Units
Great Books: Creative Writing Classics
Unit code: KWB207
Contact hours: 3 per week
Credit points: 12
Information about fees and unit costs
This unit provides an overview of the enduring classic literary works. It will give you a better knowledge and understanding of the craft of storytelling and stimulate you to develop your own critical and creative writing as well as an understanding of yourself and others. The course commences with several of Chaucer's medieval tales and concludes with Vonnegut's modern anti-war classic Slaughterhouse Five. It includes Swift's biting satire and Emily Bronte's passionate Wuthering Heights. The unit aims to make such works accessible to students from all disciplines in the university, and provides valuable historical context and analysis of the writing craft in each case.
Availability
| Semester | Available |
|---|---|
| 2013 Semester 1 | Yes |
Sample subject outline - Semester 1 2013
Note: Subject outlines often change before the semester begins. Below is a sample outline.
Rationale
This unit is designed to provide you with the knowledge and skills necessary to be a better writer or a more engaged and confident reader, or both. It demonstrates how great books deal with important ideas and values, which though particular to their time are still relevant today. The unit gives you a grasp of the uses to which language can be put and of the development of storytelling, which is central to the way we understand ourselves and our culture.
Aims
This unit aims to provide you with a grasp and enjoyment of a representative sample of great books which are classics of creative writing (mainly from European literature) that have endured and continue to influence contemporary work. It will give you a better knowledge and understanding of the craft of storytelling and stimulate you to develop your own writing and to take a critical stance towards these books, which are always in a process of reinterpretation.
Objectives
On completion of this unit you should be able to:
1. Read and interpret literary classics from a broad range of international and historical contexts.
2. Critically discuss ideas explored by the books, as well as the language and writing techniques and communicate your responses to other readers.
3. Identify the assumptions made in specified literary works about readers' emotional reactions and moral values, and be more able to imagine, and to be tolerant of, other ways of seeing the world.
4. Write a creative piece that relates to one or more of the set texts in terms of ideas, style, craft, historical context or characterisation, for example; or write an analytical essay.
Content
This unit will include content from specified texts, namely:
Beowulf, Gulliver's Travels (journeys one and four), Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Slaughterhouse 5 and Atonement.
Short stories by Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield, and Elizabethan and seventeenth century poems will be made available on the unit's Course Material's Database.
Approaches to Teaching and Learning
Classes comprise lectures and tutorials. Students will be expected to read the set texts prior to the related lectures and tutorials, so as to gain maximum benefit from the unit. The emphasis is not on literary theory but on engaging with quite demanding texts. Experiences that require active participation and mental effort are more likely to stay with us.
Assessment
LATE ASSIGNMENTS
An assignment submitted after the due date without an approved extension will not be marked. If you are unable to complete your assignment on time, you should submit on time whatever work you have done.
Faculty Assessment Information
To access the Creative Industries Faculty Assessment Information see the Blackboard site for this unit.FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
You will receive formative feedback on your progress in this unit during tutorials and discussions throughout the semester. Weight: 0%
Assessment name:
Reflective Journal
Description:
(Summative and Formative) Each lecture week will focus on a set text. You will write 250 words on the relevant text for six [6] of these weeks - giving an explication of the craft/technique (which you can also relate to ideas) for a short extract you choose from each text. It is your choice which 6 you do. The feedback on the first submission of this journal (3 entries) will guide you for the second submission (3 entries). You will also include in both submissions of your journal, the best six short writing exercises you have done in tutorials. (2500 words minimum in total).
Relates to objectives:
1,2 & 3
Weight:
60%
Internal or external:
Internal
Group or individual:
Individual
Due date:
Mid/Late Semester
Assessment name:
Creative Work or Essay
Description:
(Summative) Submission of a written creative piece which relates to one of the set texts and its ideas, craft, style or voice, for example. Or submission of an analytical essay dealing with themes, ideas, craft, for example. (1500 - 2000 words).
Relates to objectives:
3 & 4
Weight:
40%
Internal or external:
Internal
Group or individual:
Individual
Due date:
End semester
Academic Honesty
QUT is committed to maintaining high academic standards to protect the value of its qualifications. To assist you in assuring the academic integrity of your assessment you are encouraged to make use of the support materials and services available to help you consider and check your assessment items. Important information about the university's approach to academic integrity of assessment is on your unit Blackboard site.
A breach of academic integrity is regarded as Student Misconduct and can lead to the imposition of penalties.
Resource materials
Required Texts
Beowulf, Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels (read journeys one and four), Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice, Emilty Bronte Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens Great Expectations. All these book length texts are available in Penguin classics. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and Ian McEwan's Atonement are published by Vintage. . .
Short stories by Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield, and Elizabethan and seventeenth century poems will be made available on the unit's Course Materials Database.
Recommended extra reading for those who wish to read more great books in the future: Voltaire Candide; Mary Shelley Frankenstein; George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) Middlemarch; Stendhal The Red and the Black; Tolstoy Anna Karenina; Flaubert Madam Bovary; E.M. Forster A Passage to India; Franz Kafka The Trial; Gabriel Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude; Christina Stead The Man Who Loved Children; Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay) The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney; Margaret Atwood The Blind Assassin, David Malouf An Imaginary Life; A.S.Byatt Possession;,Jonathan Franzen The Corrections .Other modern greats: Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, William Faulkner, Audrey Thomas, Alice Munro, Toni Morrison, Gunter Grass, Bernhard Schlink, Thomas Mann.
Risk assessment statement
There are no out of the ordinary risks associated with this unit.
Disclaimer - Offer of some units is subject to viability, and information in these Unit Outlines is subject to change prior to commencement of semester.
Last modified: 25-Sep-2012
