BA English Literature (3 year Programme)

The degree is structured around a combination of period study, thematic study, and modules inculcating theoretical and practical skills. Victorian literature modules cover prose from Dickens to Gaskell, and poetry from Browning to Hardy; 20th-century literature topics range from Rhys, Hurston, Woolf, and Plath to Hemingway, Forster, Larkin, and Beckett. Shakespeare is one central focus. Other earlier writers who are studied include Marlowe, Donne, Webster, Herbert, Milton, Dryden, Centlivre, Swift, Pope, Blake, Wordsworth, Austen, Keats, and Shelley. Thematic study encourages students to analyse contextually based on sociological variations, gender, contemporary politics, and psychological influences. We encourage the understanding of contemporary literary and cultural theory while never losing sight of the values of liberal / aesthetic education.This is the 3-year format of the BA degree (UCAS code Q321), which allows you the traditional summer break. Starting each September, there are 3 terms per year, leading to an assessment period in early June. Then the summer is free, before the return for the new academic year in late September. This allows you more time for reading and reflection. For the 2-year format of the degree see BA English Literature | 2 Years, 2 Years (+ 1 term).Our recent graduates have gone on to pursue careers in the media, creative writing, teaching, academia, business, and marketing.Modules available on this course

Creative Writing 1

Creative Writing 2

Dissertation

Eras of English

Fiction and Theory

Film Studies

Gothic, Sensation, and Science Fiction

Literary Journalism (1642-present)

Modern American Literature

Modernist Writing

Plays in Performance

Poetry and Poetics

Renaissance Literature

Restoration and Augustan Literature

Rewriting Empire

Romantic Literature

Shakespearean Drama

Synoptic Study Unit

20th-Century Theatre

Victorian Fiction

Victorian Poetry

Women’s Writing

Full course details in the University HandbookDissertationIn your final year, you are given the opportunity to research, develop, and write a mini-dissertation of 6,000 – 8,000 words. This sounds daunting, but you have six months to complete it, and plenty of guidance from us, so many of our students have found it one of the most rewarding part of their studies.Among other outcomes, you should gain from this course:

In-depth understanding of your chosen field of study.

Experience of completing an individual piece of research through from conception to final, fully-documented work.

Understanding of scholarly standards of objectivity, documentation, referencing and citation.

A more nuanced sense of the complexities of contemporary critical practice.

The final dissertation has to be bound, fully ‘styled’ and sourced (in other words, a professional piece of report writing in every sense), and is your chance to connect together many of the skills you have acquired on the Literature programme here at Buckingham. Subjects presented recently include ‘The Idea of the Gentleman in Victorian Fiction,’ ‘Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Villains in Gothic Fiction,’ ‘Virginia Woolf’s prose fiction in the 1920s’, and ‘Sympathy and Alienation in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe’. Your bound dissertation makes an ideal accompaniment to your CV if you are applying for jobs where research and report-writing are important.