Level 3

This module draws you into the main currents of literature from 1800 to the present day. You will engage with some of the most stimulating literary works ever written, and track the seismic historical transitions and transformations relevant to them – with an eye on our present and the future. Numerous major authors are offered for close critical study (Dickens, Tennyson, Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Winterson, and others), alongside exciting but relatively neglected authors. Influential literary movements and critical interventions will be discussed, while leaving ample space for your own ideas. The module has three parts: Realities, Movements, Futures.

This broad-ranging module investigates five different topics in philosophy: truth in fiction, the justice of war, reason and action, life and death, knowledge and reason. Each topic is approached through a set of key questions that are significant, accessible and engaging.

This module takes you on an engaging journey through a diverse selection of great literature from 1570 to 1818. You will focus on two globally recognised writers in English: the playwright William Shakespeare and the novelist, Jane Austen. Your literary journey from Shakespeare to Austen will include Renaissance poetry (Donne, Spenser) and drama (Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy), Restoration comedy (Wycherley, The Country Wife), 18th century fiction (Swift, Gulliver’s Travels), Oriental tales (Arabian Nights), travel writing (Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters), autobiography (Rousseau, Confessions) and Romantic ballads. 

What does music mean? What does it do? These are the queries at the heart of this module. You will explore how music conveys meanings and impacts its social contexts, before moving into investigations of audiences, performances, and film music. The module incorporates a focus on the transmission of music, examining how it is edited, notated, and recorded. The final part looks at music in relation to specific social and historical contexts, incorporating case studies of works of western art music from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.

Advanced creative writing develops your writing ability by widening your generic range and developing your knowledge of style. The module works on the forms introduced in the OU level 2 module Creative writing (A215) – fiction, poetry and life writing – and supplements these with dramatic writing, showing you how to write for stage, radio and film. You’ll explore how these scriptwriting skills might enhance your prose style, improve your writing across the range of forms, and further develop your individual style and voice. The module offers guidance on professional layouts for the dramatic media, and is a natural progression from Creative writing (A215).