English Literary Studies with Creative Writing

The two core modules, Research Methodology and Reflective Practice in English Literature I and II, are compulsory for all MA English/English with Creative Writing students and for new first year PhD English students who have not taken an MA at Lancaster. They are designed in accordance with UK research councils training guidance. Seminars will run across terms 1 and 2, and dissertation supervision and a conference will take place in term 3. The two modules together aim to equip you with a range of skills, approaches and competences to draw on as early career researchers in the field of English Literary Studies and/or Creative Writing. Even if you are not considering a research career, we will cover skills that are valuable for any postgraduate student of literature.

The two core modules are designed to complement the more specialist topics covered on MA English programmes through specific module seminars and dissertation supervisions. These core modules typically include sessions on research and writing skills, working with archives, and working with theory, and will encourage reflection on the practice and utility of literary research. The modules will be assessed by an ongoing portfolio of tasks. In the summer term, the module will conclude with a conference – organised by the students themselves – at which each of you will give a paper relating to your research.

The two core modules, Research Methodology and Reflective Practice in English Literature I and II, are compulsory for all MA English/English with Creative Writing students and for new first year PhD English students who have not taken an MA at Lancaster. They are designed in accordance with UK research councils training guidance. Seminars will run across terms 1 and 2, and dissertation supervision and a conference will take place in term 3. The two modules together aim to equip you with a range of skills, approaches and competences to draw on as early career researchers in the field of English Literary Studies and/or Creative Writing. Even if you are not considering a research career, we will cover skills that are valuable for any postgraduate student of literature.

The two core modules are designed to complement the more specialist topics covered on MA English programmes through specific module seminars and dissertation supervisions. These core modules include sessions on research and writing skills, working with archives, and working with theory, and will encourage reflection on the practice and utility of literary research. The modules will be assessed by an ongoing portfolio of tasks, the final two of which are a dissertation proposal and a conference abstract. This prepares you for the summer term, which involves a conference – organised by the students themselves – at which each of you will give a paper relating to your research, and dissertation writing with allocated supervisors.

This module will allow you to develop an idea for a novel, select techniques appropriate to your genre, theme and style and prepare you to complete an extract or series of extracts from a novel in progress. Through reflective exploration of several contemporary novelists, targeted writing exercises and workshops, you will explore character, voice, point of view, genre, form, setting and place.

The module will be taught by a combination of large-group interactive lectures on the week's set text delivered by Jenn and Okechukwu. You will also be assigned a small workshop group and meet separately with either Jenn or Okechukwu give and get feedback on works in progress.

You will be assessed on the submission of a portfolio consisting of: 4k extracts from a novel in progress + synopsis of the proposed work (synopsis not included in word count) and a 1k reflective essay with bibliography.

Note: this module addresses novels aimed at adults – it is not suitable for students wishing to work on a project for children or young adults. You should come prepared with an idea of what you want to work on from the start of the module.

The portfolio module is your opportunity to develop an individual project that will lead to a fully-realised piece of creative work. Typically, you will be supervised by a specialist in your chosen area of interest.

The creative work may be several pieces of short fiction, a radio play, a coherent collection of flash fiction, prose poetry, poetry, an extended personal essay/memoir/autofiction, or a continuous extract from a proposed novel or other book-length work.

You will:

• Generate the idea for a piece of creative work in your chosen form
• Propose an independent reading plan
• Draft no more than 5,000 words for initial tutor review
• Develop and edit your creative project and present the finished work to a high standard - as appropriate for your chosen form (eg correctly formatted script)
• Demonstrate your knowledge of relevant form, technique, and process by writing a 3,000 word reflective essay, including a full bibliography

You will receive informal, verbal feedback during regular dissertation meetings with your supervisor. This will include suggestions for reading and research as well as feedback on the development of your creative project. When the portfolio is graded, it will be returned to you with detailed written feedback.

