Entry requirementsEntry Requirements Most applicants will have an undergraduate degree with First or Upper Second Class Honours (or the equivalent) in English or such related fields as History, Cultural Studies and Media Studies. Where a North American marking scheme is used, applicants should have a minimum grade point average (GPA) of 3.3. Promising applicants who do not meet the formal academic criteria but who possess relevant credentials and who can demonstrate their ability to produce written work at Master’s level will also be considered. Applicants may be invited to interview or asked to submit examples of written and/or creative work. We welcome applications from mature and nontraditional students.
Academic titleMA English Studies: English Literature
Course descriptionThe MA in English Literature invites students to reflect on some crucial questions. How have ideas about literature and literary value changed over time? What effects do innovations in printing and publishing have on writing? To what extent do political and social factors condition and define authorial identities and practices? The programme considers the relationship between literatures from a variety of historical periods. It is ideal both for those who intend to pursue doctoral research – particularly if your interests span traditional literary periods – and for those who wish to achieve a broad overview of Anglophone literary culture.
The MA in English Literature provides both structure and flexibility, combining a specially-designed core module with the opportunity to select further options from across the whole range of MA modules on offer in the Department of English.
Programme outline
The core module: The Production of Texts in Context, considers how texts have been produced,
disseminated, and received throughout history, as well as examining how this kind of historical enquiry might influence our own textual interpretations. Topics may include: the emergence of authorial identity in the Middle Ages; the reappearance of fictional narrative in Western Europe; the circulation and reception of information about news and current affairs in the medieval and early-modern periods; the relative longevity and popularity of different works and genres; manuscript circulation during the Restoration; the rise of the professional writer in the mid-eighteenth century; the influence of professional reviewers and criticism upon writing in the Romantic period; the emergence of ‘mass culture’ and its impact on literary production in the modern age; the influence of hypertext and the web on literary production. Students also take a non-assessed research methods module, Introduction to Research Resources.
Study options:
You will also choose three modules – one in the first semester, and two in the second – from across the range of MA modules offered by the Department of English, and write a dissertation.
Module options may include:
* Aestheticism and Fin de Siècle Literature
* The Business of Religion
* The Cultural Legacy of the Great War
* Freud and Proust
* The Harlem Renaissance
* Imagining the Modern Caribbean
* Metro-Intellectuals: Women Writing in the City, 1780–1824
* Modernism and After
* Modernism, Secularism and Religion
* Primitivism and Progress
* Private and Public Cultures in Renaissance England
* Reading Shakespeare Historically
* Renaissance in Context
* Rhetorical Cultures in the Eighteenth Century
* Romantic Manifestos
* Sociability: Literature and the City, 1660-1780
* Urban Culture and the Book: London, Publishing and Readers in the Sixteenth Century
* Writing the East End
Assessment
Coursework (67 per cent)
Assessment for each module is a 4,000-word essay.
Dissertation (33 per cent)
A dissertation of 12,000-15,000 words.