First Year Reading List - English Literature and Creative Writing Modules
ESH101 Shakespeare
We will study three plays on this module, and you should try and read all of them before we start! They are, in order of study: The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night and The Tempest. We would encourage you to read them in the single editions published in the Arden Shakespeare Third Series editions, simply because the lectures and all references will be to these very reliable and up to date texts. They are: The Comedy of Errors, edited by Kent Cartwright (Arden, London, 2016), Twelfth Night, edited by Keir Elam (Arden, London, 2008), and The Tempest, edited by Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan (Arden, London, 2011). If you wish to buy and use a complete works of Shakespeare you may do so, but we would only recommend The Norton Shakespeare 3E (meaning ‘third edition’), edited by Stephen Greenblatt (Norton, London, 2022).
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).
Your assigned reading will primarily come from an anthology (Literary Theory: An Anthology, 3rd Edition, Wiley Blackwell) which if purchased new will be approx. £29, but can be found used or in e-book format.
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
