BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing

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Hannah Kelly, Production Editor at Imagine Publishing

"The opportunity to work on the University literary magazine was instrumental in my decision to pursue a career in publishing and helped me to gain work experience placements. The course built upon basic skills, such as communication through seminar discussions, and proofreading and editing, to ensure my essays were of a high standard. Closely studying and analysing books also prepared me to work closely with the books I now edit."

Hannah's full interview

Beyond Plymouth: Enhance your prospects while studying BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing

Here at Plymouth, you won’t only study rigorous academic content—you’ll also have the chance to improve your skills and experience to enable you to secure the career you want long-term. We have a dedicated Internships and Placements Officer to help you secure relevant, graduate-level work experience. Our option module Working With Literature helps interested students to gain a formal placement and to practise key skills such as interviewing, CV writing, and more. And there are numerous fully funded, ad hoc opportunities to gain specific types of experience.

• Year 1
• In your first year, you'll study historical, theoretical, aesthetic and creative approaches to literary analysis. You’ll read literature which investigates the making of the modern world; engage with exciting theories of reading such as eco-criticism, psychoanalysis and Marxism; and write creatively in a wide range of genres including prose, poetry, drama and professional writing. You will also learn key research and essay-writing skills.

  Core modules

  • ENGL401 The Craft of Writing

    This module introduces students to the key concepts and issues in creative writing through the practise of workshops. We will read classic contemporary works of poetry, fiction and nonfiction including autobiography, travel writing, poetry sequences, essays and reportage. We will produce our own works of poetry, short story and nonfiction, and critically evaluate and contextualise them.

  • ENGL402 Writing the Modern World, 1600-1700

    This module considers `modern¿ ways of writing, thinking, trading, seeing, and relating to others in the seventeenth century. The literature of this period first explores ideas central to our own time and place, and is crucial both to understanding literary history and to understanding ourselves. The course will be structured through four key narratives, traced through a chronological selection of texts:¿ authority ¿ modern ideas of gender ¿ global capitalism ¿ modern print culture.

  • ENGL404 Critical Theory

    This module will introduce some key critical theories relevant to the study of English literature. It will familiarise students with a range of theoretical perspectives and enable them to develop an understanding of different ways of reading literature, and its wider contexts.

  • ENGL406 Gods, Monsters and Heroes: Myths and Legends in Literature

    This immersive module provides an important grounding for new students studying English and Creative Writing. Based around some of the earliest written texts that underpin Western literature, the module engages with a number of issues to enable students to gain an understanding of the historical development of literature and the ways in which texts relate to each other over the centuries.

  • ENGL407 Rewritings: Contemporary literature and its Histories

    This module will examine how and why modern and contemporary authors have rewritten or reworked influential literary texts of the past. Students will engage with a range of different literary forms, including fiction, poetry, drama and, where appropriate, film. By investigating the impulses behind such intertextual acts, students will explore the ways in which literature engages with the cultural politics of its times, focusing particularly on issues of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class and aesthetics.

  • ENGL408 The Craft of Writing II: Poetry and Drama

    This module introduces students to creative writing research, including writing theory, contextual literature, and criticism. Forms emphasised will be poetry and dramatic writing, developing from the first-semester emphasis on prose. Lectures will introduce topics, and subsequent workshops will promote the development of student work through feedback. Students will submit creative work alongside `research statements¿ twice during the term, in the form of portfolios.

• Year 2
• In your second year, you’ll write creatively in many forms including theatre and script-writing, autobiography and biography, travel writing, and literary adaptation. You will hone your skills as a writer in weekly workshops with tutors and peers. You’ll also study the writers who've shaped our literary canon, taking core modules in Romantic and Victorian literature, and selecting from a range of specialist creative, literary and work-based learning options.

  Core modules

  • ENGL501 Romanticism

    In this module literary Romanticism, in its rich and problematic diversity, is introduced and explored through a consideration of imaginative conceptions of the individual in writing between 1790 and 1830. The study ranges through a selection of texts in verse ¿ lyric and narrative ¿ and prose - essayistic, theoretical and fictional.

  • ENGL503 Dramatic Writing

    This course explores a wide range of dramatic writing and dramatic writing theory, integrating critical reading with creative writing projects. Class time will be spent discussing published authors/texts/productions, writing/reading theories, compositional processes, practical exercises, and student work.

  • ENGL506 Victorian Literature and Culture

    This module aims to introduce students to the Victorian period through an examination of literature read in conjunction with a range of other contemporary cultural documents including scientific, sociological, psychological, political economic and aesthetic texts.

  • ENGL520 Creative Nonfiction

    This module introduces students to the key concepts and issues in contemporary works of creative nonfiction including autobiography, travel writing, essays and reportage. We will produce our own works of poetry, short story and nonfiction, and critically evaluate and contextualise them.

