On this course students will reflect on how literature shapes, and is shaped by the world, as well as honing the craft of writing through a multi-genre approach.
Drawing on key texts and ideas, students will develop critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills that will help them to make their own mark. To develop their own creative writing, the Department offers an unusual approach to the practice of writing, combining innovative and traditional methods in order to develop students’ writing skills and abilities to judge their work critically, while expanding their knowledge across different modes and genres.
On the four-year MLitSt Literature and Creative Writing, students will be part of an interdisciplinary department and well-established home to practicing poets, dramatists, novelists and critics.
They have the flexibility to choose from a wide range of optional modules across different topics and areas of specialization, including;
- Writing an independent creative project
- Early Modern (16th and 17th century) literature
- Exploring the psychological foundations of creativity in relation to myth
- United States, Caribbean and Transatlantic literature
- Writing for radio and playwriting
- Poetic, contemporary and avant-garde and political writing
In their fourth year, as post-graduate students, they will be able to choose from the following masters level modules in literature and creative writing;
- Conducting research into Shakespeare
- Development of a novel plan, from research and concept-development, to plotting, character and structure
- Study of rare and antiquated books
- Poetic practice across experimental writing in poetry from the performative to the visual
At Essex they believe in radical, challenging and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of literature and while they take note of conventions, they’re not bound by them. They have nurtured a long tradition of distinguished writers whose work has shaped literature as we know it today, from past giants such as the American poets Robert Lowell and Ted Berrigan, to contemporary writers such as mythographer and novelist Dame Marina Warner, and Booker Prize winner Ben Okri.
The course offers a varied, flexible and distinctive curriculum, focused on developing students’ abilities as writers, while allowing them to take options from the other courses within the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies including literature, filmmaking, journalism and drama.
