Dr Min Wild explores literature with Year 12’s at Queen Elizabeth’s School

DR Min Wild, from the University of Plymouth, visited Queen Elizabeth’s School in Crediton at the beginning of July to lead a session with Year 12 English Literature students, designed to help them respond to unseen texts and to discuss their coursework essays.

During the session Min explored a little known 17th Century metaphysical poem, The Definition of Love, by Andrew Marvell, that paraded itself as a love poem, but was actually, on other levels, deeply involved in a debate about class, scientific advances and the fraught politics of the time.

It was fascinating to watch her draw out the different interpretations from the students and then augment it with illuminating context that few of them had previously been aware of.

Min also helped the students explore their independent coursework topics, considering how political and historical contextual research was crucial to writing a really well-informed essay that kept the texts themselves at the heart of the essay, but allowed exploration of the writer’s intentions from the point of view of various influences.

She also discussed the possibility of writing through a particular literary theoretical “lens”, namely Marxism or Psychoanalyis.

Mrs Moran Mylett, QE English teacher, said: “We are really grateful to Min for another inspirational and exciting session. She did tell the students that studying Literature at university would make their brains hurt - however they did not seem to be suffering during her lecture, which, as well as being really interesting and useful, was also very good fun!”

Caroline Wilson and Margaret Moran Mylett

English Department