English Literature

Optional modules may include:

Memory and Trauma in Contemporary Literature

The fictional narratives of Greco-Roman antiquity play a foundational role in the Western literary tradition. In this module students will encounter the extant masterworks of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Longus, Heliodorus, and Apuleius - authors once widely read in the ancient world - as well as two Jewish and Christian examples: Joseph and Aseneth and the Acts of Paul and Thecla. The ancient novels, the earliest examples of the genre, are a ripe literary field to explore the construction of gender, human sexualities, the relation of lovers to family and society, and the intersection of eroticism with ancient religious sensibilities.

30 credits

Making a Scene: Radical American Poetries of the 20th Century

In “Making a Scene: Radical American Poetries of the 20th Century” you will explore a pivotal moment in the history of challenging, experimental, innovative American poetics. Your focus will be upon a group of poets working with—and sometimes against—one another in a recognised historical-literary network. In “Making a Scene” you will encounter, reflect upon and critique writers who established significant literary scenes and who, consequently, changed the cultures in which they operated.

30 credits

Contemporary Cinemas

This module provides the opportunity for both in-depth and wide-ranging analysis of international cinematic texts drawn from the contemporary period

30 credits

American Nightmares: Socio-political Discourses in American Gothic Literature

Have you ever wondered why there are so many haunted 'Indian' burial grounds in Stephen King's stories or why none of Poe's heroines ever survive? Have you been struck by how often American socio-political discourse sound like Gothic fictions? The Gothic is a pervasive mode in America, one which expresses and negotiates a variety of social anxieties such as racial identity, patriarchy and the rise of feminism, and class antagonism. This course will examine a variety of Gothic texts from the 1800s onward to consider how they express and negotiate various socio-political anxieties and shifts. We will also contextualize the narratives by reviewing the relevant socio-political ideologies and debates contemporary to the texts. In doing so, the course will clarify the numerous chasms between the American ideal and the brutal American reality.

30 credits

Core module:

Renaissance Transformations

This module approaches Renaissance literature through the theme of transformation. It will look at examples of transformation in Renaissance writing, such as changing sex, changing religion, and changes between the human and the animal. It will also consider the changes that Renaissance writers wrought upon existing literary traditions such as the classical, the biblical and the medieval.

30 credits

Medieval Romance

The romance was undoubtedly one of the most popular genres of medieval literature, and one that has had an enduring legacy, from Tolkien to Monty Python to Game of Thrones. These texts open up unique insights into medieval culture, by presenting us with multifaceted roles for women, depicting contact between the Christian and Muslim worlds, and portraying flawed heroes. They are also artefacts that quintessentially cross boundaries: from French into English, from England to the Middle East or ancient Athens, from the natural into the magical, from history into the fantastical, from text into dramatic performance or the fine arts. This module will introduce you to a wide array of primary sources, and challenge you to look beyond received notions of the Middle Ages.

30 credits

Optional modules may include:

Directed Reading (Early Modern Literature)

Students will interrogate a wide variety of texts written in English in the early modern period in order to develop their understanding of the major literary genres of the period, and to broaden their knowledge of the field. The module will draw on both 'canonical' and 'non-canonical material' and will examine issues such as:
* the interaction between literature and the social, political, religious and intellectual cultures which produced it;
* how texts circulated, and the audiences they address;
* how texts engage with their literary tradition;
* how these texts have been treated, and constructed, within the literary history and historiography.

15 credits

Early Modern Books

Whatever they may do, authors do not write books. Books are not written at all. They are manufactured by scribes and other artisans, by mechanics and engineers, and by printing presses and other machines (Roger E. Stodhard). This module examines the processes which created the works that early modern audiences experienced, in manuscript and print, or as performance. Topics covered on the module include the production, licensing, dissemination, reception, and censorship of literary works. Knowledge of these processes, and the practical constraints and contingencies attendant on them, enriches our appreciation of how early moderns perceived the books they read/owned and the performances they witnessed, and gives insight into the often collaborative and contested nature of 'authorship'. The module will also consider the role of the modern scholarly editor.

15 credits

Pastoral Literature

Pastoral literature is writing that focuses on the lives of shepherds and other rural workers, or that concerns itself with nature more generally. Over the millennia, writers have used the pastoral mode as a means of addressing a wide variety of topics: innocence versus experience, nature versus art, simplicity versus sophistication, not to mention the religious and political problems of their times. This online module focuses on the pastoral mode as it was used and understood during the Renaissance, whether in poetry, prose or drama, but also permits students to apply its principles to writing from other periods.

