11 May 2026
Although I haven’t technically finished studying A335, my registration for A893 MA English literature part 1 has been confirmed. I also guess I’ve started, since I spent a bit of yesterday downloasding some materials onto my Kindle. If I can’t get much reading done over the summer, I do fear that I might get behind. I’m also mindful that A893 is a beast of a module, weighing in at 90 academic credits; the largest OU module I’ve ever studied.
Here’s what I’ve learnt so far:
- There are three TMAs, and an end of module assessment. The TMAs (in terms of word count) look to be longer than those that I did for the undergraduate module.
- The module has a number of themes that you can pick from. I’m not quite sure exactly what these are yet, or the differences between them – that is something I need to figure out.
- The module has a number of ‘reader’ documents which relate to different bits of the module. They contain a whole bunch of reference which can be used to guide your independent study.
- I need to buy the Norton Critical Edition of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, since it contains a number of critical essays which relate to theories about literary criticism that we may need to use.
19 May 2026
I’m about a third of the way through Heart of Darkness, and I’ve ordered the Norton Critical Edition. Over the last couple of days, I’ve prepped an annotated reading list to get my head around what I might be letting myself in for.
I’ve got a lot of figuring out to do.