Expand+ENG10030 Literary Genre: the Art of Criticism and the Craft of Writing
Academic Year 2022/2023

Literary genre is the first (and maybe even the most important) element of understanding a text of any kind. In every kind of writing, it is genre that...

Hide-ENG10030 Literary Genre: the Art of Criticism and the Craft of Writing
Academic Year 2022/2023

Literary genre is the first (and maybe even the most important) element of understanding a text of any kind. In every kind of writing, it is genre that governs and shapes language, style, form, address and the engagement with the literary tradition; in deciding how to write about a particular subject, literary genre is the writer’s first consideration, and engaging with a text's genre is vital to any act of literary criticism. In this module we aim to equip students with the skills to understand and work critically with the critical concept of literary genre, as well as particular examples of it, across poetry, prose and drama.

The module will examine a range of texts, classical to contemporary, drawn from the different genres of poetry, prose, and drama. It will identify and explore the terms by which particular genres are designated and literary traditions are built. Module texts will illustrate the flexibility, adaptation, and evolution of specific genres across time and space, in dialogue with other cognate texts and authors, and consider the relationship between genre and the always-evolving historical literary 'tradition'.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Understand the concept and implications of literary genre

2. Acquire strategies for identifying literary genre(s) and thinking critically with them

3. Demonstrate awareness of the evolution of key genres of poetry, prose and drama in pre-modern as well as modern periods

4. Develop knowledge of literary terms, and an ability to apply them to the analysis of a range of texts.

5. Deploy new knowledge about literary genre and critical skills in close readings and essays.

Indicative Module Content:
The Penguin Book of English Poetry, ed. Paul Keegan (Penguin, 2009)
The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, ed. Joyce Carol Oates (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Individual set texts for drama:
Sophocles, Antigone (translated by Marianne McDonald, Nick Hern Books, 2015)
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, (RSC Macmillan Series, Palgrave)
Noni Stapleton, Charolais, Sonya Kelly, Noni Stapleton, Margaret McAuliffe, The Wheelchair on My Face; Charolais; The Humours of Bandon (Methuen Drama, 2017)
Bertolt Brecht, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (transl. by John Willet, London: Methuen Drama, 2002.)