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English with Creative Writing

There is a long and distinguished tradition of creative writing at Queen’s, going back to the famous 'group' of the 1960s, which included such luminaries as Michael Longley, Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney (a former student and lecturer in the School).

Students will be able to complement their studies in the field of English Literature and Language with a series of practice-based creative writing modules focusing on Poetry, Prose and Scriptwriting. In their final year, students on this pathway will undertake an extended dissertation in their chosen genre of creative writing and receive one-to-one guided tuition.

Course Content

Stage 1

Students on the English with Creative Writing pathway undertake six modules in English, including An Introduction to Creative Writing.

Stage 2

In the second year, the following modules are compulsory:

  • Introduction to Creative Writing plus one of:
  • Creative Writing (Drama) or Creative Writing (Poetry) or Creative Writing (Prose)

    Students also choose four from the following modules:

    • Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature
    • History of English: Studying Language Change
    • Introduction to American Writing
    • Introduction to Renaissance Literature
    • Irish Literature
    • Late Medieval Literature
    • Literature and Society 1850–1930
    • The English Language: Language and Power
    • The English Language: Patterns of Spoken English
Stage 3

In the third year, students undertake a double dissertation in one of the following genres: drama, poetry or prose. Students also choose four from the following modules (subject to change):

    • American Fiction 1945–60
    • Chaucer’s London Poetics
    • Comic Fiction: Fielding to Austen, 1740–1820 Contemporary US Crime Fiction
    • Corpus Linguistics
    • Critical Fictions
    • Critical History: Reading the Classics of Literary Criticism
    • English Syntax
    • Interacting with the Late Medieval
    • Irish Fiction in the Twentieth Century Language and Narrative Style
    • Language in the Media
    • Literature and Science in the C19th
    • Milton and the Classical Tradition
    • Nineteenth-Century Irish Writing
    • Poet, Philosopher and Anti-Christ: Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Premodern Cultures of Performance
    • Reading Contemporary Irish and British Poetry
    • Reading Shakespeare Historically
    • Shakespeare on Screen
    • Televising the Victorians
    • The Irish Literary Revival 1880-1930
    • The Mock Epic in the Long Eighteenth Century
    • The Phonetics of English Women's Writing 1660-1820