30 credits

Shakespeare and Early Women Dramatists

This module will deal with the literary dialogue that developed as Shakespeare pondered drama written by women (such as the Countess of Pembroke) and women dramatists (such as Margaret Cavendish) transformed what they found in Shakespeare's plays. Not surprisingly, women dramatists (such as Elizabeth Cary) sometimes deal with topics that are not explicitly discussed by Shakespeare, as with inability of wives to divorce their husbands and what grounds there might be for divorce. The module will be very useful for and interesting to secondary and post-16 English teachers, particularly those whose degrees are not recent.

30 credits

Optional modules may include:

Mid-Century Modernism

The module will introduce students to current research and scholarship relating to literature of the 'long modern' period (1930 to 1975), introducing them to the history and contemporary state of criticism and theory in relation to mid twentieth-century cultural production. Students will receive a thorough grounding in research methods specific to the period. This is a period of unprecedented violence and transformation, from the momentous impact of totalitarian systems, the rise and impact of the Second World War on global culture, host to the worst events the world has ever experienced with the Holocaust and Bomb, the age of rapid and shifting groups and movements, existentialism through abstract expressionism to confessional, innovative and pop art styles. It is also an era of very deep reflection on the idea of the relations between systems of thought across disciplines. The module will chart that reflection as well as a forum for thinking about art's power in a world under new techno-political compulsions, be they nuclear-apocalyptic, Cold War-propagandized, or transnational, neo-imperial, superpowered or postcolonial.

30 credits

Making a Scene: Radical American Poetries of the 20th Century

In “Making a Scene: Radical American Poetries of the 20th Century” you will explore a pivotal moment in the history of challenging, experimental, innovative American poetics. Your focus will be upon a group of poets working with—and sometimes against—one another in a recognised historical-literary network. In “Making a Scene” you will encounter, reflect upon and critique writers who established significant literary scenes and who, consequently, changed the cultures in which they operated.

30 credits

American Nightmares: Socio-political Discourses in American Gothic Literature

Have you ever wondered why there are so many haunted 'Indian' burial grounds in Stephen King's stories or why none of Poe's heroines ever survive? Have you been struck by how often American socio-political discourse sound like Gothic fictions? The Gothic is a pervasive mode in America, one which expresses and negotiates a variety of social anxieties such as racial identity, patriarchy and the rise of feminism, and class antagonism. This course will examine a variety of Gothic texts from the 1800s onward to consider how they express and negotiate various socio-political anxieties and shifts. We will also contextualize the narratives by reviewing the relevant socio-political ideologies and debates contemporary to the texts. In doing so, the course will clarify the numerous chasms between the American ideal and the brutal American reality.

30 credits

Memory and Trauma in Contemporary Literature

The fictional narratives of Greco-Roman antiquity play a foundational role in the Western literary tradition. In this module students will encounter the extant masterworks of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Longus, Heliodorus, and Apuleius - authors once widely read in the ancient world - as well as two Jewish and Christian examples: Joseph and Aseneth and the Acts of Paul and Thecla. The ancient novels, the earliest examples of the genre, are a ripe literary field to explore the construction of gender, human sexualities, the relation of lovers to family and society, and the intersection of eroticism with ancient religious sensibilities.

30 credits

Optional modules may include:

Contemporary Cinemas

This module provides the opportunity for both in-depth and wide-ranging analysis of international cinematic texts drawn from the contemporary period

30 credits

Post-1945 British Drama, Film and Television

This module provides the opportunity for parallel study of the British drama, cinema and television of the post-war period. This era saw the emergence of influential styles, prominent figures and landmark texts in all three artistic forms: e.g. the plays of John Osbourne (Look Back in Anger), television drama (Cathy Come Home) and key British films, such as Ealing comedies (The Man in the White Suit), retrospective war films (The Cruel Sea) and social problem films (Sapphire). The module will explore the evolving post-war cultural landscape to contextualise and critically appraise examples from these interrelated literary, performative and representational media.

30 credits

Optional modules may include:

Style in Literature and Discourse - Tools and Techniques

This module explores various approaches to the investigation of style, making reference both to literary texts and to other kinds of discourse. It introduces a range of tools that we can use to analyse style in a detailed and systematic way. These include techniques for the investigation of grammar, linguistic patterning, point of view, speech and thought representation, modality, and metaphor. In this sense, the module provides a foundational account of stylistic analysis suitable for those who have not experienced it before. However, the module extends its exploration of stylistics further than is usual in undergraduate modules, engaging with the theory that lies behind the practical tools that we are covering as well as extending, problematizing, and complicating our view of what the term 'style' actually means. In this sense, the module will also be suitable for students who have some experience of studying stylistics at undergraduate level and who now wish to develop their knowledge of the field. By the end of the module, students should be able to produce sophisticated stylistic analyses of particular pieces of text and discourse while also showing a critical awareness of the intellectual context of their work and the theoretical ideas underpinning it.

