ENGLISH LITERATURE 2015/16 Resit Essay Titles
YEAR 1
Module
Critical Approaches 1
Code
Q3120
Resit
Mode
ESS 2000
words
Essay Title
Answer ONE of the following questions in a well-written essay of 2,000 words. Be sure to follow the
guidelines for academic writing by citing your sources and including a bibliography. Always refer to the
English Handbook when in doubt about how best to follow proper academic practice. Take the time to
revise and edit your essay carefully to ensure that it is coherent, well-organised, and free of grammatical
and typographical errors.
1. ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose
it to mean—neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be Master—that’s all.’ (Lewis Carroll, Alice
in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass (Norton Critical Edition, p. 163)
Using at least TWO CRITICS you have studied for the module consider some of the implications
of this exchange.
2. “It is, in the end, by means of this elaborate, difficult and contradictory logic that the author
is placed at the centre of the new, modern institution of literature” (Bennet, 64).
Does the ideology of the Romantic author rest on the notion of paradox? Is there a
“contradictory logic” at the heart of other critical approaches to the author? Please discuss TWO
CRITICS when answering this question.
Reading Genre 1
Q3122
ESS 2000
words
Answer ONE of the following questions in an essay of 2000 words:
1.
'...Since first this subject for heroic song / Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late, / Not sedulous
by nature to indite / Wars, hitherto the only argument / Heroic deemed...' (Book IX, lines 25-29)
Write an essay on the ways in which genre can be used as a form of criticism, using Paradise Lost as
your principal example (you might consider the way in which genre can be used to critique literature, or
society, or politics, etc.)
2.
" But whan thou hast, for hire [her] and thee and me, / Ygeten [got] thise knedyng tubbes
[troughs for kneading dough] thre [three], / Thanne shaltow hange hem in the roof ful hye, /
1
YEAR 1
That no man of oure purveiaunce [preparations] espye. / And whan thou thus hast doon as I
have seyd, / And hast oure vitaille [provisions] faire in hem yleyd, / And eek [also] an ax to
smyte the corde atwo, / Whan that the water comth, that we go / And breke an hole an heigh
[above], upon the gable, / Unto the gardyn-ward, over the stable, / That we may frely passen
forth oure way..."
The Miller's Tale, lines 3563-73
Critical Approaches 2
Q3123
ESS 2000
words
Consider how Chaucer uses one or more of the following to create comedy: physical description,
parody, drunkenness, space and its manipulation.
Answer ONE of the following questions in a well-written essay of 2,000 words. Be sure to follow the
guidelines for academic writing by citing your sources and including a bibliography. Always refer to the
English Handbook when in doubt about how best to follow proper academic practice. Take the time to
revise and edit your essay carefully to ensure that it is coherent, well-organised, and free of grammatical
and typographical errors.
1) Using two of our readings from this term, EITHER develop an argument about what you think
the “critical” means in Critical Approaches, OR develop an argument about two theorists’
accounts of “the self.”
Reading Genre 2
Q3125
ESS 2500
words
2) Pick one section of the film The Examined Life and develop an argument that explores how it
relates to either one or two of the readings that we have done for this module.
1. Discuss the relationship between gender and genre, drawing examples from two or more texts or
films.
2. Consider how the subversion of genres might contribute to a critique of cultural norms or values. Your
answer should focus on two or more texts or films.
3. Discuss how far 'complexes of genres' characterises two or more texts or films usually associated with
one genre.
4. Students must submit a 2500 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module
and approved by the module convenor.
Reading as a
Creative & Critical
Writer
Q3252E
POF 2500
words
Your assessment is by a portfolio of creative and critical writing, totaling 2500 words. This must include
a critical essay of at least 1000 words, together with one or more pieces of creative writing, in any
genre. You may find ideas for developing your assignment from some of the weekly reading and writing
tasks set during the module (see Study Direct). There should be a productive link between the critical
and creative sections (there is advice on this on Study Direct), and the portfolio should have a title
which you devise.
2
YEAR 1
Culture in Global
Contexts
Q3251E
ESS 2000
words
Resit mode: 2 essays of 1,000 words each
1. Discuss how you might apply a postcolonial perspective to one of the following:
Tourism
Ecology
Sport
Constructions of 'race'
Constructions of gender
National identity
Language
2. How would you define the postcolonial? Back up your answer with reference to at least two writers
or theorists studied on this course.
3. With reference to a postcolonial theorist of your choice and one image, short story, poem or film
clip, discuss how culture has been mobilised to contest colonial legacies.
4. Select an essay or extract by one of the following writers and offer a critical evaluation of its
contribution to your understanding of the field of postcolonial studies:
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Edward Said
Frantz Fanon
Paul Gilroy
Edward Kamau Brathwaite
Jamaica Kincaid
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Aimé Cesaire
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Comedy
Q3253E
ESS 3000
words
Write a 3,000-word essay on one of the titles listed below, concentrating on one or more texts studied
on this module.
Essay Questions
3
YEAR 1
1. In your essay, demonstrate how one or more of the theories of humour (i.e. superiority, relief and
incongruity) operate through a close reading of one of the texts studied on the module.
2. Do you agree that carnivalesque comedy is politically radical? Discuss with reference to comic texts
studied on this module.
3. Write an essay on the motif of repetition in comedy, considering its political and social significance.
Your answer should refer closely to texts studied on the module.
4. Consider the way(s) in which comic amusement is generated from texts that set out to challenge or
disrupt logical thought, such as we saw with the absurdist and proto-surrealist plays studied on the
module. How are these forms of humour different than more conventional/logical comic modes?
Your essay will be assessed on the following criteria:
• Clear and appropriate structure
• Use of appropriate conceptual frameworks
• Contextualised and substantiated argument
• Critical analysis
• Appropriate use of examples and evidence
• Evidence of appropriate reading and research
• Full bibliography of all materials consulted
• Accurate referencing according to your chosen form
• Accurate spelling, punctuation and syntax
• Appropriate original ideas and insights
• Clear, lucid expression
Key Points to Remember:

