Literature: The Literature of Uplift

How does literature inspire? How do writers encourage their readers or audience to hope without falling into the facile or sentimental? In this course, we will be reflecting on texts which raise the spirits, ground us in reality and inspire us to go forward. We will be discussing life stories through autobiography and biography in extracts from Amy Liptrot’s moving 2015 account of personal recovery 'The Outrun', and the gloriously celebratory 2018 collection 'Angels of the North' by Moira Kilkenny and Joyce Quin. Poetry and song will also be part of the course, including writers such as U.A. Fanthorpe and James Weldon Johnson, Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson. Practical sources of hope will be provided in the non-fiction texts 'Regeneration' by Andrew Painting, and 'Hope Matters' by Elin Kelsey: both offer a fact-based optimism about the natural world, and how we can sustain it. There is laughter and kindness presented in works as diverse as Dickens’ 'Nicholas Nickleby' and George Mahood’s wild adventure seeking the good in others, 'Free Country'. Finally, the role of children and the hope they can give us will be analysed in our set text for study, David Almond’s strange and beautiful work for all ages, 'Skellig'.