BA (Hons) English & Comparative Literature

Over the course of the degree you'll:

• read, discuss, and attend lectures on selected works spanning literary culture from Homer to the present day
• be introduced to the study of themes, genres and movements across national literatures, and the relationship between literature and other disciplines
• develop a grounding in the methods and terms used in the analysis of texts
• have the opportunity to familiarise yourself with the short story genre
• look at comparative literature and the arts during three major periods, and examine cross-national influences and affinities in a variety of genres and media
• complete a dissertation on an approved topic

You'll also be able to choose specialised option modules from the wide range available within the Department.

Year 1 (credit level 4)

You take four compulsory modules (120 credits) which will introduce you to the key areas, problems, and concepts of their respective disciplines.

Year 1 compulsory modules Module title Credits. Explorations in Literature Explorations in Literature 30 credits

This module introduces a wide range of works covering the major literary genres and embodying significant interventions or influences in the history of literature. The emphasis is on reading primary texts and discovering (or rediscovering) writers and cultures so that you will be able to make informed choices among more specialised modules later in your degree.

30 credits. Approaches to Text Approaches to Text 30 credits

The module will introduce students to essential concepts in modern literary study, critical theory and literary criticism through a detailed engagement with literary texts, theoretical texts and literary criticism. Students will develop critical reading skills, gain a vocabulary for discussing and analyzing literary works, and through a close integration with the PASS programme, will build up their academic writing and research skills in a series of short, assessed exercises that will aid in the writing and revision of their course work in the first year and throughout the degree.

Principal texts might typically include Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Seamus Heaney's North, and Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba.

30 credits. Literature of the Victorian Period Literature of the Victorian Period 30 credits

This module is based on writing in Britain between 1830 and 1900. Perhaps no period of literary history has been so subject to stereotyping as the Victorian, yet, as its chronological span alone suggests, Victorian literature is marked above all by its diversity. The literature of the Victorian period contains both the legacy of romanticism and the origins of modernism; its aesthetic and moral ideals are powerful, varied, and unstable. Most crucially, it is the site of debate: about morals, politics, religion, science, sexuality, gender, nationhood, empire, and, at its very basis, about the nature and function of literature itself. The texts featured on this module will represent the full chronological sweep of the Victorian period as well as a range of its genres, including poetry, novels, short stories, and essays.

Major texts might typically include B Richards', English Verse 1830–1890 , Dickens' Bleak House , C Brontë's Villette , Eliot's Middlemarch , Hardy's The Return of the Native , and Collins' The Moonstone.

30 credits. Introduction to Comparative Literature Introduction to Comparative Literature 30 credits

What is comparative literature? How and what do comparists compare? In addressing these questions, the module introduces you to what has traditionally been the main focus of comparative literature: the study of themes, genres and movements across national literatures, as well as the relation between literature and the other arts.

Overall, the aim of the module is to develop and enhance your appreciation of the ways in which comparative literature involves the study of literary and other texts across cultures and is concerned with patterns of connections in literature across both time and space.

30 credits. Year 2 (credit level 5)

The modules in Year 2 offer a wide range of optional elements and they are designed to allow you to start to specialise in areas of your interest. At the same time, they are characterised by literary-historical and contextual range.

There is one compulsory module worth 30 credits, which must be passed for the degree to be awarded:

Studies in Comparative Literature
You will look at literature and the arts during three major periods of European cultural history, seen as exemplary of a process of circulation, diffusion and adoption of new ideas and styles. Cross-national influences are investigated across a broad range of works and assimilation is observed through translation and imitation in a veriety of genres and media. The three major periods to be covered are the Renaissance, Romanticism and the Fin de Siècle.

You are then able to choose modules worth a total of 90 credits from an approved list. At least one of these modules must be chosen from those designated by the Department as encompassing pre-1800 literature.

The overall list may change from year to year but recent examples have included:

Year 2 option modules Module title Credits. Drama and Transgression: From Prometheus to Faust Drama and Transgression: From Prometheus to Faust 30 credits

This module explores a range of approaches to conflicts between divine or political authority and human claims to self-assertion and freedom; submission to orthodoxy; co-existence of orthodoxy and humanism; reconciliation of autonomy and theonomy; and the demise of divine law. The module introduces you to epoch-specific types of overlaps and tensions between religious and positive law, divine and human reason, feeling and understanding. The module also aims to increase your awareness of issues of gender and power, and investigates the nature of female revolt and violence in the light of the Aristotelian theories and traditional male academic and religious discourses.

