Introductory description

Memoir, personal essay, travel and adventure writing, nature writing, ‘literary journalism,’ and investigative journalism. Creative nonfiction is a vague and unfortunate term, of course, and the entire field is a mess, but that’s what makes it fun.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

1 St. Augustine, Confessions (online link)
Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life (pp 3-8), In Pharaoh’s Army (pp 171-181)
Annie Proulx, The Shipping News (pp 1-11)

2 Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (pp 7-13)
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (pp 3-22)
Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes (pp 11-19)

PERSONAL ESSAY (AND INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM)
3 Begin workshop of student work (2 or 3 manuscripts per week)
Aristotle, “The Kinds of Friendship” (online link)
Seneca, “On Noise” (pp. 3-8)
Michel De Montaigne, “On affectionate relationships,” “On sleep,” (pp 205-210, 303-305),
introductory note (online link), “Of books” (online link), “Of thumbs” (online link)
Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal” (online link)

4 James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son” (pp 85-114)
Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (online link)
Jamaica Kincaid, “On Seeing England for the First Time” (pp. 333-344)

5 Ann Hodgman, “No Wonder They Call Me a Bitch” (pp. 157-162)
Philip Weiss, “How To Get Out of a Locked Trunk” (pp. 150-156)

6 Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Darkening Sea”
Gary Taubes, “Is Sugar Toxic?”

TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE WRITING (AND ‘LITERARY JOURNALISM’)
7 Intro to Travel Writing by Jamaica Kincaid (Best American TW 2005)
Frances Mayes, Under The Tuscan Sun (pp 1-25)
Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence (pp 3-25)

8 Peter Hessler, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (author’s note & pp 3-32)
Kira Salak, “The Vision Seekers”
Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm (pp XI-11 and 136-146)

NATURE WRITING
9 William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (online link)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Nightingale,” “Dejection: An Ode” (online links)
Henry David Thoreau, “Solitude” (online link)

10 Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (pp 3-33) Gretel Ehrlich, “The Solace of Open Spaces” (pp 467-476) and “The Source of a River” (pp 208-211) Pam Houston, “A Blizzard under Blue Sky” (pp 37-43)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a practical and critical knowledge of the construction of literary non-fiction in terms of language, genre, form, narrative, character, dialogue and description, and of representative examples by published writers. b) Key Skills: By the end of the module the student should be able to: produce works of literary non-fiction to a high standard and know more about the impact of their work on an audience.c) Cognitive Skills: By the end of the module the student should be able to: analyse prose sentence by sentence in terms of how each works in terms of structure, music and voice, reflect on the relation between theory and practice.
• Produce works of literary non- fiction to a high standard and know more about the impact of their work on an audience.
• Analyse prose sentence by sentence in terms of how each works in terms of structure, music and voice, reflect on the relation between theory and practice

Indicative reading list

Aristotle, “The Kinds of Friendship”
Baldwin, James “Notes of a Native Son”
Blake, William, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, “The Nightingale,” “Dejection: An Ode”
Dillard, Annie, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Ehrlich, Gretel, “The Solace of Open Spaces” and “The Source of a River”
Hessler, Peter, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
Hodgman, Ann, “No Wonder They Call Me a Bitch”
Houston, Pam, “A Blizzard under Blue Sky”
Hurston, Zora Neale, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”
Junger, Sebastian, The Perfect Storm
Kincaid, Jamaica“On Seeing England for the First Time”
Kingston, Maxine Hong, The Woman Warrior
Kinkaid, Jamaica, Intro to Travel Writing
Kolbert, Elizabeth, “The Darkening Sea”
Mayes, Frances, Under The Tuscan Sun
Mayle, Peter, A Year in Provence
McCourt, Frank Angela’s Ashes
Montaigne, “On affectionate relationships,” “On sleep,” “Of books”, “Of thumbs”
Proulx, Annie, The Shipping News
Robinson, Marilynne, Housekeeping
Salak, Kira, “The Vision Seekers”
Seneca, “On Noise”
St. Augustine, Confessions
Swift, Jonathan, “A Modest Proposal”
Taubes, Gary, “Is Sugar Toxic?”
Thoreau, Henry Taylor, “Solitude”
Weiss, Phillip, “How To Get Out of a Locked Trunk”
Wolff, Tobias, This Boy’s Life, In Pharaoh’s Army

Subject specific skills

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Transferable skills

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