Living on the Edge: Literature of the Western Fringes

What does it feel like to live on the edge, facing an expanse between you and the next place? Who has lived on the Western fringes of Britain and America? Who has named, formed, and been inspired by that land? Whose voices are silenced in the (re)making of a place? Shaping the landscape through the words we use or the features we build and imagine is as old as recorded time. In this course, we'll investigate how the land is conceived, defined, settled, and delimited through history and literature, with particular reference to Wales and California. We'll focus on specific elements in the landscape, Water, Hill, Tree, Stone, and Border, looking at a sequence of locations through historical, archaeological, placename, literary, and artistic analyses. Students will produce close readings of literary descriptions of landscape, and will read indigenous writers' work alongside those of settlers and colonisers. Among the authors studied will be John Muir, John Steinbeck, Beth Piatote, Linda Noel, Dylan Thomas, R. S. Thomas and Gwyneth Lewis.