On this module we will learn how to read the materiality of the manuscript page and understand how the work-in-process can illuminate the published text. This module will use both online digital manuscripts and Cardiff University’s own rich archives. We will debate key questions that affect our understanding of literary manuscripts, challenging our understanding of poetic ‘genius’ and the way in which poems are written. Beginning by understanding the effect of material writing conditions on the poetry produced we will analyse the digital manuscripts of First World War writers comparing the poems of Isaac Rosenberg written in the trenches to those of Wilfred Owen written on the home front. We will interrogate the difference between analyzing the physical artifact and the digital version, as well as addressing genetic criticism and archive studies. At the centre of the module is an engagement with the papers of Edward Thomas held in Cardiff University Special Collections. We will go onto consider collaborative composition and how this affects our understanding of creativity. Lastly we will consider the way women poets have been portrayed as writing in an ‘inspired’ or ‘mystical’ manner and how this erodes their agency in the craft of their own work. We will interrogate these ideas through an analysis of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel manuscripts.

On completion of this module students should have a deep and broad knowledge of the texts on the course. They should be able to undertake close readings of the manuscript page – involving both close textual analysis of the language as well as paying attention to the materiality of the manuscript page. Students should be able to locate the texts in their literary, historical and production contexts as well as engaging with archival, manuscript and creativity theories. Vital skills will be developed in areas of critical, independent thinking. Employability skills include the ability to synthesize information, operating in group-based discussion, skills in digital capture and editing, presentation skills, informed understanding of handling physically delicate materials. 

Teaching consists of a weekly one-hour lecture and a weekly two-hour seminar. Hand-outs and PowerPoint presentations will be used where appropriate, and made available on Learning Central directly after the session. Seminars provide the opportunity for closer textual analysis and small-group discussion. Discussion questions will be provided a week ahead of the seminar. Students are expected to arrive prepared to contribute, and will occasionally be asked to give short presentations. As some of the archives with which we will be engaging are digital, students will need to use laptops or tablets. There will be a small number of devices available for class use. Students may also use their own devices. Some seminars will take place in the University Special Collections in the Arts and Social Science Library.

WHAT IS EXPECTED OF ME?

Students are expected to attend and participate in the lectures and seminars for all modules on which they are enrolled. Students with good cause to be absent should inform their module leaders, who will provide the necessary support. Students with extenuating circumstances should submit the Extenuating Circumstances Form in accordance with the School’s procedures.

The total number of hours which students are expected to devote to each 20-credit module is 200. Of these, 30 hours will be contact hours with staff (lectures and seminars); the remaining 170 hours should be spent on self-directed learning for that module (reading, preparation for seminars, research, reflection, formative writing, assessed work, exam revision).  There are also additional seminars and workshops that students are able to attend.

Students will also have the opportunity to submit unassessed, formative exercises in preparation for assessed work.

Mid-term assessment

Students will be required in groups to select an item of interest from the Edward Thomas Archive and create a video presentation of ten minutes exploring why the item is of interest and how it can illuminate an aspect of Thomas’s writing, life or the period in general. These video presentations will also be screened in an event attended by staff in the department in order to showcase the work being undertaken by students on this module.

Video Presentation (10 minutes) = 30%
Approx date of assessment in March

Essay (2200 words) = 70%
Approx date of assessment in May

Week 1: Introduction

Lecture: Introduction to Manuscript Study: ‘the magical and the meaningful value’

Seminar: How to read the manuscript page

Week 2: The First World War Poetry Digital Archive

Lecture: First World War Poetry: Isaac Rosenberg and Wilfred Owen

Seminar: The material conditions of composition

Reading: selected poems of the First World War, James Campbell, ‘Combat Gnosticism: The Ideology of First World War Poetry Criticism’

Week 3: Debating the Status of the Manuscript/digitization

Guest Lecture: Dr Matt Hayler (University of Birmingham) ‘Digital Bodies: What We Read When Nothing Seems to Change’

Seminar: genetic criticism, digitization and archival considerations

Reading: Frank Paul Bowman, ‘Genetic Criticism’,

Week 4: The Papers of Edward Thomas.

Lecture: The Poetry of Edward Thomas

Seminar: Cardiff University’s Edward Thomas Archive

This session will take place in Cardiff University Special Collections. Reading: Selected Poems of Edward Thomas

Week 5: The Papers of Edward Thomas.

