First Year Reading (October 2024 Entry)

As a first-year student at Lancaster, you will take three year-long modules.

 

The Department of English Literature & Creative Writing currently offers four such modules:  

  • ENGL100: Literature in Time
  • ENGL101: World Literature
  • ENG 102: Literature, Place and Space
  • CREW103: Introduction to Creative Writing

 

Core Modules and Options

Depending on what degree scheme you decide to take will inform which reading lists to select from.

If you are coming to Lancaster to study Single Hons English Literature...

then you must do ENGL100, and we would encourage you to do ENGL101 and ENGL102. You may, though, want to take CREW103; however, you can, if you wish, take 1 or 2 modules from outside of the Department.*

If, though, you are coming to Lancaster to study English Literature and/or with Creative Writing...

then you must do ENGL100 and CREW103, and we would encourage you to do ENGL 101 or ENGL102; however, you can, if you wish, take 1 module from outside of the Department.*

ENGL100

Literature in Time is our core module in the Department which all our first-year students take. It offers a historical grounding in literature in English and also does much more than this, introducing students to the history of the discipline of English Literature, some crucial literary debates that have animated this history, new problems and innovations in literary analysis, and an exciting and diverse range of texts in a variety of modes: fiction, poetry, essay, memoir, and graphic novel.

Here are some of the key texts – we have marked with an asterisk those which we study in the early weeks, so these will be especially good texts to read in advance:

  • *Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God
  • *Samuel Selvon, The Lonely Londoners
  • George Eliot, The Lifted Veil
  • Virginia Woolf, Orlando
  • Alison Bechdel, Fun Home

Some other texts which we will read include the following – note that these can, if you wish, be sourced online:

  • *Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
  • *William Shakespeare, The Tempest
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (Books 1 and 9)
  • William Wordsworth, Two-Part Prelude
  • Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale (from The Canterbury Tales)

PS In addition, we do recommend that, as excellent general preparation for English at Lancaster, you dip into Andrew Bennett and Nick Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory.

ENGL101

World Literature is an optional module that extends to other geographical and theoretical dimensions what we do on ENGL100. The module explores English literature as a vehicle for representing other national contexts (for example, India and Nigeria) and in a global context (for example, we explore transformations of Shakespeare’s plays in world cinema, and vampiric narratives in different places and times). We also read texts in translation, including but not limited to European classics (such as Ovid, Kafka, Borges), and consider the ‘politics of translation’, or how texts travel. The module further develops your familiarity with literary theory.

Here are some of the key texts:

  • Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
  • Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love
  • Chris Abani, Song for Night
  • Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
  • Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
  • Tom Sperlinger, Romeo and Juliet in Palestine
  • Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis (can sourced online)

In addition, we will study:

  • Ovid, Metamorphoses the lecture will focus on sections titled: ‘Apollo and Daphne’ and ‘Narcissus and Echo.’ We will be using Charles Martin’s translation of Metamorphoses, as published by Norton Editions. This will be available online via the University Library; but a print copy can be purchased or an older translation can be found online at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21765/21765-h/21765-h.htm

ENGL102

Literature, Place and Space

This module organises your study of literature through the frame of space, exploring a wide range of major ancient, modern, and contemporary texts, all of which relate to such particular places as archive, museum, castle, stage, mountain, sea, border, plantation, stage, glacier, womb etc. Some of the spaces we will have in mind relate directly to the historic city of Lancaster itself and to its wonderful location near to both the Lakes and the coast, and some of the spaces will relate most directly to places far away. The module concludes with a range of "mini-modules", each one focusing on a very specific place, or kind of place. Options may include: the North, the map, the church, the digital, the desert.

Here are some of the key texts:

  • Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
  • M. Forster, Howards End
  • Elizabeth Jane Burnett, The Grassling: A Geological Memoir 
  • Laila Lalami, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits
  • Ali Smith, How to Be Both
  • Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

CREW103

Introduction to Creative Writing is your first step in Creative Writing as an undergraduate at Lancaster. It’s a core module, comprising teaching on poetry, prose, drama and more. You will be taught via weekly lectures on a range of topics, and workshops in which you receive feedback on your work from peers and a tutor – and you will give feedback in return. As such, CREW103 involves no set texts each week, so none of the reading suggestions are asterisked. Instead, we encourage you to find and explore the writing about which you are passionate, and to broaden your horizons by reading outside your comfort zone. As this is likely to be the first time you have studied Creative Writing in an academic setting, you might find it particularly helpful to read books offering guidance on the writer’s craft, such as:

  • Alan Ayckbourn, The Crafty Art of Playmaking
  • Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
  • Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard (eds.), Writing Creative Nonfiction:
  • Robert McKee, Story: Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting
  • Matthew Salesses, Craft in the Real World
  • Peter Sansom, Writing Poems

*If you do choose to go outside of the Department, there are a host of wonderful modules to choose from. Below are just a few of the many that are usually available.

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Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, and the University will make every reasonable effort to offer modules as advertised. In some cases changes may be necessary and may result in some combinations being unavailable, for example as a result of student feedback, timetabling, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes and new research. Not all optional modules are available every year.