) 7. reading week 8. John Donne, Songs and Sonnets, the Elegies,and the Holy Sonnets (all those in the Norton) 9. George Herbert and Henry Vaughan (all poems in the Norton) 10. John Milton, Paradise Lost (books 1-4, in Norton) 11. John Dryden, The Conquest of Granada 12. Etheridge, The Man of Mode Editions ¿ no preference.
• QXE-2019: Contemporary Writing (Lit) (20) (Semester 2)
  ‘Contemporary Literatures’ introduces students to the first postmodern texts in the 1950s, and takes them right up to literature from the present day. The course asks students to investigate how literature (across a range of genres) responds to the broad historical trends and specific events of the age. While these might include residual literary traditions from the 1950s such as the theatre of ‘angry young men’ and ‘Movement’ poetry, the module will initially focus on the emergence of postmodernity. It will go on to consider how the Anglophone literary field has became more international in the second half of the twentieth century, witnessing the emergence of national literary traditions in a range of former colonies. New and contemporary movements and traditions in Anglophone literature will be explored in the second part of the course. These might include British Asian literature, post 9/11 literature, recent American drama, eco-poetry and the effect on literature of recent digital innovation.
• QXE-2020: The Romantic Period in Britain (20) (Semester 1)
  The Romantic Period (c. 1785 -1832) was marked by social change, political strife and a growth in print culture. In many ways it was the start of the modern age, as Britain sought to define itself both internally and within a global context. This course introduces students to both canonical and non-canonical texts of the period and the ways in which they both shaped and reflected wider social and cultural concerns. It will guide students through key areas of current scholarship of the period so that they may refine their understanding of the relationship between texts and their contexts. In order to question what the term ‘Romanticism’ may entail, this course focuses not only on certain authors and texts from this period but also what may be termed Romantic spaces, including the home, nation, metropolis (both London and Edinburgh will feature prominently), border spaces, natural or picturesque settings (including Tintern Abbey and nearby Snowdon), reading rooms, theatres, the boxing ring and galleries.
• QXE-2024: Alfred Hitchcock (20) (Semester 2)
  Alfred Hitchcock is perhaps the most notable example of a director whose films were popular both with audiences and with critics seeking to establish the credibility of film as an art form. His work provides a case-study of theories of authorship; of different national cinemas and studio systems, and of a particular genre, the thriller. In addition, the popularity and accessibility of Hitchcock’s films also raise questions concerning narrative, spectatorial pleasure, the gaze, and gender, and consequently provide an opportunity to explore the interrelation and limits of film theory and film practice
• QXE-2027: Literature and Modernity (20) (Semester 1)
  Literature and Modernity examines literature about, or by writers from, Britain and Ireland in a period bracketed by the emergence of proto-modernist writing in the late 1890s and the emergence in the early 1950s of texts that would later be seen as postmodern. This period in Western Europe witnessed unprecedented changes in the modes of production, in relations between the sexes and between the classes, and in the development of new cultural forms like radio and cinema. While these originated in the Victorian period, they were accelerated by the social and psychological impact of the First World War, global depression, the rise of fascism, another catastrophic World War and the start of the nuclear age, historical factors that make the study of literature from this period especially rewarding. Students will study some of the ways in which authors responded to these cataclysmic shifts by considering work from a range of critical perspectives. These may include the literary movement (for example, modernism), broad historical change (for example, changes in gender roles), a major historical event (for example, the Second World War), genre, or recent trends in criticism which encourage us to look at this period’s writing from a new angle.
• QXE-2101: Beowulf to Malory (20) (Semester 1)
  Seminar list/lecture list Week 1 Historical and Cultural Overview of the Old English Period Week 2 Beowulf Week 3 The Old English Elegies Week 4 Christian Heroes Week 5 Chaucer: Canterbury Tales: General Prologue and the Franklin's Prologue and Tale Week 6 Chaucer: the Nun's Priest's Prologue and Tale Week 7: NO LECTURES OR SEMINAR Week 8 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Week 9 Malory, The Morte Darthur, I Week 10 Malory, The Morte Darthur, II Week 11 Henryson (photocopies to be provided) Week 12 NO LECTURES; revision seminar

Compulsory Modules

40 credits from:

• QXP-3011: Discovering Cities (20) (Semester 1)
• QXP-3025: Fantastic Fictions (20) (Semester 2)
• QXP-3093: Experimental Writing (20) (Semester 1)
• QXP-3099: Creative Writing Dissertation (40) (Semester 1 + 2)
  This module involves the production of an extended piece of creative writing of high quality, with an attached ‘criticism in practice’ piece, an introduction to the work, and relevant bibliographic and ‘creative’ references. The focus of the dissertation is the piece of creative writing, which can be undertaken in any genre (after agreement with supervisor) and must be preceeded by a detailed (2 3 page) plan of work to be completed. The critical piece can be in a style similar to that of a critical literature essay, or it can be more focused on creative practice or the contextualisation of that creative practice, and can use the student’s own work as one of the reference points, as well as containing references to the work of other writers. The length of the dissertation varies according the genre and is the subject of discussion with the supervisor, but as a guide the total number of words for a prose fiction submission would be between 8,000 and 10,000 words. The deadline for submission of the dissertation is noon on Friday of week ten of semester two.