Use your introduction to explore the title and its terms as well.

Make sure every paragraph addresses the essay’s title – avoid digression and answer all
aspects of the title.
4
YEAR 1
Westerns

Beware of spending all your time describing but never reflecting on and analysing your points:
make sure that you support every suggestion with argument and evidence. You need to be
critical, and avoid superficial observations and generalizations.

You should research the issues raised by the essay’s title in order to offer suitable justifications
for your arguments: each essay must include a bibliography formatted according to an
accepted style, eg. MHRA style: (you can download a free copy of the guide here:
http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Books/StyleGuide/download.shtml)

You may use any material studied on the module (including trips, screenings, etc.) in your
arguments. However you must ensure to contextualize these examples in a way that could be
understood by readers outside the module; don’t assume your reader will know the
performance/material you reference.

Treat your chosen topic sensitively: it is complex and should not be reduced to simple
positions.

Be specific: move from particular points to more generalized conclusions. Do not generalize
without evidence to support such a position.

Make sure your essay is double-spaced and that it adheres to the word count. Footnotes and
bibliography are not part of the word count.
Q3276E
ESS 2500
words
“By employing the Western as a vehicle for potentially critical social ideas, writers and directors
allowed their films to be readily recontained by dominant conservative ideologies” (Stanley Corkin) How useful do you find this critique? Discuss with reference to TWO texts or films that we have
studied.
Q3010
ESS 3500
words
Students must submit a 3500 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
YEAR 2
Writing and the
Great War
5
YEAR 2
Reading PostColonial Texts
Q3072
ESS 3500
words
(Answer one question; word limit: 3,500 words)
1.
Discuss some of the ways that the legacy of colonialism has affected the writing and
culture of the former colonies.
2.
The authors of The Empire Writes Back define post-colonial’ as follows:
We use the term ‘post-colonial’ to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process from the
moment of colonization to the present day (i.e. approx. ¾ of the world’s population).
How useful is this definition?
3.
In what ways have one of the following been explored in postcolonial texts:
1. community
2. sexuality
3. gendered identities
4. migration
5. violence
4.
What kinds of textual practices do postcolonial writers deploy to challenge the
representation of the colonized subject as ‘Other’ in colonialist History?
5.
Benedict Anderson argues that the nation is an ‘imagined community’. Discuss the ways
that the texts you have studied seek to endorse of challenge this view.
‘There is always the other side, always’ (Jean Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea). Discuss the ways that one
(or more) postcolonial writer has attempted to represent the complicated and ambivalent positions of
both colonizer and colonized.
Scenes of Learning
Q3128
ESS 3500
words
Students must submit a 3500 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Languages of
Racisms
Q3129
ESS 3500
words
Students must submit a 3500 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Gender, Culture and
Politics
Humans and
Animals
Q3203
POF 3000
words
ESS 3500
words
Portfolio of 3000 words following the prompts on Study Direct
Modernism and
Childhood
Q3267
Q3268
ESS 3500
words
Discuss the relation between humans and animals in one or two texts from the module with particular
attention to one of the following:
a)
Violence
b)
Labour
c)
Language
d)
Appetite
e)
Feeling
Students must submit a 3500 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
6
YEAR 2
The Arts and
Literature of Satire
Q3049
ESS 3500
words
Students may make up their own titles if they wish, in consultation with the tutor and/or exams
convenor.
Alternatively, they may choose one of the following:
1. Discuss the relation of satire to one of the following:
a) Comedy
b) Tragedy
c) Parody
d) Farce
e) Melodrama.
2. To what extent do you think satire is essentially a masculine genre?
Staging the
Renaissance:
Shakespeare
Senses of the Self
Q3059
ESS 3500
words
Q3086
ESS 3500
words
Sense and Sexuality:
Women and Writing
in the Eighteenth
Century
Q3097
ESS 3500
words
Representation and
the Body
Q3117
ESS 3500
words
Primitivism
Q3188
ESS 3500
words
3. Discuss how any satiric text you have studied has been converted into one of the following forms:
1. television
2. theatre
3. film
4. radio.
Students must submit a 3500 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3500 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Q. ‘Whatever its ostensible topic, it is power – political, sexual, social – which is always the real concern
in writing about women in this period’.