This module will enable you to develop your understanding of prose writing for young people, with a focus on Children’s Fiction (8-12 years) and Young Adult Fiction (11+ and 14+). During the module, you will develop an idea for a manuscript suitable for one of these audiences. The manuscript will be informed by the critical discussion of the set texts, targeted writing exercises and participation in workshops. Together, we will explore voice, point of view, story structure, setting and place, as well as formulate conceptions of the role of gatekeeping, reader expectations, and current movements and trends in the children’s publishing landscape. You may come prepared with a manuscript idea you wish to work on, or you might build on an idea generated in class. Towards the end of the course, you will also be asked to write reflectively on your creative process.

This module examines a range of British and Irish fiction that appeared against the revolutionary backdrop of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It considers the ways in which novelists engaged with and/or resisted the political and intellectual upheavals of the period -- the French revolution, the spread of political radicalism, abolitionism, the rise of feminism -- and shows how novels of the time can be read both as trailblazers for democratic modernity and as gestures of counter-revolutionary consolidation. Focusing on a range of writers that includes Jane Austen, Walter Scott and Mary Shelley, the course explores tensions between past and present; between Englishness and otherness; between dangerous experimentation and steadfast loyalty to tradition. Emphasis will also be placed on the formal upheavals that literary fiction underwent in this period, not least the conflicts between realism and rival modes such as Gothic, melodrama, historical saga and science fiction.

This module is concerned with a range of wonderful texts from c.1919 to c.1980 that together suggest a line of broadly modernistic writing that has a fascination both with the city (primarily Paris, but also Berlin, Oxford, London, Zurich, and even that city of death which is the death camp) and with the mixing of genres - in particular, such genres as critical essay, philosophical treatise, poetry, comic dialogue, fragment, novel, anecdote, manifesto, autobiography, history, textual commentary, and travelogue. Featured authors currently include Walter Benjamin, Virginia Woolf, Hope Mirrlees, Mina Loy, Samuel Beckett, Paul Celan, and Jacques Derrida. Special attention will be paid to texts that blur the genre-boundary that, traditionally, separates critical writing from creative writing, and students will be invited, if they wish, to submit such texts themselves.

How did people in the late Middle Ages conceive of the relationships between themselves and the natural world? How did early English literature react to and characterise the environment that seems an increasingly pressing concern for our own modern context? This module will explore the many roles that early literature played not just in reflecting the environment, but also in constructing and shaping human interactions with the natural world. The module examines a type of literary environment each week and investigates the kinds of relationships the texts posit between the human and non-human to address the above questions. We will work with theoretical approaches such as ecocriticism and encounter a wide range of primary source material that imagines early human interactions with the environment.

This module offers an introduction to understanding and exploring ideas of space, movement and identity in relation to major writers and texts across the nineteenth century with a particular interest in reading and mapping. What can and cannot be mapped? What resists or exceeds acts of mapping? We will read key writers of place alongside a range of relevant spatial and philosophical texts and extracts for each of the thematic themes that are addressed across the module. As the title suggests the course is particularly interested in the challenges involved in moving across and between direct physical and embodied experiences and the representation of place in different literary forms.

The module focuses on three themes: walking and writing; mapping literary place and space; and interior and exterior spaces. We will use these themes to think about how place and space are constructed through movement, action and reaction, as well as to consider how the visual representation of place through literary maps bears upon verbal description within a text.

This module prepares you for your dissertation project and supports the development of the research, scholarly and critical skills that it will require. You will be introduced to the idea of ethical practice and any students working on memoirs or verbatim work will be offered specific guidance. You’ll also explore the ideas, concepts and issues around reflective practice and the vital role of research within creative writing.

We’ll study in a cohesive group, bringing students on combined courses and those following different pathways together to create a wider forum; our discussions will focus on professional practice and research issues.

This module aims to enhance your knowledge of library, archival and online research and develop your understanding of the creative process - taking you from first draft to final submission, including problem-solving strategies for creative blocks or obstacles. The module also places your creative work in the context of a professional literary world.

