London Global introduces students to the study of narrative. We will think about the different ways we encounter narrative: when we read alone, in classes, or in public spaces like libraries or cafes – on pages and on screens, in silence or within the soundscape of everyday life. Our focus is on the literature of London. You will encounter a range of narrative forms from the eighteenth century to the present, including the novel, short story, poetry and visual culture. The city is a space of complex relationships, strikingly reflected in urban texts. But what do we as readers do when confronted with the often baffling complexity of dense, multi-voiced or multi-plotted narratives? London Global invites you to give yourself over to the excitements and challenges of telling stories of the city, both as a literary critic and as a writer. We will think about how London has been imagined by writers and artists over time: as a space of translation and exile, a location of community or belonging, a meeting place of global histories or as a text itself open to interpretation or rewriting. You’ll learn to attend carefully to voice and perspective, style and structure and to articulate your own interpretations of the urban experience expressed in literature. You’ll hear from a leading London novelist, talking about his own practice as a writer. And we’ll give you plenty of space to reflect on what you bring to the study of London texts, to discover what interests you most and to have fun experimenting with your own writing.
