-
8/10/2019 Therapy Through Literature MA Module
1/4
CENTRE FOR RESEARCH INTO READING,
LITERATURE AND SOCIETY (CRILS)UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL
Bibliotherapy:
Therapy through Literature
Afirst step towards a two-year Part Time MA in
Reading For Life
Commencing in LONDON from
January 2015
-
8/10/2019 Therapy Through Literature MA Module
2/4
FIRST MODULE:
Bibliotherapy: Therapy through Literature
If literature takes life as its subject-matter, what practical
relation do books have to the
lives of those who read them? What help does reading really
offer to people?
These are the questions raised by what is now often called
Bibliotherapy: the attempt to
use books in the effort towards personal development and
discovery. They are also the
questions to be investigated in Therapy through Literature, a
stand-alone module which can
also become part of a Masters degree in Reading for Life,
inviting open-minded investigation
into the therapeutic role of reading in relation to health - in
the broadest sense of that
word.
Therapy through Literaturetakes as its subject what the
psychologist William James described
as the predicament of twice-born souls those who have to
readjust to experience,
following trauma. It looks at crucial versions of
life-reappraisal: prose narratives of
breakdown and second chance from Charles Dickens to Oliver
Sacks; the expressive
power of poetry as a form of second life, including Elizabethan
sonnet writers, Wordsworth
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This is an intensive but
personally moving reading course
designed to show the value of literary thinking through the
close exploration of literary
language across the ages, in the search for human meaning. There
are opportunities for
informal writing-practice, with feedback, allowing participants
to develop their personal
thinking beyond merely conventional essay-exercises.
The Masters degree in Reading for Life, the first of its kind in
the country, is not a course
which concentrates upon narrowly targeted self-help books how to
overcome
depression; how to survive divorce or bereavement or redundancy.
It is concerned, instead,
with the wider and deeper ways in which serious creative
literature finds people,
emotionally and imaginatively, by offering living models and
visions of human troubles and
human possibilities. This course over two years, part-time -
offers books of all kinds
novels, poetry, drama, essays in philosophy and theology and
books from all periods
from Shakespeare to the present: you will be helped to develop
the ability, the confidence
and the enthusiasm to use all literature as a form of personal
time-travel and meditation.
You will also learn how, in turn, you may re-create this process
for others, through the
formation of equivalent reading-groups based on the innovative
and successful shared read-aloud project run in various locations
across the country (schools, hostels for homeless
people, community libraries, day centres for the elderly,
rehabilitation and drop-in centres,
prisons) by the award-winning charity, The Reader
(www.thereader.org.uk).
-
8/10/2019 Therapy Through Literature MA Module
3/4
Module Details:
Cost: 750 per module (+50 for accreditation); 30 credits for
6,000 word final essay, plus
informal formative writing in practice and preparation
Contact: Professor Philip Davis, Centre for Research into
Reading, Literature and Society
(CRILS), University of Liverpool: [email protected]
From January 2015 (subject to final formal approval), 12
two-hour seminars on
Wednesdaysat either 2.00-4.00 or 5.00-7.00 at the University of
Liverpool in London,
33 Finsbury Square, London EC2A 1AG
-
8/10/2019 Therapy Through Literature MA Module
4/4
Of particular interest to:
All those seeking personal development through intense and close
involvement with
serious literature across the ages
Those seeking to develop and enhance careers in areas of
reader-development (e.g. in
libraries, prisons, reader social-outreach programmes in local
and often hard-to-
reach communities, in schools and with looked-after
children)
Carers who may want to develop reading-groups within health
facilities (dementia
homes, rehabilitation centres, prisons, mental health
reading-groups within facilities or
drop-in centres)
People with interests in the area of so-called bibliotherapy who
are willing to
challenge and investigate that term through careful close
reading of serious literature
What our students say:
The most powerful feeling I had, was that I was in an atmosphere
where I could be
honest. I loved the notion that what was required was to be what
we really all are
struggling thinkers. And that it was fine for the feeling to
come first, and then to
work things out from there.
We were encouraged to believe in our own response in its
validity, but also in its
leading to something deeper. Not to be satisfied with surface,
but to give time and
patience to the small things, the difficult things : Difficulty
will yield to attention
according to one tutor, and thats something I shall not
forget.
This course has been one of the most important things that I
have done, and the
most demanding. Both of these things - the demand, the
importance - are linked.
I did not enjoy my undergraduate degree at all and left
university in 2008 feeling
disconnected from literature, the university and the majority of
the people Id met
along the way. This course has been the antidote.
It's like it's the only real education I've ever had.
It gave me an understanding of the importance of believing in
perhaps as yet
unactualised ideas. It's such a personal course, where you must
bring so much ofyourself.