Indicative study themes:

• Understanding the Research Context
• Library, Online and Archival Research
• Scholarly Conventions
• Creative and Professional Presentation
• Research and Reflective Practice
• The Ethical Researcher

'This module explores the evolution of prose fiction from the late Romantic era through the first two decades of Victoria’s reign. A defining focus of the course will be on the ways in which the Victorian novel negotiates with Romantic legacies: the primacy of self, the necessity of intellectual and personal liberty and an ambivalence towards the past are crucial to the development of the form. The historical frame of the course allows us to move from James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) to George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876) and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). We will consider the shaping presence of other genres in the development of nineteenth-century fiction, including spiritual autobiography, the Gothic and the long poem.

Historical contexts will also be emphasised with particular reference to the religious and political debates of the period. We will explore the emergence of the novelist as a major cultural figure and interrogate the ways in which the writers under review both internalise and contest the ethical, spiritual and economic forces of their historical moment.'

This module aims to do two things: to encourage the student to think about contemporary poems in several different visual dimensions but always from the viewpoint of the practitioner; and it offers an opportunity for them to develop their own work in progress, while at the same time actively promoting their critical reflection upon the process of writing and the visual dynamics a poem can activate and contain. The module admits that the ‘how to’ approach might be of less use when it comes to writing poetry, and instead promotes and explores a wider sphere of influences, encouraging experiment and engagement. A critical exegesis allows the student to reflect upon the decisions made and the effects sought in their creative project. These aims will be achieved through a variety of methods:

The short story is a complex and malleable form. This module considers the multiple forms and styles of contemporary short fiction from a range of cultural backgrounds and nationalities.

You will have the chance to develop your understanding of short fiction by drawing upon contemporary writers as well as secondary and critical reading - which will also help you to build a critical and theoretical framework around your own writing.

Peer and tutor review, both oral and written, will encourage you to work reflectively as a creative practitioner. And you’ll be encouraged to demonstrate your knowledge of the forms and genres used in contemporary short story writing by incorporating them in your own short story portfolio.

Indicative study themes:

• The longer short story of Alice Munro
• The historical short story (eg ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’)
• Myth and fairy tale in the short story
• Magical realism and the fantastic
• Formal experimentation
• Hypertext
• Science and the short story (the Comma Press 'Science into Fiction' Series)
• Politics and the short story

This module explores the relation between the novel and neoliberal politics, economics and philosophy from 1979 to the present. It introduces you to the philosophy of neoliberalism by examining key theoretical texts by, for example, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Michel Foucault, David Harvey and Wendy Brown and tracks how the modern novel historically reflects, reinforces and questions the rise (and fall?) of neoliberalism. This module seeks to map the contours of what Walter Ben Michaels has famously called the Neoliberal Novel by examining its defining genres, tropes, subjectivities, imaginaries, affects and ideologies. We will seek to address the following indicative questions. To what extent is it possible to speak of a Neoliberal Novel? How far do novels from 1979 to the present reflect, anticipate and contest the history of neoliberalism from the collapse of Keynesianism in the mid-1970s, through the monetarist experiments of the Thatcher and Reagan governments in the 1980s, up to the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of 'post-liberal' populists like Trump? To what extent is it possible for the contemporary novel to think with, through and even beyond the neoliberal order?

This module introduces you to the personal essay: a flexible, hybrid form incorporating elements of cultural and literary criticism, memoir, journalism, fiction and auto fiction. We will explore a number of modes of personal writing, assisting you in the development of a form that best serves your creative intentions.

Taught via literature seminars and creative workshops, you will experience a range of literary techniques, including generative writing prompts and exemplar texts. You will also learn how to respond reflectively and creatively to feedback - to this end, one seminar each term will be replaced by a one-to-one personal tutorial.

Indicative study themes:

• The Writing 'I': developing a voice, the strategic ‘I’, literary personae, authority and double perspective.
• Mode and register: memoir, documentary, reflection and commentary.
• Scene setting and dramatisation: applying creative technique to 'real life' material.
• Finding a subject; the writing self and the world.
• Autofiction, truth and artifice.
• Developing a form: the list essay, the braided essay, collages, fragments and mockuments. Rereading, rewriting, reconsidering: reflective editing and responding to feedback.

