Free courses on English literature
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Start writing fiction: characters and stories
Learn more to access more details of Start writing fiction: characters and storiesStart writing fiction is a free course that helps you to get started with your own fiction writing, focusing on the central skill of creating characters.
Level: 1 Introductory
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Exploring Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts
Learn more to access more details of Exploring Virginia Woolf’s Between the ActsThis free course introduces Virginia Woolf’s last novel, Between the Acts (1941), with the aim of understanding how she writes about time, memory, and ideas about identity. It also considers why Woolf’s fiction is often considered difficult. Selected extracts from her essays on writing help to clarify some of these perceived difficulties, ...
Level: 2 Intermediate
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Approaching literature: reading Great Expectations
Learn more to access more details of Approaching literature: reading Great ExpectationsThis free course, Approaching literature: reading Great Expectations, considers some of the different ways of reading Great Expectations, based on the type of genre the book belongs to. This is one of the most familiar and fundamental ways of approaching literary texts. The novel broadens the scope of study of a realist novel, in both literary ...
Level: 2 Intermediate
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Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
Learn more to access more details of Christopher Marlowe, Doctor FaustusWhat does Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus tell us about the author and the time at which the play was written? This free course, Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, will help you to discover the intricacies of the play and recognise how a knowledge of the historical and political background of the time can lead to a very different ...
Level: 2 Intermediate
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John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
Learn more to access more details of John Webster, The Duchess of MalfiThis free course, John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, concentrates on Acts 1 and 2 of John Webster's Renaissance tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi. It focuses on the representation of marriage for love and the social conflicts to which it gives rise. The course is designed to hone your skills of textual analysis.
Level: 2 Intermediate
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The poetry of Sorley MacLean
Learn more to access more details of The poetry of Sorley MacLeanSorley MacLean (1911-1996) is regarded as one of the greatest Scottish poets of the twentieth century. This free course, The poetry of Sorley MacLean, will introduce you to his poetry and give you an insight into the cultural, historical and political contexts that inform his work. MacLean wrote in Gaelic and the importance of the language to ...
Level: 3 Advanced
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Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners
Learn more to access more details of Sam Selvon, The Lonely LondonersThis free course concentrates on Sam Selvon's twentieth-century novel, The Lonely Londoners. It considers the depiction of migration in the text as well as Selvon's treatment of memory as a vital part of the migrant's experience.
Level: 2 Intermediate
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Exploring books for children: words and pictures
Learn more to access more details of Exploring books for children: words and picturesMany people have fond memories of the stories they encountered in childhood, perhaps especially of those wonderful picture books and illustrated tales which fired our young imaginations and transported us to magical worlds. To an adult’s eye, some picture books may seem remarkably simple, even oversimplified. However, in this free course, ...
Level: 2 Intermediate
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Exploring Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd
Learn more to access more details of Exploring Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding CrowdThis free course, Exploring Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, is designed to tell you something about Hardy's background, and to introduce you to the pleasures of reading a nineteenth-century novel. Why do we believe in fictional characters and care about what happens to them? You will discover some of the techniques that Hardy ...
Level: 2 Intermediate
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