This module, which includes teaching spanning two terms (in 2020-21, SP and SU), will explore key theories relating to creative writing alongside related writing texts and relevant workshop exercises. Theories to be explored will typically cover defamiliarisation, surrealism, intertextuality, structure, post-modernism and post-colonialism. Essentially, term 1 focusses on 'making the familiar unfamiliar' (defamiliarisation) and term 2 focusses on 'narrative' (including narrative in art as well as in literature).
Teaching will combine a study of key theories and texts across a range of genres, from poetry and fiction to autobiography, with practical writing exercises. In addition, we try to pay some attention to how writers (such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Pound and Breton) have theorised their own (and others' work). There is a strong focus on re-writing and on engagement with others' work.
Teaching will combine a study of key theories and texts across a range of genres, from poetry and fiction to autobiography, with practical writing exercises. In addition, we try to pay some attention to how writers (such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Pound and Breton) have theorised their own (and others' work). There is a strong focus on re-writing and on engagement with others' work.
Module Supervisor's Research into Subject Area
Chris McCully has published many book-length works of non-fiction including textbooks, fishing and travel guides. His most recent book-length work of non-fiction is an account of living, working and observing the natural world in the Netherlands (Outside, 2011); further essays exploring travel, place and cultural memory appeared in Four Places (2018). He has also written well over hundred feature articles and continues to write essays and reviews for literary journals. Particular research interests include poetic and prose form, Old English poetry (Chris’s new translation of Beowulf appeared in 2018) and narratives of ‘home’ and homecoming. Recently (2020) Chris has also completed a new collections of poems (A Few Late Wasps, to appear 2022), a volume of synoptic (10-line) epics (The English Funerals, to appear in 2021), a dictionary of the names of freshwater fish (to appear in 2022) and a book about Wharfedale, in Chris's native Yorkshire (The River of All the Goodbyes, to appear in 2023). He has also begun to theorise dragons in (Western) literature - his essay on the porperties of dragons (2020) may be consulted as part of this module.
- Module Supervisor: Philip Terry