Focusing on the literary essay, this unit aims to integrate, synthesise and refine the critical reading, writing, conceptual and analytic knowledge and skills students have acquired across the multiple and diverse topics within their study of English. Throughout the early modern, modern and post-modern periods, the literary essay has developed alongside and in dialogue with other major genres of writing – most notably, the novel, drama, poetry, literary and cultural criticism. While it is a much practised form, it is often viewed as an invisible genre, commonly studied and utilised in conjunction with other textual practices, but rarely analysed in itself as a specific kind of discursive practice with particular, though diverse, stylistic features, conceptual parameters and ideological concerns. In this unit students read, critically analyse and write a range of essays across various subject areas – such as literature, art, music, film, politics, food, travel and so on. However, the critical focus of the unit is on the essay as textual practice: its generic affiliations; stylistic and discursive characteristics; ideological assumptions and agendas; and its role and impact within culture in general.
