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Creative Writing after Modernism

When you'll study it
Semester 2
CATS points
15
ECTS points
7.5
Level
Level 5
Module lead
Kevin Brazil
Academic year
2026-27
Module overview Aims and Objectives Syllabus Learning and Teaching Assessment
Module overview Aims and Objectives Syllabus Learning and Teaching Assessment

Module overview

What happens when writing positions itself against communication or expression? How can the form and content of a literary text be determined by chance, constraint or the operations of the unconscious? Can a text ‘perform’ on the page? How might oral performance or digital inscription activate writing? How can literary form reflect developments in our understanding of cognition and perception? What happens if meaning is not the only measure of literary value? Where do the borders between genres break down? These questions have fascinated many modernist and postmodernist writers over the past hundred years. In this period, all forms of language art—including novels, poetry and theatre— have been marked by a consistent and thorough-going experimentalism. Poetic collage, stream of consciousness, conceptual writing, metafiction, concrete poetry, constructivist writing, performance writing, and other such strategies became practical investigations of the relations between language, signification, subjectivity and society. These innovations were often instigated, or influenced by, technological, scientific, economic and political change. The drive to develop radical modes of writing continues to provoke writers to experiment with how they conceive of, create and disseminate their writing. This module encourages students to explore—and, through creative practice, to extend—the implications of Creative Writing After Modernism.