ENGL201

The Essay and Beyond: Creative Non-Fiction

15 points

Not offered 2025, offered in 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024

For further information see Humanities

Description

Non-fiction writing has a strong place within the traditions of literature, but has often tended to be neglected as a subject of study. To redress this, we will look at different genres of non-fiction: essays, popular science, travel writing, nature writing, and various types of "life writing". We will question the particular techniques and generic distinctions of texts studied, consider the specific subjects of non-fiction texts, examine how the texts are constructed and discuss their significance in the contexts most relevant to them. In addition, the course will explore the representation of place, displacement and placement; the history of subjectivity; recent interventions into postcolonial, globalisation and literary studies, and ecocriticism and human-animal studies; and the operation of gender and class as they apply to the production and readership of literary non-fiction.

Prerequisites

Any 15 points at 100 level from ENGL, or
any 60 points at 100 level from the Schedule V of the BA.