Gwybodaeth Modiwlau

Module Identifier
WL11420
Module Title
Literature And The Sea
Academic Year
2020/2021
Co-ordinator
Semester
Semester 1
Other Staff

Course Delivery

 

Assessment

Due to Covid-19 students should refer to the module Blackboard pages for assessment details

Assessment Type Assessment length / details Proportion
Semester Assessment Assignment 1  1 x 1500 word creative piece (or pro rata for poetry), plus a 1000 word commentary OR 1 x 2000 word essay  50%
Semester Assessment Assignment 2  1 x 1500 word creative piece (or pro rata for poetry), plus a 1000 word commentary OR 1 x 2000 word essay  50%
Supplementary Assessment Resubmit Assignment 1  Resubmit failed or missing essay: 1 x 1500 word creative piece (or pro rata for poetry), plus a 1000 word commentary OR 1 x 2000 word essay  50%
Supplementary Assessment Resubmit Assignment 2  Resubmit failed or missing essay: 1 x 1500 word creative piece (or pro rata for poetry), plus a 1000 word commentary OR 1 x 2000 word essay  50%

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this module students should be able to:

1. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of a range of writings about the sea.

2. Display an awareness of a range of relevant critical and theoretical perspectives.

3. Show a reflective awareness of the ways in which themes and techniques employed in the set texts have informed their own critical and/or creative practice.

4. Write in a disciplined and cogent manner, making use of appropriate registers and conventions

Aims

This module offers students the opportunity to engage critically with a range of literary texts (short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction) that take the sea and/or the shoreline as their subject. The module will introduce students to range of authors (e.g. Conrad, Woolf), theoretical concepts (e.g. ecocriticism, postcolonialism) and writing practices which form the base knowledge on which later modules (such as Literary Modernisms, Literary Theory: Debates and Dialogues, and Writing and Place) can build. The module will consist of ten 50-minute lectures and ten 2-hour seminar/workshops. It will be an alternative assessment module, open to both Creative Writing and English Literature students. Students will have the option of workshopping either a short piece of creative writing or a few paragraphs of literary analysis.

Brief description

This module offers students the opportunity to engage critically with a range of literary texts (short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction) that take the sea and/or the shoreline as their subject. The module will begin with Rachel Carson’s poetic exploration of the sea’s primeval origins, before considering representations of the sea’s capacity for instilling wonder and wreaking devastation, in both Victorian and Modernist texts. The sea’s role in the slave trade will be explored in work by Derek Walcott and Kamau Brathwaite. The last part of the module will examine contemporary literature on the sea in the genres of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction – with a special focus in weeks 8 and 9 on Welsh writing in English. The module will introduce students to range of authors, theoretical concepts and writing practices which will form a base knowledge on which later modules can build. Teaching delivery will consist of ten 50-minute lectures and ten 2-hour seminar/workshops. It will be an alternative assessment module, open to both Creative Writing and English Literature students.

Content

Week 1: Rachel Carson, ‘The Grey Beginnings’ (from The Sea Around Us)
Week 2: Selected Sea Shanties (from Poems of the Sea ed. by J.D. McClatchy)
Week 3: Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’; Walt Whitman ‘As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life’; Alfred Tennyson, ‘Crossing the Bar’
Week 4: Joseph Conrad, Typhoon
Week 5: Wallace Stevens, ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’; Marianne Moore, ‘A Grave’
Week 6: Ernest Hemingway, ‘After the Storm’; Virginia Woolf, ‘The Watering Place’
Week 7: Derek Walcott, ‘The Sea is History’; Kamau Brathwaite, ‘Limbo’
Week 8: Cynan Jones, ‘Aberarth’ (from A Fiction Map of Wales)
Week 9: Robert Minhinnick, ‘Story of the Woman Who Fell’; Zoë Skoulding, ‘Llanddwyn Beach with Directions for Copenhagen’
Week 10: Kathleen Jamie, ‘Three Ways of Looking at St Kilda’ (from Sightlines)

Module Skills

Skills Type Skills details
Application of Number N/A
Communication (Written) By developing a sustained critical argument (Oral) Through group discussions and seminar presentations (not assessed)
Improving own Learning and Performance Through reflecting on how theoretical understanding can be used to improve the students’ own creative practice.
Information Technology By using word processing packages and making use of Blackboard and other e-resources to research and access course documents and other materials.
Personal Development and Career planning Through increased critical self-reflection and the development of transferable, ICT, communication and research skills.
Problem solving By evaluative analysis and critical skills
Research skills By independent and directed research for seminar preparation and work on summative assessment tasks.
Subject Specific Skills Writing skills and conceptual knowledge in key fields of creative writing and literary study.
Team work Through group work in seminars.

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 4