Course description
The English MA at Bangor is distinctive in that it gives students a free choice of topics, within the limits of the supervision available in the School. It aims to help students develop their intellectual interests, while learning the disciplines involved in advanced literary-critical research. A significant proportion of the course is delivered through weekly one-to-one supervisions. Students applying for it should have a good idea of a period, topic, or author(s) they would like to study, though the department staff will help them to clarify and refine their ideas both before and after applying.
Course Structure
In Part One of the MA students develop skills and acquire subject knowledge relevant to Part Two, a 20,000 word dissertation. The Diploma, which consists of Part One of the MA programme, aims to develop learner autonomy to the point where the student is capable of beginning a scholarly dissertation at MA level.
Part One
* Introduction to Literary Theory
* Open Essay Module I
* Scholarly Writing and Documentation
* Research Skills
* Special Subject or Open Essay Module II
* Open Essay Module II
* Oral Presentation
* Dissertation Proposal
Part Two
* Dissertation
Module Details
Introduction to Literary Theory
This module aims:
1. to introduce students to key ideas in modern literary theory.
2. to introduce students to key texts in modern literary theory.
3. to enable students to read pieces of literary criticism analytically, paying particular attention to the theoretical assumptions and axioms underlying them.
4. to encourage students to reflect on the assumptions underlying their own critical practices.
Open Essay Module I
This module aims:
1. to help students develop their autonomy as learners, through guidance from an experienced researcher.
2. to help students gather knowledge of the current state of scholarship in a given field of literary research.
3. to help students structure a complex argument in secondary form.
4. to help students employ a mixture of primary and secondary evidence in an essay.
5. to help students learn to frame working hypotheses, to evaluate them in the light of counter-arguments and counter-evidence, and to revise them. In doing this, they relate abstract principles and concepts to particular literary texts.
6. to help students design a small-scale programme of literary research.
Scholarly Writing and Documentation
This module introduces students to key skills required by all academic writers in the humanities: writing persuasively and unambiguously, and employing a proper system of referencing. It also shows students how to proof-read literary critical essays, and how to employ a recognised system for annotations.
Research Skills
This module aims to introduce students to a range of research methodologies, emphasising the processes involved, and providing information about relevant resources in each area.
Open Essay Module II
This module builds on the student’s first semester experience of Open Essay I.
Oral Presentation
This module aims:
1. to develop students’ skills in making a formal oral presentation to an academic audience.
2. to develop students’ skills in fielding questions.
3. to develop students’ skills in using visual aids, where appropriate.
4. to introduce the main parameters involved in effective oral presentation, equipping students with concepts which will enable them to develop their skills further through their careers.
Dissertation Proposal
This module aims to guide students in producing a viable and realistic plan for lightly supervised study leading to the production of a 20,000 word dissertation.
The Arthurian Story: Past and Present
Students wishing to study Arthurian Literature may take this module in place of Open Essay I.
This MA module will explore the origin and function of the Arthurian myth from Nennius to late medieval romances, including Malory and some modern adaptations. Emphasis will be placed on the historicity of Arthur and the biased use of the Arthurian myth, with close analysis of texts from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Layamon, Chrétien de Troyes, popular romances in Middle English and Malory, and their modern interpretations in a selection of movie productions. Attention will be paid to the shaping of the Arthurian myth across the centuries and the potential for alternative/competitive interpretations with a particular appeal to the modern audiences. The aim of this option is to explore the process of shaping the Arthurian myth throughout the medieval period into the modern era and to examine the narrative changes and techniques used in this process.
Special Subject Modules
Early modern performance texts
The module will allow students to appreciate a range of performance texts from the early modern period, (predominately from the seventeenth century), to understand the circumstances of their production and consumption, and to recognise the role of performance in literary interpretation. Students will also study appropriate theoretical material, particularly by Stephen Greenblatt and Michel Foucault, and will be encouraged to interrogate those theoretical positions through the critique of the texts they study. This module aims to develop those cognitive skills concerned with historically informed critical procedures and the interrogation of literary theory. It provides an introduction to historically informed literary research in the early modern period.
Theorising the Gothic
This module will focus on the changing face of theoretical readings of gothic writing from the period of Romanticism to the present day. It will include discussions of certain key issues characteristic of the Gothic (the uncanny, the sublime, concepts of horror, landscape) as well as the exploration of certain ideological and theoretical frameworks through which the Gothic is read (psychoanalysis, gender theory, Marxism, questions of ethnicity). The parameters of gothic writing will be questioned, as will its border territory with the ghost story and fantasy writing. Emphasis will fall, throughout, upon a consideration of theoretical and conceptual discussion rather than close reading of individual texts. Students will be expected to select their own primary material (fiction, poetry and/or drama) upon which to base their application of theoretical material. Though students will choose their own essay topics in consultation with the tutor, their assessed work should demonstrate an awareness of historical shifts in knowledge relating to the Gothic between 1770 to the present-day.
Finding a Voice: Welsh Writing in English
This module considers the English-language writing which emerged in Wales at the beginning of the twentieth century as the result of the massive economic, social and cultural changes which Wales had undergone. This writing expressed the distinctive cultural life of English-speaking Wales, positioned as it was between the older Welsh-language culture and the dominant power of the neighbouring English culture. Issues studied will include a consideration of the ways in which this literature constructs versions of Welsh identity, the ways the conflicted cultural situation is manifested in individual texts, the ways in which issues of national identity are cut across by issues of class and gender, etc. A variety of critical approaches will be employed - including postcolonial theory - to consider a range of novels, short stories and poetry, selected in consultation with the class: including work by Caradoc Evans, Glyn Jones, Dylan Thomas, Alun Lewis, Rhys Davies, Margiad Evans, Emyr Humphreys, Dorothy Edwards, Hilda Vaughan, R.S. Thomas and Gillian Clarke.
The European Renaissance
This course will offer students the possibility to extend and to contextualise their existing knowledge of the early modern period. Students will be offered the opportunity to compare and contrast familiar texts from the early modern period with those produced in the same period on continental Europe. Seminars will range widely in interest from the dramatic genres of tragedy, comedy and satire to examples of epic poetry, Petrarchan writing and prose meditations, for example. This module will consider both male- and female-authored writing in the early modern period and will invite students to review critical and theoretical debates surrounding comparative literary study; the development of generic expectations in the early modern period, theatre and performance strategies in selected European cultures, relationships between gender and authorship in Renaissance European cultures and the deployment of cultural markers of religious allegiance, race, rank and political sovereignty in course set texts, for example