30 credits. European Cinema European Cinema 30 credits

This module Providing an overview of significant trends in European cinema since 1945, this module considers a number of specific films which reflect changing attitudes to contemporary European society and shifting notions of European identity. The first half explores the emergence of the various new cinemas in Europe after 1945 and the second examines a number of key films in order to explore how European identities have been projected and dramatised.

30 credits. Hollywood Cinema Hollywood Cinema 30 credits

This module provides an analytical overview of some of the major areas of Hollywood cinema and its connection to the wider cultural landscape of the United States. Topics include:

• The rise of cinema and modernity
• Narrative cinema
• Definitions of melodrama
• Noir
• Westerns
• Psychoanalysis
• Femininity and masculinity
30 credits. Inventing the Nation: American Literature in the mid-19th Century Inventing the Nation: American Literature in the mid-19th Century 30 credits

This examines a cluster of major American writers from the 1830s to the 1880s, all of which are engaged in shaping, describing, criticising and contesting the emerging American nation. We will examine literature’s role in the definition of national identity by exploring individual writers. We will also address the key ways in which the American literary tradition differs from its English counterpart. The writers of the so-called ‘American Renaissance’ – Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman – will be central to the module, as their writings are at the heart of the project of national self invention. However, the module will look at this project from alternative perspectives, including those of region, race and gender. It includes the study of film as well as texts.

30 credits. Literary London Literary London 30 credits

During the 19th century, London easily outstripped all other contenders as the largest and most vibrant metropolis in the world. Inevitably, the city, with its extraordinary contradictions, was intimately involved with some of the century’s most major literary developments.

This module focuses on representations of the metropolis by a range of writers living and working in London across the period, and in so doing covers a range of genres (poetry, biography, essay, novel, crime writing) and subjects (everyday life, government, poverty, religion, law, empire).

30 credits. Literature of the English Renaissance Literature of the English Renaissance 30 credits

You examine the literature and ideas of the 16th and 17th centuries, principally in poetry and drama. The major texts might typically include Marlowe, 'Doctor Faustus'; Shakespeare, 'Henry IV' and 'King Lear'; the poetry of Donne; Spenser, 'The Faerie Queene' (Canto 1); Milton, 'Paradise Lost' (Book 1); Webster, 'The Duchess of Malfi'.

30 credits. Literature of the Later Middle Ages: Society and the Individual Literature of the Later Middle Ages: Society and the Individual 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. You study English writing in the 14th and 15th centuries, especially social satire, the comic tale, varieties of romance, and autobiography. You study texts in relation to genre; society and morality; gender; dissent and individual consciousness. Texts might typically include Chaucer, 'The Canterbury Tales' (selection); romances such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and 'The Book of Margery Kempe'; the ‘Lais of Marie de France'.

30 credits. Moderns Moderns 30 credits

You study modernist writing in Britain, Ireland and internationally from the 1920s, including such works as Eliot, 'The Waste Land'; Woolf, 'Mrs Dalloway'; Joyce, 'Ulysses'; Brecht, 'Mother Courage'; poems of Yeats, Auden, Stevens and others.

30 credits. Old English Old English 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. An introduction to the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons, with consideration of a variety of themes and genres, including history, lyric, mythology, poetic elegy and romance. Some texts are read in translation. Major texts might typically include selections such as the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle', 'Beowulf', works by King Alfred, Ælfric, and Bede.

30 credits. Post-Victorian English Literature Post-Victorian English Literature 30 credits

This module examines selected literary works across several genres in the period 1901-36, concentrating upon English-based writings in the non-modernist tradition. Topics for consideration include responses to social change and warfare, and new conceptions of Englishness and modern sexuality. Authors typically include Hardy, Shaw, Forster, Strachey, Brooke, Owen, Graves, Mansfield, Lawrence, Waugh, Holtby, and Orwell.

30 credits. Restoration and 18th-Century Literature Restoration and 18th-Century Literature 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. You study English verse and prose satire 1660–1760; the Restoration comic stage; the rise of the novel; landscape and poetry. The principal texts might typically include selections from: Paul Hammond (ed.), 'Restoration Literature: An Anthology'; Behn, 'Oroonoko'; Defoe, 'Robinson Crusoe';Swift, 'Gulliver’s Travels'; Richardson, 'Pamela'; Fielding, 'Tom Jones'; Sterne, 'Tristram Shandy'; and works by Burney and Johnson.