Optional Modules

80 credits from:

• QXE-3012: Detective Fiction (20) (Semester 1)
  This module covers nineteenth-century works by Poe, Collins and Conan Doyle; English ‘classical’ stories of the early twentieth century (Chesterton, Christie); American ‘hard boiled’ versions (Hammett, Chandler), and modernist and postmodernist variants (Borges, Auster). The module will situate the text in some historical and cultural contexts, and focus on the relationship between form and ideology in the genre.
• QXE-3022: Shakespeare and EM Literature (20) (Semester 1)
• QXE-3028: Literature in the Community (20) (Semester 1)
• QXE-3031: Welsh Writing in English (20) (Semester 2)
  ‘Modern Welsh Writing in English’ will consider a range of texts, principally written in English, emerging from modern Wales. The module explores the development of a tradition of Anglophone Welsh writing from the late nineteenth century, across the twentieth century and up to the contemporary moment. In so doing seeks to investigate the varied ways in which Welsh writers – male and female, from North and South (and beyond), rural and industrial, and across a range of genres and forms – have articulated the Welsh experience in all its diversity. The module will also introduce students to some of the current critical and theoretical approaches being adopted in the study of Welsh writing.
• QXE-3034: Arthur: legend and super hero (20) (Semester 1)
  This module will consider a selection of the best writing about the Arthurian legend, from the ninth century to the twentieth, with the aim of showing the development and use of this legend throughout a very long period. The choice of texts may be vary from year to year, but is likely to include the Mabinogion, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Malory, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Mark Twain and T.H. White. The main themes that inform the legend will be discussed alongside the different writers’ agendas in adapting and manipulating the core elements of the tradition.
• QXE-3086: Shakespeare's Afterlives (20) (Semester 2)
  In order to explore the concept of literary afterlives, the weekly seminars alternate between the study of a Shakespeare play and the investigation of instances of the ‘afterlife’ of that particular play. For example, a seminar on A Midsummer Night’s Dream is followed by a seminar on Angela Carter’s novel Wise Children, a text riddled with references to the play and its adaptations as well as to the ‘Shakespeare industry’ as a whole. The module encourages students to be alert to examples of the use and abuse of Shakespeare in our own contemporary contexts, and to respond creatively as well as critically to the plays and other texts under discussion. Participation in seminars is stimulated by a variety of means, including weekly presentations by pairs of students and a final colloquium on the essay projects being researched by members of the group.
• QXE-3088: Bob Dylan (20) (Semester 2)
  SEMINARS Material to be studied in seminars will include: Critical distinctions between modernist, mass, and popular cultures; `Folk music¿ and Dylan's early career; Rock music and Dylan's transition to electric performance; The relationship between biography and critical analysis; Dylan and religion; Dylan and literature; Textual analysis of the song lyric; Dylan and the visual arts; The transition from analogue to digital reproduction and dissemination; Bootleg culture.
• QXE-3094: Realms of Magic (20) (Semester 2)
  This module will cover the development of the romance genre from its earliest form in Marie de France’s and Chrétien de Troyes’ work through to insular productions such as Amis and Amiloun, Emaré, King of Tars, Isumbras, Sir Amadace, Bevis of Hampton, and Floris and Blancheflour. The range of texts will remain flexible, and their early modern versions will also form part of the discussion; the transformations and adaptations of these romances in medieval manuscripts and early modern prints will also be addressed. Topics as varied as spiritual instruction, courtly love, political governance, war, sexual fulfilment and magic will be investigated alongside incest, race, gender and ideology. The versatility of the genre will be explored in its development into other genres, in particular, but not exclusively, in early modern drama, and the endurance of its appeal will be judged with reference to the transformation of the genre in the early modern period. Connections will be established with Shakespeare’s plays and Spenser’s Faerie Queene. The module will end with analyses of adaptations of romance in the modern period (novel, film productions).
• QXE-3096: Medieval Women's Literature (20) (Semester 1)
  What texts were medieval women writing and reading? This module examines women’s textual culture in an historical period in which many male-authored works encouraged women to be ‘chaste, silent and obedient,’ in spite of an assumption that women were naturally inclined towards lust and gossip. The module explores texts from the range of literature written and read by women, and the ways in which female-produced works (those written, translated, read, commissioned, performed and discussed in medieval England) were in dialogue with the constructions of medieval womanhood current during this period. The texts studied in seminar offer opportunity to hear, amongst others, the intimate thoughts and words of Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, the Paston wives and Marie de France, on topics as broad as love, marriage, sex, death and religion, as recorded in travel narratives, letters, devotions, lyrics and other literature – all of which contributed to the rich textual culture of the Middle Ages. This module is an ideal companion to any of the other level three medieval literature modules.
