English Literature pathway
Year 2 (national level 5):
Core modules (40 credits)
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Questioning Literature: History and Theory (20 credits)
Explore the historical development of approaches to literature from the ancients to the 20th century. Familiarise yourself with the major movements in English literary history and literary thought using critical extracts from each period. Examine central questions in relation to criticism, covering issues such as the authority given to literary critics’ judgements, valid critical interpretations, and classifying particular literary approaches.
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Refocusing Literature: Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism (20 credits)
Examine the major theoretical approaches to literary criticism emerging from the beginning of the 20th century. Study different approaches, for example structuralism or Marxism, and apply them to a short literary text. Develop a palette of critical and theoretical perspectives and concepts that can be applied to fiction, poetry, or drama.
English Literature pathway modules (40 credits). Choose two:
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Literature from the Inferno to Paradise: The Renaissance (20 credits)
Discover the emergence of literature from the medieval period into the renaissance. Learn how mankind evolved from a belief in the great chain of being and the divine right of kings into a humanistic system of beliefs where individuals were respected for the first time. Explore the works of the great writers of the period from Dante, Spenser, and Marlowe to Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton.
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Literature of the Victorian Age (20 credits)
Explore the most famous and adapted pieces of writing that derive from the Victorian Age. Study how topics of gender, class, art, and religion feature in the poems of Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett, and Emily Dickinson and in the fiction of George Eliot and drama of Henrik Ibsen.
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Exploring the City and the World in Eighteenth Century Literature (20 credits)
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Romanticism (20 credits)
In addition, students on all pathways will take an additional 40 credits from a combination of any core or designated modules above, or from our range of optional modules.
Example optional modules:
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X-Raying Narrative Fiction (20 credits)
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The Writing of American Freedom and Slavery (20 credits)
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Under the Red, White and Blue: American Literature, 1920-2020 (20 credits)
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Genres of Poetry (20 credits)
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Reading and Writing the Short Story (20 credits)
Year 3 (national level 6):
Choose four modules from the list below.
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Monster, Madness and Murder: Gothic Literature (20 credits)
Explore modern Gothic fiction from both literary and theoretical perspectives, focusing on a series of Gothic monsters. Delve into themes and issues in modern Gothic fiction such as vampires, serial killers, ghosts, terrorists, werewolves, dark fairies, witches, and zombies. Gain the ability to employ a range of critical approaches for analysing a range of Gothic texts.
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‘The Play’s the Thing’: Shakespeare’s Dramatic Genres (20 credits)
Gain an introduction to a range of Shakespearean plays, covering the main genres of comedy, tragedy, history, romance, and problem plays. Learn how to critically reflect on how knowledge in the discipline is produced through an appreciation of critical concepts and methodologies, in application, as well as debates around the composition of the subject.
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Troubles: 100 Years of Irish Poetry 1916-2016 (20 credits)
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Modern Fiction: Gender, Sexuality and Experimentation (20 credits)
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Chaucer’s Genres: The Canterbury Tales (20 credits)
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The Art of the US Story 1960-2016 (20 credits)
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Women’s Autobiography (20 credits)
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Jane Austen: Text, Context, and Adaptation (20 credits)
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Representations of Totalitarianism and the Holocaust (20 credits)
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World Englishes in Fiction (20 credits)
