AustLit
Texts
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Lolita!$!Nabokov, Vladimir!$!Harmondsworth!$!Penguin!$!2008s
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The White Earth
Crows Nest
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Allen and Unwin
,
2004
Z1113518
2004
single work
novel
(taught in 14 units)
'His father dead by fire and his mother plagued by demons of her own, William is cast upon the charity of his unknown uncle - an embittered old man encamped in the ruins of a once great station homestead, Kuran House. It's a baffling and sinister new world for the boy, a place of decay and secret histories. His uncle is obsessed by a long life of decline and by a dark quest for revival, his mother is desperate for a wealth and security she has never known, and all their hopes it seems come to rest upon William's young shoulders. But as the past and present of Kuran Station unravel and merge together, the price of that inheritance may prove to be the downfall of them all. The White Earth is a haunting, disturbing and cautionary tale.' (publisher's website)
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Joe Cinque's Consolation
Sydney
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Pan Macmillan Australia
,
2004
Z1132428
2004
single work
prose
(taught in 26 units)
'In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests - most of them university students - had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died. It probes the gap between ethics and the law; examines the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as 'evil'; and explores conscience, culpability, and the battered ideal of duty of care.' (Source: Pan Macmillan website)
Garner takes 'a deliberately subjective and "literary" approach' to her material with an 'emphasis on a sympatheitic authorial persona as the source of the reader's perspective' (Susan Lever 'The Crimes of the Past: Anna Funder's Stasiland and Helen Garner's Joe Cinque's Consolation'. Paper delivered at the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) conference 2006).
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Description
This is an advanced subject for students in the Master of Arts in Creative Writing. It brings together graduate writing students from a number of areas to workshop their own and each other's work, to provide and receive productive feedback on work-in-progress and to explore aspects of contemporary writing practice and theory that are both directly related to and/or challenge their own practice.
Subject objectives/outcomes
At the completion of this subject, students are expected to:
a. Have demonstrated creative, imaginative and fluent practices as writers;
b. Have developed their self-reflective critical and editing skills;
c. Have gained an insight into their own writing habits;
d. Have honed their skills in analysing the writing of others;
e. Have a clear understanding of the limits and possibilities of a variety of contemporary forms of creative prose, and how each differs from other prose forms.
Content
Reading
We approach the readings as writers, looking closely at the work of others to understand the choices and possibilities open to us. The readings include exemplary texts; critical essays; and reflections on the writing process. We shall be doing a close study of the readings, looking in detail at the idea of scene and dramatisation and the representation of reality. We shall pay particular attention to texture (description, character, place, language, rhythm), to time (elapsed time, speeding up, slowing down, pausing, lateral movement) to character and movement, and to the relationship of style, structure and subject matter.
The critical essays and the reflections on writing will be discussed in class.
Writing
Students will present a seminar paper reflecting a close reading and analysis of the examples they choose to illustrate the exploration of their topic. The examples should be photocopied and handed out the week before their seminar date. Each student will present their own writing for discussion in workshop either in small groups or to the whole class, at least twice during the semester. They will give one another oral and written feedback. The learning that takes place in a workshop stems from their involvement in the work of others as well as in their own. When considering a work, we find ways to raise questions and to locate problems through constructive criticism offered with goodwill and generosity.
Assessment
Assessment item 1: To workshop a creative work at least twice during semester
Objective(s): a, b, c, d
Weighting: 50%
Task: To present creative writing for discussion in workshop at least twice, and to hand in for assessment one polished piece of creative work. Length: 3000 words or equivalent. These to be worked through the necessary re-writes, class discussions and editorial changes. Ideally these will be from each student's longer work to be developed in Professional Writing Project.
Assessment criteria:
* Technical accomplishment of writing style
* Originality of ideas
* Dramatic and effective structuring of work.
Assessment item 2: To present a seminar paper reflecting a close reading and analysis of the chosen topic
Objective(s): c, d, e
Weighting: 50%
Task: To present a seminar paper reflecting a close reading and analysis of the examples chosen to illustrate the exploration of the topic which will be from the lists of set texts or readings. This is a written task in the form of an essay and is to be handed in for assessment. Length: 2000 words.
Assessment criteria:
* Demonstrated insight into the themes, techniques and issues chosen.
* Capacity to apply themes and issues arising from work under discussion to creative practice
* Effective presentation of the topic.
Students who have a reason for extended absence (e.g., illness) may be required to complete additional work to ensure they achieve the subject objectives.
Supplementary Texts
Style Manual: for Authors, Editors and Printers, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 2000.
Dykes, Barbara. 1992. Grammar Made Easy. Sydney: Hale & Ironmonger
Strunk, William & White, E. B. 1979. The Elements of Style, 3rd Edition. New York: MacMillan Publishing
Narrative Technique
Brande, Dorothea. 1981 (1934). Becoming a Writer. London: Macmillan.
Browne, Rennia & King, David, (Eds). 1993. Self Editing For Fiction Writers. New York: HarperCollins Publishers
Dillard, Annie. 1989. The Writing Life. New York: Harper & Row Publishers
Disher, Garry. 2001. Writing Fiction: an introduction to the craft. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Goldberg, Natalie. 1986. Writing Down the Bones. London: Shambhala
Grenville, Kate & Sue Woolfe. 1993. Making Stories: how 10 Australian novels were written. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hirsch, Edward. 1991. How To Read A Poem and Fall In Love with Poetry. Florida: Harvest Books
Hodgins, Jack. 1993. A Passion for Narrative: a guide to writing fiction. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
King, Stephen. 2000. On Writing. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Lodge, David. 1992. The Art of Fiction. Harmondsworth: Penguin
Lodge, David. 1997. The Practice of Writing - Essays Lectures, Reviews and a Diary. Harmondsworth: Penguin
Pack, Robert and Parini, Jay (Eds). 1991. Writers On Writing, A Bread Loaf Anthology. Hanover: Middlebury College Press, University Press of New England
Stern, Jerome. 1991. Making Shapely Fiction. New York: WW Norton & Co
Walker, Brenda (Ed). 2002. The Writers' Reader. Sydney: Halstead
Narratology
Booth, Wayne. 1961. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Genette, Gerard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Todorov, Tvetan. 1977. The Poetics of Prose. Trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Screen Writing
Aronson, Linda. 2000. Scriptwriting Updated: New and Conventional Ways of Writing for the Screen. Australian Film Television & Radio School: Allen & Unwin
Dancyger, Ken. 1995. Alternative Scriptwriting/Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush. Boston: Focal Press
McKee, Robert. 1999. Story Substance, Structure and Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. London: Methuen
Seger, Linda. 1994. Making a Good Script Great. Hollywood, Calf.: Samuel French Trade.
1992. The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film. New York: Henry Holt & Co
Other Details
Levels:
Postgraduate