Workshop: Discussion/ researching items in the Thomas papers/drawing together ideas for the group presentation

Seminar: Discussion/ researching items in the Thomas papers/drawing together ideas for the group presentation

This session will take place in Cardiff University Special Collections. Reading: Selected Poems of Edward Thomas

Week 7: The Papers of Edward Thomas

Workshop: Training in video capture and editing

Seminar: filming/editing video presentations

Screening: Videos of presentations on an item of interest found in the Edward Thomas papers to be screened to staff.

Week 8: Collaborative Composition: The Waste Land Facsimile.

Lecture: Modernism and T. S. Eliot

Seminar: Did T. S. Eliot write The Waste Land?

Reading: The Waste Land and Other Poems T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land Facsimile

Week 9: Representing the writing practices of women writers

Lecture: Women writers: seers, automatic writing, confession.

Seminar: Craft or inspiration?

Reading: Modern Confessional Poetry, Jo Gill, ed., Heather Clark, The Grief of Influence: Plath and Hughes, extracts from Sylvia Plath, Journals.

Week 10: Sylvia Plath’s Ariel manuscripts: a burst of inspiration?

Lecture: Sylvia Plath’s poetry

Seminar: Reading Ariel in manuscript form

Reading: Sylvia Plath, Ariel, Ted Hughes, ‘The Evolution of “Sheep in Fog”’

Week 11:  Conclusion: course summary and Q & A.

INDICATIVE READING LIST:

Jonathan Boulter, Melancholy and the Archive (2011)

Frank Paul Bowman, ‘Genetic Criticism’, Poetics Today, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Autumn 1990)

James Campbell, ‘Combat Gnosticism: The Ideology of First World War Poetry Criticism’, New Literary History, Volume 30, No. 1 (Winter 1999)

Heather Clark, The Grief of Influence: Plath and Hughes (2011)

Timothy Clark, The Theory of Inspiration: composition as a crisis of subjectivity in Romantic and post-Romantic writing (1997)

Michael Davidson, Ghostlier Demarcations: Modern Poetry and the Material world (1997)

T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land Facsimile (2011)

Steve Enniss, ‘In the Author’s Hand: Artifacts of Origin and Twentieth-Century Reading Practice’, RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts and Cultural Heritage (2001)

Jo Gill, ed. Modern Confessional Writing (2009)

Anita Helle, ed. The Unravelling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath (2007)

Susan Howe, The Birth-mark: unsettling the wilderness in American literary history (1993)

Ted Hughes, ‘Evolution of “Sheep in Fog”’, Winter Pollen (1995)

Carolyn Hamilton, ed., Refiguring the Archive (2002)

Dirk van Hulle, Textual Awareness (2004)

Dirk van Hulle, Manuscript Genetics, Joyce's Know-how, Becket's Nohow (2008)

Dirk Van Hulle, Modern Manuscripts: The Extended Mind and Creative Undoing from Darwin to Beckett and Beyond (Historicizing Modernism) (2013)

Judy Kendall, Edward Thomas: the origins of his poetry (2012)

Tim Kendall, Modern English War Poetry (2009)

Tim Kendall, Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study (2001)

Charles Lamb, ‘Oxford at the Vacation’, London Magazine 2 (October 1820)

Philip Larkin, ‘Neglected Responsibility: Contemporary Literary Manuscripts’, in Required Writing: 1955-1982 (1983)

Margaret Mills Harper, ‘Nemo: George Yeats and Her Automatic Script’, New Literary History, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Spring 2002)

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)

Sylvia Plath, Ariel (1968)

Rob Pope, Creativity: Theory, History, Practice (2005)

Isaac Rosenberg, The Collected Works of Isaac Rosenberg: Poetry, Prose, Letters and Some Drawings, ed. by Gordon Bottomley and Denys Harding (1937)

Rosemary Sassoon, Handwriting of the Twentieth Century (1999)

Carrie Smith and Lisa Stead, eds. The Boundaries of the Literary Archive: Reclamation and Representation (2013)

Edward Thomas and Edna Longley, The Annotated Collected Poems (2008)

Jonathan Woolley, ‘Beyond the Beats: An Ethics of Spontaneity in the Poetry of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann’, College Literature, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Fall 2003)