Student Essays

These are the excuses for writing I handed in during a three year BA honours degree in English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth... maintaining a 67.5 average in the second and third years with not much variation. I advise you to credit any sources you use — I don't care about plagiarism, but your college or university undoubtedly would.

At some point I'll jot down and put up some writing tips, as I never really grasped coherent extended writing until after I graduated. Some would say I still haven't.

English, year three

RT2 Literary Theory

1. "The subversiveness of a deconstructive reading of literary texts is a purely textual, not political phenomenon." (The Turn of the Screw, Henry James)

2. "The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond its title, the first line and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration, its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences."
(New Writing 9, Kennedy & Fowles ed. & Yes Prime Minister, Lynn & Jay)

Science-Fiction: From Frankenstein To Cyberpunk

1. Examine the relationship between science fiction and the Gothic in Frankenstein.

2. "When science fiction looks at the future, it is really looking at the here and now."
(Neuromancer, William Gibson & Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick)

EN30930 / EN30830 - Nineteenth & Twentieth Century Literature

1. "Not the opium-eater, but the opium, is the true hero of the tale."
How do you interpret De Quincey's (in)famous pronouncement on his Confessions of an English Opium Eater?

2. 'There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies' (Marlow in Heart Of Darkness.) Discuss the role of lies and self-deception in the novel.

English, year two

EN34720 - Detective & Crime Fiction

1. "Detective fiction is a defensive reaction against the unknowability of the modern world." Discuss. (Primary texts for this essay: The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler & The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.)

2. ‘If the purpose of detection is the discovery of hidden identity, the effect of the process of detection is the forging of new identities for the characters caught up in it.’ Discuss some of the tensions that arise in the treatment of ‘identity’ in detective and crime fiction in the light of this comment.
(Texts: Beneath The Blonde, Stella Duffy & Cabal, Michael Dibdin.)

EN33120 - Women, Writing & Religion In The Middle Ages

1. Virginia Woolf claimed that medieval women did not write 'for writing's sake.' What reasons did medieval women have for writing and what sort of texts did they produce?

2. Write on the representation of the body and/or female sexuality, and/or sexual violence in at least two texts on the course.

English, year one

The earliest of these essays, often neglecting basics such as paragraph structure, complete footnotes or sufficient background reading. Learn from my mistakes.

Core Modules

1. "Compare these two editions of Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe." Or similar.

4. "Are there obvious links between these two poems?" Or something like that.
("Beggars" and "The Sailor's Mother" from Home At Grasmere, William Wordsworth)

3. "Discuss the direction and effect of Pope's satire in The Rape of the Lock with particular reference to his use of the mock-epic." (The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope)

4. "What was the value, the meaning of things" (To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf)

An Introduction to Genre

"The literature of the uncanny invites psychological interpretation." Discuss.
(Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen & The Confessions of a Justified Sinner, James Hogg)

2. Compare and contrast the representation of the beloved in Shakespeare's Sonnet 20 ('A woman's face') and his Sonnet 130 ('My mistress' eyes').

Contemporary Writing

1. "Byatt's message is that art, curiosity and stories save us." Do you agree?
(Text: Elementals, A.S. Byatt)

2. "For a cult youth novel, Alex Garland's The Beach is extremely critical of youth culture." Discuss. (Text: The Beach, Alex Garland)

American Studies, year one

These last essays should mostly be taken as examples of how not to write academically. Lengthy quotation and sparse bibliography do not an essay make.