Course description
BA English
Programme
First Year
You will study a range of subjects, including A Literary Genre: The Novel, Approaches to Literature (with its integrated Study Skills Workshops), the History of the English Language (including issues about contemporary society and language use), and Renaissance Drama: Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (with its emphasis on text, film and performance). You will also study a Supplementary Subject, selected from a range including American Literature, Italian, History, Computer Studies, History of Art, and Film Studies.
Second Year
You will begin work on your finals papers with courses in The Study of Language (Old English), with its focus on the earliest English literary corpus; Chaucer (including The Canterbury Tales), and Renaissance Poetry (with classics such as Paradise Lost, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets). You will also study Medieval Literature, Critical Theory and From Satire to Sensibility: Literature 1660-1789. These courses provide a solid foundation for your own programme of study, and the core modules, in the third year.
Third Year
You will study three major literary periods: Romantic to Victorian: 1789-1870 (including the Romantics, and Victorian authors such as Dickens), Victorian to Modern: 1870-1945 (including Hardy, and Modernism) and Postwar to Postmodern: 1945-Present Day. You will choose two Special Subjects selected from a wide range on offer, such as Jane Austen and George Eliot, Women in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Contemporary North American Texts, Writing India, 1900-Present Day, Early Drama, Late Victorian Gothic, and Literature and the North of England. You will also undertake a Dissertation with individual supervision, which can focus on any literary or language topic that interests you, whether that might be monsters in Medieval Literature, the use of bad language, Revenge Tragedy, Joe Orton’s Drama, or American Women Writers.