  Optional modules

  • ENGL502 Gothic Fictions: Villains, Virgins, Vampires

    This module looks at eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels to trace the variety and scope of literary contributions to the Gothic. It begins by discussing the origins of the Gothic novel, then moves to the heyday of the genre in the revolutionary 1790s, on to authors writing in the early and mid-nineteenth century, through to the decadence of the 1890s.

  • ENGL509 Women and Romanticism

    This module tests notions of `Romanticism¿ by asking how it looks different when viewed from a gendered perspective. The course incorporates well-known material and popular texts not normally encountered at undergraduate level. Developing knowledge of Romantic-era writing, the module attends to gendered norms, transgressions, and authorship.

  • ENGL510 Shakespeare and the Early Modern Stage

    This module provides an introduction to many aspects of Shakespeare's plays with emphasis on the practice and practicalities of playwriting for the early modern stage and on Shakespeare's plays in performance. Students will also be introduced to a range of critical approaches to the plays, from Shakespeare's contemporaries to the present day.

  • ENGL511 Apocalypse and the Modern Novel

    This module explores how fiction from the late nineteenth century to the present day has represented end of world scenarios. It will engage with issues of genre and form, and with appropriate historical and cultural contexts including the environment, spirituality, technology, and globalisation. Criticism and secondary sources pertaining to these issues, as well as to individual authors, will be considered alongside the primary texts.

  • ENGL516 American Novel

  • ENGL519 Working with Literature

    While remaining focused on English and English and Creative Writing projects, this module will provide students with the opportunity to apply their literary and creative skills in a 'work-facing' environment.

  • ENGL521 Re-Thinking Historical Fiction

    This module aims to explore the interface between literature and history. Using key ideas in narrative theory and historiography, it will examine the ways in which narratives of history are crafted through literature and how literary texts can impact on our understanding and interpretation of history.

• Final year
• In your final year, you’ll refine your reading and writing, undertaking workshops to polish your skills in research and revision. Core modules will bridge your writing and reading experience, as you study widely-differing examples of the short story and contemporary poetry. You’ll have further opportunities to write creatively and critically, including your own year-long project – a 12,000 word creative dissertation, which you'll work on with the focused support of your personal supervisor.

  Core modules

  • ENGL602 Project in Creative Writing

    The student will complete, under tutorial supervision, a project in creative writing such as a collection of poetry, short stories, a longer piece of prose fiction, autobiography, travel writing or other suitable modes which may draw upon issues encountered in other English modules and which includes relevant literary-critical material. Maximum length 12,000 words.

  • ENGL603 Modernism

    This module will explore a number of themes through an examination of writing published in the approximate period 1910-1930. The themes will include structural and linguistic experimentation, historical and artistic influences, the First World War and literary networks.

  • ENGL606 The Short Story

    In this module we will examine a range of contemporary short story writing and relevant theory as a way for students to learn how to compose their own poems. Class time will be divided between discussion of poetry/theory, writing exercises and peer workshops of student poetry.

  • ENGL609 Contemporary Poetry

    In this module we will examine a range of contemporary poetry and poetic theory as a way for students to learn how to compose their own poems. Class time will be divided between discussion of poetry/theory, writing exercises and peer workshops of student poetry.

  Optional modules

  • ENGL607 War Writing Since 1914

    The module will explore a range of the writings of war published in a variety of countries since the outbreak of the First World War. The writing will cover a number of wars with a principal focus on WW1 and WW2. It will involve the writing of both men and women in several genres.

  • ENGL608 American Crime Writing

    This module considers the development of twentieth-century American crime fiction from hard-boiled detectives, to myths of the mafia, and postmodern reinventions of the genre. This module will explore the cultural contexts of American crime writing, prevailing conventions of the genre, as well as challenges to those conventions.

  • ENGL610 Reading Jane Austen - then and now

    This module explores the cultural politics of Jane Austen's novels and of reading her work, both at the time it was written and now. Attending to social and historical contexts, the course selects some of Austen's major works, together with a selection of early and minor material and work by her contemporaries, to consider how we can read Austen as a novelist, as a political writer, and as a writer of `romance'.

  • ENGL613 Literatures of Environmental Crisis

    This module explores the ways in which contemporary literature and literary studies are responding to our current era of ecological crisis. It introduces students to the debates, modes of reading and key ideas of ecocritical literary criticism.

  • ENGL615 Professional Writing

    This module introduces students to the key concepts and issues in professional writing. We will explore technique in features and literary journalism; music reviews, opinion columns and longer immersion features as well as other contemporary works of non-fiction feature writing, both short- and long-form, from sub-genres including profiles and interviews, autobiography and columns, travel writing, and reportage. We will learn to research and produce our own works of professional nonfiction and critically evaluate them.

Every undergraduate taught course has a detailed programme specification document describing the course aims, the course structure, the teaching and learning methods, the learning outcomes and the rules of assessment.

The following programme specification represents the latest course structure and may be subject to change:

BA Hons English Combinations programme specification 2806

UCAS tariff

104 - 112