• QXE-3099: The English Dissertation (40) (Semester 1 + 2)
  This module involves the production of an extended piece of critical writing of a length and quality appropriate to the culmination of the undergraduate degree scheme. Drawing on knowledge and critical methodologies learned earlier in the degree, students will be assisted via lectures and individual supervisions in devising, refining, developing and presenting a substantial piece of critical work on a topic of their choosing. The series of introductory lectures and workshops will focus on how to develop the initial research idea into a workable project presented in appropriate scholarly form. Critical self-reflection will be developed via the proposal and oral presentation in the first semester, and via discussions with the supervisor, which are held at key stages in the development of the project in both semesters.
• QXE-3102: The 1820s: Print Explosion (20) (Semester 2)
  The early nineteenth century was a period of radical social and intellectual change that also witnessed an explosion in new forms of print culture, from the ‘serious’ historical novels of Walter Scott through to the supposedly light reading of the Christmas gift book, or annual. This module concentrates on a single decade – the 1820s – in order to explore the emergence of several of these new forms, including, for example, the illustrated political satire of William Hone and the other post-Peterloo radicals, the playful critical essays of Hazlitt and Lamb (associated with an emergent magazine culture), and the new forms of writing about the self in the ‘confessions’ of De Quincey and Hogg. This module investigates a range of canonical texts (which may include Byron’s mock-epic Don Juan; an example of Scott’s ‘Waverley’ novels; and the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater), while placing them in the context of less familiar works (such as Pierce Egan’s illustrated novel, Life in London, the short stories of The Keepsake, and John Clare’s manuscript poems). This combination of canonical and understudied popular texts raises important questions about the relationship between image and text, literature and politics, the individual and society, questions still prevalent in our own age.
• LXE-3103: Wales: A European Contact Zone (20) (Semester 1)
• QXE-3105: Reading Myth (20) (Semester 2)
  This module will take as its focus the textual response to inherited mythic structures: how myth may be perceived in theoretical terms as a proairetic discourse; how it establishes affinities with certain genres (e.g. epic, tragedy, romance); and how in more contemporary cultural debates it has been problematised by expectations of falsehood. The seminar programme will range from Ancient Greek representations of myth (e.g. Medea) to medieval accounts of Scripture in dramatic narrative (e.g. Abraham and Isaac) and to varying accounts of saints’ lives. In the early modern period attention may be devoted to the changing importance of ancient mythologies in literary narrative. In the more contemporary periods, options will change from year to year, but may include explorations of such pervasive constructs as the Founding of Empire (Kipling, Lessing), The American Dream (Capote, Fitzgerald, Highsmith) and The War on Terror (Buchan, Fleming, and Porter’s Empire State).
• QXE-3107: EM Lit: Sex, Sects and Scandal (20) (Semester 1)
  Beginning with English constructions of nationhood in the 1590s, this module will examine the pressures that are placed upon Tudor notions of English identity by the ways in which early modern texts engage with Britishness. From here, the module will move to explore seventeenth century Anglophone literature in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Authors to be studied might include Edmund Spenser, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Deloney, Thomas Heywood, William Shakespeare, Katherine Philips, Henry Vaughn, William Drummond and Roger Boyle.
• QXE-3110: Neo-Victorian Fiction (20) (Semester 2)
• QXE-3113: The Monstrous Middle Ages (20) (Semester 2)

Compulsory Modules

Semester 1

• QXE-4019: Creative Writing: Poetry (30)
  Through individual tutorials and workshops, participants will learn how to develop an idea, carry out the necessary research, select an appropriate poetic form and style and construct a piece of writing suitable for its intended audience. Participants will be required to critically reflect on their own work and revise and edit as required. They will also be introduced to the work of other poets carrying out similar work, and appreciate the cultural and literary context in which their work is produced and received. By the end of the module participants will have written and edited a number of pieces of poetry and will understand the literary and cultural context of their work.