Write an essay in response to this statement, of no more than 3500 words. You should discuss TWO
fictional texts in your answer.
Students must submit a 3500 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Did not run 15/16 for students who sat the module in 14/15
Students to answer one of the questions below:
1. The ‘cult of sensibility’ is a cultural phenomenon that should be considered primitivist. Do you
agree?
7
YEAR 2
2. ‘Projections of a pre-social past tell us more about the time in which they are conceived than
the past they imagine.’ Is this true in the literature and thought around the turn of the
nineteenth century?
3. Write an essay exploring the significance of one of the following terms in the literature and
thought around the turn of the nineteenth century:
4.
a)
Spontaneity
b)
Luxury
c)
Nature
d)
Progress
e)
Liberty
f)
Virtue
5. What role does form play in the depictions of progress and its alternatives in the literature and
thought of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?
6. Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality represents just one of several models of the past’s
relationship with the present to be found in this period. Do you agree?
7. ‘Simplicity’ is a key term in the period’s writing, and is loaded with positive significance. Do you
agree?
Writing Poetry
Q3204
Literature and
Philosophy in the
C18
Q3269
The C19 American
Short Story
Q3271
CPJ
approx.
3500
words
ESS 3500
words
ESS 3500
words
A collection of 12 poems plus a short preface, totalling a maximum of approx. 3500 words
For Literature and Philosophy in the 18th C the resit title can be:
Develop an analysis of one of the following topics in relation to two texts from the module:
a)
Sympathy
b)
Nature
c)
Community
d)
Education
e)
Property
Students must submit a 3500 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
8
YEAR 3
Special Author:
Charles Dickens
Q3003
ESS 3000
words
Special Author:
Christopher Marlowe
Q3011
ESS 3000
words
Special Author:
Virginia Woolf
Q3023
ESS 3000
words
Special Author:
Thomas Hardy
Q3036
ESS 3000
words
Special Author:
Salman Rushdie
Q3046
ESS 3000
words
Special Author(s):
Rhys and Kincaid
Q3080
ESS 3000
words
Special Author:
Henry James
Q3139
ESS 3000
words
Special Author: John
Ashbery
Q3177
ESS 3000
words
Special Author:
James Joyce
Q3181
ESS 3000
words
Special Author:
Wollstonecraft
Q3183
ESS 3000
words
Special Author:
Coleridge
Q3184
ESS 3000
words
Special Author: J.M.
Coetzee
Q3194
ESS 3000
words
Special Author:
Vladimir Nabokov
Q3195
ESS 3000
words
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
9
YEAR 3
Special Author:
Geoffrey Chaucer
Q3196
ESS 3000
words
Special Author:
Edgar Allan Poe
Q3198
ESS 3000
words
About the Young
Idea
Q3201
DIS 6000
words
Culture and
Pornography
Q3141
DIS 6000
words
Experimental writing
Q3199
DIS 6000
words
Islam, Literature and
the west
Q3024
DIS 6000
words
The Literatures of
Africa
Q3079
DIS 6000
words
Queer Literatures
Q3186
DIS 6000
words
Spectacular
Imaginings
Q3202
DIS 6000
words
Technologies of
Capture
Q3192
DIS 6000
words
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 3000 word essay on a topic related to the materials covered on the module and
approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact the exams
convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 6000 word dissertation on a topic related to the materials covered on the
module and approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact
the exams convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 6000 word dissertation on a topic related to the materials covered on the
module and approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact
the exams convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 6000 word dissertation on a topic related to the materials covered on the
module and approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact
the exams convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 6000 word dissertation on a topic related to the materials covered on the
module and approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact
the exams convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 6000 word dissertation on a topic related to the materials covered on the
module and approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact
the exams convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 6000 word dissertation on a topic related to the materials covered on the
module and approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact
the exams convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 6000 word dissertation on a topic related to the materials covered on the
module and approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact
the exams convenor for approval.
Students must submit a 6000 word dissertation on a topic related to the materials covered on the
module and approved by the tutor who has taught the module. If your tutor is on leave, please contact
the exams convenor for approval.
10