First Year Reading List - English Literature and Creative Writing Modules
ESH101 Shakespeare
We will study four plays on this module, and you should try to read the first of them – Twelfth Night – as soon as possible. Week 1 will be introductory, but in Week 2 we will begin work on that play, so you should make sure that you have read it by then. We ask you to buy the plays in the Arden 3 Series editions, which have extensive introductions and notes.
- Twelfth Night, Arden 3 Series, edited by Keir Elam (2008)
- Troilus and Cressida, Arden 3 series, revised edition, edited by David Bevington (2015)
- Othello, Arden 3 series, revised edition, edited by E.A.J. Honigmann with a new introduction by Ayanna Thompson (2016)
- The Tempest, Arden 3 Series, revised edition, edited by Alden T. Vaughan, Virginia Mason Vaughan (2011)
These are available from online booksellers for around £12 per volume (though you can get them cheaper than this if you purchase them second-hand).
You should bring your copy of the relevant play to each seminar.
You can also access online editions of each play at https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/home when you have received your QMUL login details.
ESH102 Reading, Theory and Interpretation: Approaches to the Study of English Literature
There is no advanced preparation for this module, but you can always start thinking about what ‘theory’ might mean for the study of literature. A good place to start is with a basic introduction like Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Cullers (2011), or Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory by Peter Barry (1995).
ESH124 Poetry
There is no preparatory reading required for this module, and nothing you need to buy. Each week during the semester we will read around ten poems – so while the number of pages is relatively low, we’ll ask you to concentrate on them carefully and take your time over them.
To warm up your poetry brain, you could start reading a poem a day – choose a varied selection of old, new, conventional and experimental from websites such as the Poetry Foundation (where you can subscribe to receive a poem a day), or listening to recordings of poets reading their work at PennSound. You might be inspired to approach the work of criticism in a different way by reading some reviews of new books, such as those at Jacket2 . We won’t be focussing on technical terms to discuss poetry, but if you’ve never had any introduction to these and would like to get started, The Poetry Handbook by John Lennard is useful and can be bought for around £3 used.
ESH126 London Global
There is no required preparation for London Global. Still, advance reading can be helpful and it is always good to read as widely as you can about London's cultures and histories and to walk as much as you can, getting to know the city if you don't already know it, or getting to know it better if you do. In London Global we will be also thinking about narrative, and about our experiences of reading long-form texts.
The novels we will be studying on London Global are:
Semester 1: Yara Rodrigues Fowler, there are more things and Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners.
Semester 2: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations and Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (any editions) .
You should have your own copy of each of these novels, and you are strongly encouraged to read them in preparation for the module, as this will lighten your workload during the semester. As you read, think about the very different Londons that each of these writers conjures.
If purchased at full price, the cost of the set texts will be approximately £38; however second-hand copies are widely available.
Further reading material for the module will be provided in the digital module pack, available on QMPlus.
ESH129 Literatures in Time: Epic and Romance in the Middle Ages
There is no advance preparation for this module, and nothing you need to buy. All reading will be made available in a digital module pack. You are not expected to have any knowledge of medieval literature before taking this module – lectures will provide you with the relevant contexts and information for studying our set texts.
We will be reading a combination of short and long medieval texts on ‘Literatures in Time’. Our two longest texts are the Old English epic poem Beowulf, which we will study at the beginning of the module, and the fourteenth-century Middle English romance (i.e. adventure story) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We will be reading both texts in translation. We will only be reading extracts from Beowulf, but you are welcome and encouraged to read the full poem.
If you’d like do some optional preparation work, then I’d recommend reading modern English translations of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in advance. This would help you to familiarise yourself with the stories, and you could start thinking about some of their main themes (e.g. humanity, monstrosity, magic and the supernatural, honour, community). Several translations are available at the QMUL Library. If you’re really keen, then you might even want to compare different translations of say, Beowulf, focusing on one or two short sections or scenes. Are there any interesting differences between the translations, for example in how they portray the hero and his monstrous opponents? (Spoiler Alert: some translations are quite different. The recent feminist translation of Beowulf by Maria Headley stands out.) But any amount of reading in advance would be helpful, and hopefully also fun. So, however much you read, enjoy!
ESH4101 Introduction to Creative Writing
All reading will be made available on QMplus. In preparation for Week 1, please write a poem. There are no guidelines with regards to form, style, or subject matter, but we would like you to think about voice, persona, and dialogue: write a poem that explores your voice, the voice of another person or object, or a poem that contains multiple voices. You will be asked to read the poem aloud in class, so please ready yourself for a start-of-semester poetry reading! Links to the Required Reading are below, you can take a look to get some ideas for your own work.
Required Reading