Semester 2

• QXE-4018: Creative Writing Prose (30)
  Through seminars, workshops and individual tutorials participants will learn how to develop an idea, carry out the necessary research, select an appropriate genre, form and style and construct a piece of writing suitable for its intended audience. Participants will be required to critically reflect on their own work and on the work of others and the ways in which it is an expression of a particular culture and society. Links between creative writing and other forms of non-creative writing will be made explicit, and participants from non-creative backgrounds will be encouraged to reflect on the ways in which the skills they develop can be transferred between different forms. By the end of the module participants will have written and edited a piece of prose fiction and understand its literary and social context.
• QXE-4094: M.Arts Dissertation (60)
  The Dissertation module offers the student the opportunity to produce a substantial piece of scholarly research. Students are required to produce a 12,000-word dissertation on a literary topic, the precise nature of which will be agreed in consultation with the supervisor. Early meetings will be used to discuss ideas, resources, and approaches, later meetings to discuss final drafts of the dissertation.

Optional Modules

60 credits from:

• QXE-4011: MA Open Essay 1 (30) (Semester 1)
  This optional module enables students who have completed two taught modules (QXE4015 Literary Theory, Scholarship and Research and one other module) to develop an individual research project, shorter in length than the MA Dissertation, with guidance from a supervisor. The precise nature of the topic will be agreed between the student and the supervisor.
• QXE-4012: MA Open Essay 2 (30) (Semester 2)
  Each module is taught by up to six individual supervisory tutorials, one hour each, the exact timing across the semester to be agreed between tutor and student. QXE4012 is taken by all students taking the English MA.
• QXE-4025: Manuscript and Printed Books (30) (Semester 2)
  This module will explore a range of manuscripts and incunabula from the medieval and early modern periods, with a view to engaging with the complex notions of medieval written artefact and composite books, the circulation and the dissemination of manuscripts and printed books. This module will offer the postgraduate the opportunity to pursue highly innovative lines of research in often neglected fields of study, including editing from digital resources and dealing with complex issues in transcription. There will be ample time during the semester for the postgraduate to shape and develop their own enquiries.
• QXE-4028: Myth and Early Modern Writer (30) (Semester 2)
  This module will explore a wide selection of published and manuscript texts which deal with the highly complex and fluid concept of myth in terms of cultural appetites for narratives of: origination and belonging; eschatology and the representation of supernature; extraordinary grandeur in which the human condition may be pondered. Particular attention will be paid to the roles of the translator, the natural philosopher, the dramatist and the poet as creative purveyors of mythological narrative for early modern consumption. This module will offer opportunities for the postgraduate to explore analogies between the written text and the visual arts and the development of music in the period. In the course of this module, the postgraduate will be encouraged to pursue research with frequently neglected texts. Moreover, there will be ample time during the semester for the postgraduate to shape and develop their own enquiries.
• QXE-4030: Medieval Arthur (30) (Semester 1)
  This module will explore the Arthurian myth and legends from its inception through to the end of the Middle Ages, while paying attention to the way the story was shaped in different centuries, socio-political contexts, as well as material culture – the manuscript and printed editions. The module will offer the postgraduates on the MA in Arthurian Literature a solid foundation for the continuation of their course, while giving others, who choose this module as an option, an insight into the origins and development of Arthurian themes in early literature. There will be ample time during the semester for the postgraduates to shape and develop their own enquiries of the subject.
• QXE-4031: Post-Medieval Arthur (30) (Semester 2)
  This module will explore the Arthurian myth and legends in the post-medieval periods, particularly from the early modern period onwards, also paying attention to the way the story was shaped in different centuries, socio-political contexts, as well as material culture – the manuscript and printed editions up to the present day. The module will offer the postgraduates on the MA in Arthurian Literature a solid foundation for the continuation of their course, while giving others, who choose this module as an option, an insight into the origins and development of Arthurian themes in post-medieval literature, including adaptations for film. There will be ample time during the semester for the postgraduates to shape and develop their own enquiries of the subject.
• UXS-4038: Media, Culture & Creativity (30) (Semester 1)
  This module encourages creative practitioners to situate their work within an academic context, as well as enabling researchers to engage with creative work as a form of academic enquiry. Students will explore the nature of creative research from the perspective of a number of disciplines, including science, psychology and the creative arts. The relationship between creativity and knowledge will be explored and creativity will be placed within a theoretical context that includes intention, innovation and practice. The process of creativity and the effect of research on creativity and practice will be explored. Students will have the opportunity to consider the research process, looking at elements, principles and theories of how creative and critical research correlate. Research design and methodology will be critically evaluated in order to assess the role of creative practice within research, looking especially at the types of research question for which creative practice is a suitable methodology, and how the consequences of the results of this research affect future actions. The module will prepare students, especially those going on to the Ph.D. or into employment in the culture and/or creative industries, with creative and critical self-consciousness, intellectual sophistication and scholarly confidence, whatever their specialist medium, period or genre.
• QXE-4042: Revolution/Modernity 1790-1930 (30) (Semester 2)
  This module will explore a range of texts published between 1790 and 1930 which document revolutionary moments in political ideology, gender identity and aesthetics. Arranged around three revolutionary moments- the French revolution of 1789, the European revolutions of 1848, and the duration and aftermath of the First World War (including the Russian revolution), it will examine texts that bear witness to the birth of new forms of modernity and which challenge (or sometimes reassert) dominant political, gender and aesthetic ideologies. Authors studied are likely to include, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Blake, Wordsworth, Marx, Thomas Carlyle, Emily Bronte, T.S. Eliot and James Joyce.
• QXE-4044: Welsh Literature in English (30) (Semester 1)
  The module will cover a range of canonical Anglophone Welsh texts. Topics to be covered may include: canonicity; the grounds on which a distinctive Anglophone Welsh literary tradition has been established and contested; the relation of literary texts to Welsh history; the ways in which literature constructs and interrogates Welsh national identity; internal differences across Wales; Celticism; modernism; the relation between cultural and political (in)dependence; what texts from the tradition of Welsh Writing in English have in common with literature from other traditions; Welsh literature and postcolonialism; Welsh literature and gender; the relation between Anglophone Welsh and Welsh literary tradition. Core Critical Texts Primary texts will vary from year to year but will include those by some of the following authors: Amy Dillwyn, Arthur Machen , Caradoc Evans, Edward Thomas, Lewis Jones, Jack Jones, Gwyn Jones, Gwyn Thomas, Idris Davies, Glyn Jones, Ron Berry, Alun Richards, Menna Gallie, Raymond Williams, Chris Meredith, Dylan Thomas, David Jones, Lynette Roberts, Brenda Chamberlain, R. S. Thomas, Emyr Humphreys, Rhys Davies, Margiad Evans, John Sam Jones, Peter Finch, Gwyneth Lewis, Menna Elfyn.
• QXE-4050: Material Texts & Editing (30) (Semester 2)
  This module will explore the complex inter-relationships between texts and the editorial methods which lead to the production of editions. It will expose students to issues pertaining to textual transmission and authorship from the medieval to the contemporary period and difficulties posed by factors such as anonymity or translation and adaptation, among other. The students will have the opportunity to study the methods employed in the editing of scholarly journals, and of texts from the medieval to the contemporary period, including elements relating to the history of publishing in these periods, with a view to better understanding the influence of the editorial process on the history of textual reception. Manuscript as well as print history will be related to the shaping of the canon of literature, and students will be encouraged to learn about as well as view critically norms practiced and adopted by editors across time.