30 credits

Style in Literature and Discourse - Approaches to Research

This module considers what is involved in developing a research project in the field of stylistics. Rather than concentrating on the specific analytical tools that are typically used to explore the style of texts and discourse, it focuses on the larger questions that researchers ask about matters of style and the methods that they use to answer those questions. The module will include discussion of research in areas such as Corpus Stylistics, Cognitive Stylistics, Historical Stylistics, Multimodal Stylistics, Eco-Stylistics and the Stylistics of Drama. In each case we shall look at examples of research in the area, consider what kinds of research questions shape it, examine the methods devised to answer those questions, and explore the ways in which new research establishes its relationship with what is happening more broadly in the field. The module will offer a thorough account of both the practice and theory of stylistic research, the assessment requiring that students develop plans for research projects in two different areas of the field and carry out a small-scale pilot study for each.

30 credits

Romantic Gothic

Romantic Gothic considers the various manifestations of the Gothic mode, from the middle of the eighteenth century towards the end of the Romantic period in 1830. Looking at how the Gothic became such an enduring and powerful mode of expression in literature, the module will look at Gothic poetry, Gothic novels, Gothic bluebooks, and accounts of supernatural occurrences in the popular magazines and newspapers of the age. By the end of the module, you will have a good knowledge of the rise of the Gothic during the eighteenth century and Romantic periods, and will have examined some of the most popular Gothic works of the age alongside less canonical works.

30 credits

Contemporary Cinemas

This module provides the opportunity for both in-depth and wide-ranging analysis of international cinematic texts drawn from the contemporary period

30 credits

Literary Language (History and Culture)

This module focuses upon the investigation of literary language with reference to its historical and cultural contexts. It provides opportunities to explore the ways in which literary style was conceptualised in earlier periods of history (in Renaissance rhetoric, for example) and to consider contemporary debates about the politics of literary language (among postcolonial writers, for example). Throughout the module, we shall focus on the relationship between ideas about literary style, as they are expressed in critical, theoretical, or pedagogical texts, and literary practice as it is revealed through the stylistic analysis of prose, poetry, and drama.

30 credits

Literature and the Mind

This module explores the relationship between literature and the human mind, drawing on a range of academic disciplines; from literary theory to cognitive psychology, from literary linguistics to philosophy. The module considers how recent advances in the study of human cognition can enhance our understanding of the reading experience. Students will be introduced to a range of concepts from cutting-edge cognitive research and will be encouraged to investigate the ways in which this body of knowledge can be used as a means of exploring literature. We will examine, for instance, the role of cultural and personal knowledge in the reading process, the conceptual structure of metaphor, how texts direct readerly attention and the readerly experience of literary worlds.

30 credits

Literature and Language in the Workplace

This, the core module for the MA in English Studies, will combine an introduction to electronic, microfilm, and paper tools with an in-depth exposure to the way in which close reading can be aided by consideration of reception history, literary theory, historical backgrounds, and stage history. Students will learn by way of and demonstrate skills in online discussions. Students who complete this module will have developed skills that are transferable to various employment situations, especially publishing. The module will be very useful for and interesting to secondary and post-16 English teachers, particularly those whose degrees are not recent.

15 credits

Work Placement with Research Project

This module provides students with the experience of working with an external organisation (for example, a library, gallery, theatre, school) and undertaking a short research project related to that organisation. Students will choose a placement from those offered at the start of the academic year and will work on a defined project agreed between the academic co-ordinator and the partner institution. Alongside this project, students will undertake a programme of related reading and research directed by the academic co-ordinator. The module has three aims: (1) to enable students to develop their discipline-specific vocational skills (2) to enable students to gain practical research skills through undertaking research related to their project (3) to promote reflection on the relationship between academic research and external organisations.

30 credits

With a focus on literature from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, optional modules may include:

Romantic Gothic

Romantic Gothic considers the various manifestations of the Gothic mode, from the middle of the eighteenth century towards the end of the Romantic period in 1830. Looking at how the Gothic became such an enduring and powerful mode of expression in literature, the module will look at Gothic poetry, Gothic novels, Gothic bluebooks, and accounts of supernatural occurrences in the popular magazines and newspapers of the age. By the end of the module, you will have a good knowledge of the rise of the Gothic during the eighteenth century and Romantic periods, and will have examined some of the most popular Gothic works of the age alongside less canonical works.

