EL6063 - Language, Strange and Enchanted

You will learn through two weekly 90-minute seminars, individual tutorials, and independent learning. The seminars will introduce you to a wide range of texts which foreground strange, fantastical, and non-naturalistic approaches to language and storytelling, potentially including constrained writing, constructed languages (as in A Clockwork Orange) ludic approaches, and the shaping properties of concepts like incantation and poetic form. You will also be introduced to relevant critical materials, which might include authors’ self-reflections and theoretical writings. You will discuss and analyse these texts in order to develop your understanding, and carry out writing activities in order to produce your own work. Part of the sessions will be given over to writing workshops, in which you will read and discuss fellow students’ work-in-progress.
At Level 6 the main impetus of your work must come from you: independent writing and study will form the main learning activity, and you must conceive, plan and drive forward your own writing project for this module. It is your opportunity to design and carry out your own piece of creative writing, putting into practice the techniques you have acquired on the degree so far. Your independent learning will be focused on reading and on producing your own piece of writing which engages with the provocations of the course. Tutorials will enable you to gain one-to-one tutor feedback and to talk to your tutor about the development of your work.

Your learning will be academically supported by peer and tutor feedback on your work within writing workshops. We will help you engage with a range of literary, theoretical, critical and reflective texts and provide writing exercises to help you produce your own piece of strange or fantastical writing. Your tutor will support the development and realisation of your work towards the assessment, and provide one-to-one tutorial support.
The module handbook provides details of seminars, reading lists and assessment criteria; lecture PowerPoint slides are made available on the e-learning platform, together with links to relevant skills materials in the library.
The module tutor is available in seminars, as well as during office hours, to discuss any queries or concerns you have.
You are advised to see your Guidance Tutor at least twice each semester to review your academic progress. The Guidance Booklet, which you receive at the start of your first year, includes structured materials designed to help you develop your self-reflection skills. These materials underpin the academic side of the regular Guidance meetings, helping you to learn how to best use the feedback you receive on your assignments, how to build on your strengths, and improve in the areas where you could perform better.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:
• Demonstrate an understanding of non-naturalistic, innovative and fantastical language use in creative texts
• Develop a sense of how qualities of strangeness, enchantment and the unexplained have been foregrounded by authors and readers over time

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:
• Produce effective creative writing which foregrounds linguistic play and innovation
• Position creative work in relation to the varied histories and traditions of non-naturalistic writing

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
• Reflect critically on work of self and others

Formative feedback is offered in individual 15 – 20 minute tutorials as well as through feedback in seminars and written feedback on draft materials. MLO 3, 5

Summative
Assessment 1 (100% summative):
A portfolio of writing (up to 3000 words or equivalent, 120 lines of poetry) which foregrounds non-naturalistic or otherwise innovative uses of language, accompanied by a 1000-word commentary in which the creative choices of the author are contextualised within the literary traditions discussed on the course.
MLO 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Feedback will be provided using the Departmental template and comments on the script.

N/A

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How can writers create reading experiences where language does something out of the ordinary, with the potential to intrigue, mystify or enchant readers and audiences? And who decides what falls inside and outside of linguistic norms? Linguistic innovation, play and constraint have played significant roles in the development of multiple genres, from poetry to horror and fantasy, often to create a sense of ‘other worlds’ or modes of experience beyond the conventional. This module looks at how authors over time have put pressure on language to produce feelings of strangeness, enchantment and the unexplained, and explores the vexed relationship between ‘normality’ and ‘strangeness’ in the languages of creative texts. This module is transhistorical, meaning that both historical and contemporary texts may be considered for discussion, and the assessment asks you to draw on the various traditions of non-naturalistic writing you will have examined to do something distinctive or innovative with language in your own submission. It will enrich your writing by pushing your use of language in new and potentially surprising directions, and will introduce you to a wide and engaging range of texts departing from the mainstream realist tradition.