BA English Literature
Entry requirements
A level: A*AA including an A in English Literature or combined English Literature and Language. IB: 37 with 766 in higher level subjects, including English Literature or English Literature/Language.
About this course
The BA (Hons) in English Literature is a three-year full-time undergraduate degree tracing writing in English from the medieval period to the present. Core topics include research methods. In the final year, students carry out a compulsory Dissertation of guided research on a topic, author or genre of their own devising. Students may apply to take a placement year or spend a year abroad, which extends the course to four years. The first year builds foundations in literary reading through Approaches to Literary Studies, Introduction to Poetry, Introduction to Drama and Epic and the Literature of Legend, the last of which examines the earliest English writing, including Beowulf. The second year's compulsory modules are Shakespeare, covering works from across the career in different genres, and Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism, which considers what critics assume when they read and how judgement is shaped. Optional modules in this year extend the range with Chaucer, Reading Paradise Lost, Postcolonial and World Literatures and Literature and the Internet. The final year's compulsory Dissertation is guided research on a topic, author or genre chosen by the student, with options including Post-War Fiction and Poetry, History and Memory in African Women's Writing, Mind and Narrative and Creative Writing Poetry / Prose Fiction. Further options span medieval and Old Norse texts, Restoration and Romantic writing, American fiction and contemporary autofiction.
Modules
- Approaches to Literary Studies
- Introduction to Drama
- Introduction to the Novel
- Introduction to Poetry
- Romance and the Literature of Chivalry
- Epic and the Literature of Legend
- Shakespeare
- Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism
- Example optional modules
- Dissertation
- Example optional modules