About English Literature
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Key Ideas
Literature is more than just entertainment or a way to pass the time. It can change our perspective and challenge our current beliefs in order to inspire us to wonder about the world. Literature is responsible for strengthening your critical thinking skills, empathy and creativity in your education. Reading Literature can spark creativity and imagination in students as it exposes them to different genres of writing that can encourage them to think outside of the box.
Key Concepts in English Literature
English Literature courses cover a range of genres, time periods, and techniques from Old English poetry to modern global fiction. Here are some of the key areas you might explore:
1. Genres and Forms
Understand the conventions of poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fiction. How do plays differ from novels? What makes a sonnet work? How do writers break the rules?
2. Literary Devices
From metaphor and alliteration to unreliable narrators and stream of consciousness, you’ll explore the tools writers use to shape meaning, mood, and rhythm.
3. Historical and Social Context
You’ll examine how works respond to their time - from the Elizabethan stage to post-war novels or even post-colonial poetry.
4. Themes and Symbolism
Explore big ideas such as identity, freedom, gender, memory, nature, and justice, and how these are woven into the fabric of a text.
5. Close Reading and Analysis
Sharpen your ability to zoom in on language, structure, and tone that will reveal how a passage works word by word to create impact.
6. Comparative Reading
Connect the dots between authors, movements, and cultures comparing how different writers tackle similar ideas across time and space.
7. Creative and Critical Response
Alongside analytical essays, you may explore writing in response to literature, whether that’s writing your own short story or reimagining a classic text from a new perspective.
The Future At A Glance
To briefly summarize your future with English Literature (which you will have if you decide to pursue it!), you will learn the craft and process of writing through workshops led by experienced, working writers that make up the facility. You’ll enrich crucial skills such as creating your own original works, assessing various creative works of writing, analyzing artistic works clearly etc. during your experience writing in different genres.
A few careers that are available to you are:
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Author
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Editor
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Film or TV Editor
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Journalist
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Librarian
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Magazine Editor
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Screenwriter
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News Analyst
These are only a few but if you take advantage of your time and make room for new opportunities, more doors will open for you! Don’t let all that creativeness go to waste! Face new opportunities head on to develop those helpful skills even further! :)
Some Opportunities Include:
Email to subscribe to their mailing list to access curated career insights from a creative writing lens
Join this experiment in deep listening where a poet reads an entire book of poems from start to finish.
Read or contribute your own analyses of books for young readers.
Meet other students at readings, info sessions, and other programs.
