Taught Elements

Course Outline :

Teaching in this course takes place in two terms of twelve weeks duration. The first term is called the MICHAELMAS TERM, the second, the HILARY TERM. In each of these terms, students will take a combination of required courses and their choice of option courses. In the third term, TRINITY EXAM TERM, students begin working on their dissertations.

Required Courses

Perspectives in Irish Writing (20 ECTS)

This is a weekly series of lectures and seminars (two hours per week) on the history and contexts of Irish Writing from the sixteenth century to the present day. This course is given by various lecturers from the School of English.

Single Major Authors (20 ECTS)

This course, taught in a weekly two-hour seminar, covers the work of four major individual authors from the Irish literary tradition. In Michaelmas term we study Swift and Yeats, and in Hilary term, Joyce and Beckett, as below:

Michaelmas Term :

Weeks 1 - 6 Swift (Prof Ian Campbell Ross)

Week 7 Study Week

Weeks 8 - 12 Yeats (Prof Eve Patten)

Hilary Term:

Weeks 1 - 6 Joyce (Prof Samuel Slote)

Week 7 Study Week

Weeks 8 - 12 Beckett (Prof Nicholas Grene)

Graduate Research Methods Course (5 ECTS)

This is a series of two-hour weekly seminars, taught in Michaelmas Term, and shared with students on the M.Phil. in Popular Literature, M.Phil. in Literature of the Americas and M.Litt. and PhD students in the School of English. The course introduces students to the research resources of the Library and provides for the development of research skills and techniques.

Option Courses

Students are required to select one of the options offered in Michaelmas Term and one of those offered in Hilary Term. Please inform the Course Administrator of your choice of Michaelmas Term option by the end of the second week, your choice of Hilary Term option by the end of Michaelmas Term: please note the earlier deadline if you wish to apply for the Creative Writing workshop. (Students are permitted to audit the options in which they have not enrolled with the exception of Option 5).

Michaelmas Term:

1. The Poet and Poetry: Yeats, MacNeice and Heaney (10 ECTS)
This is taught by Prof Terence Brown in a weekly 2-hour seminar

2. Ireland on Stage (10 ECTS)
This is taught by Prof Nicholas Grene in a weekly 2-hour seminar

Hilary Term :

3. Irish Poetry 1935-2005 (10 ECTS)
This is taught by Prof Gerald Dawe in a weekly 2-hour seminar

4. Irish Fiction After Joyce (10 ECTS)
This is taught by Prof Eve Patten in a weekly 2-hour seminar

5. Creative Writing (10 ECTS)
This is taught by the Writer Fellow in a weekly 2-hour workshop, open only to students selected upon presentation of a portfolio of recent creative work. Portfolios should be presented to the Course Administrator by 9 December 2011.

The Practice of Writing

This is a series of weekly talks for the M.Phil. in Creative Writing during which writers from Trinity and outside College, working in Irish as well as English, speak about their own experience of the practice of writing. It is open to M. Phil. in Irish Writing students on a voluntary basis.

Trinity Term:

Students begin working on their dissertations.