0 to 10 credits from:

• QXE-4033: Postgraduate Portfolio S1 (10) (Semester 1)
  This module is designed to enable to postgraduate to pursue advanced level of research through sustained pieces of writing on a research area to be determined by student and tutor. This module offers the opportunity for the postgraduate to submit a portfolio of work of independent research (guided by tutorial supervision) addressing an enquiry which might not be on offer within the existing range of core and optional postgraduate modules within the existing menu in the home CAH School. The intellectual format of the portfolio will be agreed by tutor and student and will present an ideal outlet in which to demonstrate the student¿s scholarly practices: the ability to construct carefully researched and organised piece(s) of writing; the ability to abide by scholarly practices of notation and referencing; the ability to engage at an advanced level with critical approaches to the chosen field of enquiry; the ability to formulate argumentation at an advanced level.
• QXE-4034: Postgraduate Portfolio S2 (10) (Semester 2)
  This module is designed to enable to postgraduate to pursue advanced level of research through sustained pieces of writing on a research area to be determined by student and tutor. This module offers the opportunity for the postgraduate to submit a portfolio of work of independent research (guided by tutorial supervision) addressing an enquiry which might not be on offer within the existing range of core and optional postgraduate modules within the existing menu in the home CAH School. The intellectual format of the portfolio will be agreed by tutor and student and will present an ideal outlet in which to demonstrate the student¿s scholarly practices: the ability to construct carefully researched and organised piece(s) of writing; the ability to abide by scholarly practices of notation and referencing; the ability to engage at an advanced level with critical approaches to the chosen field of enquiry; the ability to formulate argumentation at an advanced level.