Thinking Literature 2 (Q3298)

30 credits, Level 4

Spring teaching

We tell stories all the time; stories about ourselves and others, stories about origins, stories about where we see ourselves or the world as going.

Stories make up our lives and help construct our individual and collective identities. Thinking Literature 2 focuses on different kinds of prose narrative and their acts of storytelling, from the medieval to the contemporary. We’ll explore key concepts such as fictionality, realism, life-writing, and metafiction, while also gaining an overview of the history of these concepts' deployment in literature. We will pay some attention to the development of the novel as a form, from the eighteenth century to the present, but we will also contrast the novel with other forms including short stories, tales, letters, non-fictional prose, and comics.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 55 hours of contact time and about 245 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2022/23. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.