30 credits

Murderers and Degenerates: Contextualising the fin de siècle Gothic

The module explores three related case histories which help to establish how the literary Gothic shaped particular fin de siècle anxieties. To that end the module examines accounts of Joseph Merrick (aka The Elephant Man), newspaper reports of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and the trials of Oscar Wilde. It is by exploring how the Gothic infiltrated medical, criminological, and legal discourses that we can see how a narrative which centred on the pathologisation of masculinity was elaborated at the time. These case histories will be read alongside Jekyll and Hyde (1886) and Dracula (1897) as two of the key literary texts which also examine medicine, the law, and crucially the urban and gender contexts which in turn shape the three case histories.

30 credits

Love and the Lyric

This module will be taught via ten weekly seminars.1.Seminars will address aims A-F and outcomes A-F by providing a supportive, structured environment within which students can interrogate and apply their understanding of the lyric poetry. Students will be set preparatory reading in advance and will be expected to share their knowledge of sources, interpretative methods, historical/conceptual issues, debate relevant topics and listen and respond to the views of others. Seminars will be organised around the work of a particular poet. The final seminar will be devoted to student presentations. (This session is addressed directly to aims E-F, and outcomes E-F.)

30 credits

Humans, Animals, Monsters and Machines: From Gulliver's Travels to King Kong

This module examines imaginings of the 'human' in relation to machines and animals (and those monsters that are neither one thing nor the other) from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. We will focus mainly on fiction, its cultural contexts and on readings from the period's key thinkers of human being, alongside more recent theories of humans, posthumans and animals. The aim is to encourage critical engagement with this key issue and to facilitate a deeper appreciation of the period's literature, culture and politics, including the relationship of discourses of technology and species to discourses of class, gender and race.

30 credits

American Nightmares: Socio-political Discourses in American Gothic Literature

Have you ever wondered why there are so many haunted 'Indian' burial grounds in Stephen King's stories or why none of Poe's heroines ever survive? Have you been struck by how often American socio-political discourse sound like Gothic fictions? The Gothic is a pervasive mode in America, one which expresses and negotiates a variety of social anxieties such as racial identity, patriarchy and the rise of feminism, and class antagonism. This course will examine a variety of Gothic texts from the 1800s onward to consider how they express and negotiate various socio-political anxieties and shifts. We will also contextualize the narratives by reviewing the relevant socio-political ideologies and debates contemporary to the texts. In doing so, the course will clarify the numerous chasms between the American ideal and the brutal American reality.

30 credits

Modules may include:

Romantic Gothic

Romantic Gothic considers the various manifestations of the Gothic mode, from the middle of the eighteenth century towards the end of the Romantic period in 1830. Looking at how the Gothic became such an enduring and powerful mode of expression in literature, the module will look at Gothic poetry, Gothic novels, Gothic bluebooks, and accounts of supernatural occurrences in the popular magazines and newspapers of the age. By the end of the module, you will have a good knowledge of the rise of the Gothic during the eighteenth century and Romantic periods, and will have examined some of the most popular Gothic works of the age alongside less canonical works.

30 credits

Confession

Western man has become a confessing animal, or so Michel Foucault contended. This module interrogates confessional acts in literature and culture, beginning with St Augustine's Confessions (often considered the first autobiography in the Western tradition) and focusing in particular upon eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forms. Students will explore confession across a range of contexts: sacred and secular law, medicine, self-improvement, scandal and sensation. A variety of genres will be considered, from autobiography to fiction, prison writing to medical case studies, periodical print to the confession 'album'. Authors will include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas De Quincey, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Oscar Wilde.

30 credits

Love and the Lyric

This module will be taught via ten weekly seminars.1.Seminars will address aims A-F and outcomes A-F by providing a supportive, structured environment within which students can interrogate and apply their understanding of the lyric poetry. Students will be set preparatory reading in advance and will be expected to share their knowledge of sources, interpretative methods, historical/conceptual issues, debate relevant topics and listen and respond to the views of others. Seminars will be organised around the work of a particular poet. The final seminar will be devoted to student presentations. (This session is addressed directly to aims E-F, and outcomes E-F.)

30 credits

Murderers and Degenerates: Contextualising the fin de siècle Gothic

The module explores three related case histories which help to establish how the literary Gothic shaped particular fin de siècle anxieties. To that end the module examines accounts of Joseph Merrick (aka The Elephant Man), newspaper reports of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and the trials of Oscar Wilde. It is by exploring how the Gothic infiltrated medical, criminological, and legal discourses that we can see how a narrative which centred on the pathologisation of masculinity was elaborated at the time. These case histories will be read alongside Jekyll and Hyde (1886) and Dracula (1897) as two of the key literary texts which also examine medicine, the law, and crucially the urban and gender contexts which in turn shape the three case histories.

30 credits