English Literature BA (Hons)

Introduction to Drama

introduces the work of, and critical debate about, a wide historical range of drama and dramatists writing in English, typically covering work from all or most of the following areas: the medieval, early modern, Restoration and Augustan, Romantic, Victorian, and twentieth and twenty-first century: post-medieval dramatists to be covered might include, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Behn, Gay, Shelley, Wilde, Shaw, Beckett, Kushner and Butterworth.

Introduction to Poetry

introduces a wide range of poems by poets writing in English from the early modern to the contemporary periods including some American poetry. You will develop your understanding of traditional major verse forms, modes of organisation and genres (e.g. blank verse, the couplet, the stanza, lyric, elegy, sonnet, epic, pastoral, ode, open form).

Introduction to the Novel

introduces ways of reading English novels and various contexts for studying them. You will be familiarised with strategies for engaging with fictional texts formally as well as historically, by situating the novels studied in their distinctive cultural environments while also being taught the ways in which novelistic form and technique have changed over time.

In recent years, optional modules have included: Romance and the Literature of ChivalryEpic and Literature of LegendAncient Worlds and English Literature.

Shakespeare

introduces a broad range of Shakespeare’s work, and enables you to analyse in detail a selection of works from different periods of Shakespeare’s oeuvre and in different genres. The module seeks to foster an awareness of the kinds of scholarly, critical and theatrical issues which Shakespeare’s work has generated from the seventeenth century to the present.

Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism

introduces the presuppositions and principles of literary criticism and issues of knowledge, value and ideology arising from the practice of reading. You will develop an independent critical sense in your own practice of reading, contextualised against the history of theory and criticism.

In recent years, optional modules have included: ChaucerOld EnglishOld NorseOld FrenchRenaissance LiteratureLiterature of the Modern PeriodAmerican PoetryPostcolonial and World LiteraturesModern PoetryContemporary US Fiction and the Question of GenreWriting Women: Gendering Literature, c.800-1600Hotel StoriesThe Brontës.

Dissertation

The final year includes a involving guided research on a self-formulated topic, author or genre. The dissertation is based upon the gathering and processing of relevant information and materials, and results in work of sustained argumentative and analytic power.

In recent years, optional modules have included: Restoration and 18th Century LiteratureOld EnglishOld FrenchAmerican FictionPost-War Fiction and PoetryLiterature, Cinema and NeuroscienceUS Cold War Literature and CulturePost-1945 Black British WritingLife Writing and Mental HealthCreative Writing Poetry / Prose FictionSexology and the Novel.