30 credits. Sensibility and Romanticism: Revolutions in Writing and Society Sensibility and Romanticism: Revolutions in Writing and Society 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. The module covers aspects of mid to late 18th century and early 19th century literature including ‘sensibility’, ‘pre-romanticism’, the Gothic novel and the emergence of the Romantic movement. Principal texts might typically include Sterne, 'A Sentimental Journey'; Goldsmith, 'The Vicar of Wakefield'; Austen, 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Mansfield Park'; Lewis, 'The Monk'; Scott, 'Waverley'; Brontë, 'Wuthering Heights'; selected poems of Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats and Wordsworth.

30 credits. Shakespeare Shakespeare 30 credits

This module constitutes a ‘pre-1800’ choice. The module covers the literary and cultural analysis of Shakespeare’s work in its chronological development; his poetic language and dramatic art. You read most of Shakespeare’s plays and poems.

30 credits. Varieties of English Varieties of English 30 credits

This module explores how and why language is used differently in a range of contexts. We will examine language variation in relation to region, gender, ethnicity, age and social class; we will see that individuals are able to shift their style of speaking from one situation to the next and we will explore the attitudes that people have towards different varieties of English. The topics/issues that will be studied may include the following: Do women and men speak differently? What is slang? How and why do adolescents speak differently from adults? What are the public stereotypes about speakers with 'non-standard' accents? What is Standard English? In our discussion of these issues we will study various examples of spoken and written language and examine the role of literature and the media in representing language variation.

30 credits. Aspects of the Novel Aspects of the Novel 15 credits

You'll explore key developments and trends in the novel form the early eighteenth century to the present day. Beginning with Defoe’s Moll Flanders, the module goes on to look at representative landmarks of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ‘realism’ and of later modernist and postmodernist fiction.

As well as attending to the distinctive features of the individual novels, we will investigate critical and theoretical accounts of the genre, paying particular attention to debates about mimesis, character, narrative voice and plot.

15 credits. Contemporary Arab Migrant Writing Contemporary Arab Migrant Writing 15 credits

You’ll examine the transcultural and transnational spaces imaginatively created in the works of Arab writers who are originally from North Africa and the Middle East and migrated to European and North American countries.

The core module texts are novels, memoirs, as well as short stories that cross boundaries spatially but also socio-culturally and linguistically. These works confront the waves of political repression, socio-economic crises, conflicts and geopolitical upheavals in the Arab world, as well as unprecedented rates of illegal migration, especially to Europe. The module texts are mostly Anglophone Arab literature and translations from Arabic and French, since 1999.

We will approach the texts as both specific to particular political and cultural geographies and also reflective of people’s physical and intellectual itineraries in a world where borders are alternately opened and closed. We will mainly look at place, memory, identity, home, diaspora, exile, refugee status, clandestine migration, surveillance, human rights, conflict, resistance, postcolonialism, nationalism, transnationalism, multiculturalism, assimilation dynamics and integration policies, gender, religious diversity and extremism, life-writing, as well as language, translation and the transcultural imagination.

15 credits. Year 3 (credit level 6)

You complete a compulsory dissertation (30 credits) of 6,000-8,000 words.

You also take modules worth a total of 90 credits. The modules on offer may vary from year to year, but recent examples have included:

Year 3 option modules Module title Credits. Caribbean Women Writers Caribbean Women Writers 30 credits

You explore representative African-Caribbean and Indian-Caribbean women’s writing – prose and poetry – since the 1960s, with comparative study of black women’s writing in non-Caribbean contexts. Principal texts might typically include Gilroy, 'Boy Sandwich'; Collins, 'Angel'; Hodge, 'Crick Crack Monkey'; Riley, 'Waiting in the Twilight'; Senior, 'The Arrival of the Snake Woman'.

30 credits. Creating the Text Creating the Text 30 credits

You explore practical problems of literary convention and technique, including dramatic dialogue, poetic forms, fictional prose and reviewing.

30 credits. Decadence Decadence 30 credits

This module explores the literature of the decadence in France and England in the 19th century. Beginning with definitions of the term ‘decadence’ and its antecedents in antiquity, the module considers the emergence of decadence as a literary tradition in France as a challenge to the orthodoxies of Romanticism and its subsequent treatment by English decadents and European Symbolists at the Fin de Siècle. The principal themes of decadence – degeneration, disease, sex, death – are traced in the work of writers in the 19th century and understood against the backdrop of contemporary cultural anxieties and controversies.

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