Taking our cue from Haruko Maeda’s remarkable twenty-first century painting Heartbeat of the Death, Queen Elizabeth I (2013), Tudor Gothic critically considers the relationships between traces of Tudor history and culture in four gothic novels (Deborah Harkness’s Shadow of Night (2012), Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (c.1803), Sophia Lee’s The Recess, or a Tale of Other Times (1784) and Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764)) and proto-gothic tropes (such as wonder, terror, strange places, clashing time frames) in select poetry, prose and drama produced in the Tudor period (1485-1603) itself. Rather than viewing the Tudor Gothic as an anachronistic term, the module suggests that Tudor Gothic informs and shapes literary gothic’s social, political and imaginary landscapes.

The module seeks to challenge the conventional tendency to think of the Victorian era as an age of moderation, as ‘a land / In which it seemed always the afternoon’ (to quote Tennyson). We shall, therefore, be paying close attention to the many extremes and extremities within Victorian literature and culture. These extremes can be found in some of the period’s formal experimentations, and cover subjects such as perception, experience, radicalism, imagination, secularism, and belief. Throughout the module, we shall be exploring the relation between these Victorian extremes and the coming of Modernity. This exploration will take us beyond the chronological limits of what we normally think of as the Victorian period, and we will be enlisting the help of several critical pieces to focus our seminar discussions.

This module explores modern/contemporary transnational literature in the Anglosphere, tracking relations between the local and the global, the domestic and the public sphere, the body and body politic, the concepts of ‘original’ and ‘translation’, and the human and the world. We privilege minority/decentring perspectives and consider how literature comes to us as Anglophone readers via the publishing industry, perceptions of translatability, and the literary prestige economy.

Key themes include: the body, space, mobility, modernity, relationality, marginality, agency, translatability, and environments. Key questions include: What makes a world literary writer? How are minority writers positioned within Anglophone publishing? (How) does a particular authorial signature impact upon the way a literary work circulates? What connections emerge across contexts?

All texts will be studied in English, though multilingual readers may also refer to originals.

This module looks at poetry culture in the UK and beyond, preparing you to enter the world of the publishing poet by closely examining the prize culture, some of the significant prize- winning collections by new poets over the last few years, and current poetry journals.

You will investigate current trends, having the chance to learn what it takes to get your work read - by editors, publishers and the poetry-consuming public. And you’ll put together a publication package with the aim of building your own portfolio in readiness for the vibrant and varied poetry marketplace - which continues to defy predictions of its demise.

Each seminar will typically be divided into reading and workshopping of your creative work in light of what we've read.

Indicative study texts:

• Seamus Heaney, Seeing Things (Faber, 1991)
• Sarah Howe, Loop of Jade (Chatto 2015)
• Kei Miller, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion (Carcanet 2014)
• Sam Riviere, Kim Kardashian's Marriage (Faber 2015)
• Andrew McMillan, Physical (Cape 2015)
• Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers (Faber 2015)
• The Current Forward Anthology for that year
• A series of poetic journals (as chosen by your cohort)
• Michael Symmons Roberts, Drysalter (Cape 2013)
• Sinead Morrissey, Parallax (Carcanet 2013)

The aim of this module is to enable you to write drama for radio, developing your own scriptwriting style and gaining an awareness of the professional requirements of the genre. We will study exemplar radio dramas and use them to contextualise the creative choices in your own work whilst also exploring the effects of different structural and stylistic approaches.

Peer and tutor feedback will guide the development of your creative portfolio as you work towards a single radio drama script of 25 pages. Reflective practice will help you to develop the art of redrafting and editing and you will pen a 1,000-word essay placing your experience of this in the context of radio drama.

Taught through a combination of seminars and workshops, we will initially focus on the key elements of writing for radio, with weekly tasks corresponding to study themes. Latterly, we will move on to more intensive workshopping of your own work.

Indicative study themes:

• The radio landscape
• Narrators
• Navigating through and creating soundscapes
• Beginnings
• Character creation and character voice
• Story structure
• Status shifts
• Script format (and software resources)