BA (Hons) English & American Literature

Over the course of the degree you'll:

• cultivate an understanding of the main cultural, historical and political concepts underpinning America and its literatures
• be introduced to selected works spanning literary history from Homer to the present day
• be given a grounding in the methods and terms used in the analysis of literary and non-literary texts
• have the opportunity to familiarise yourself with either the short story genre, or with the genre of poetry, sharpening your interpretative skills through close reading and teaching contributions from practising poets
• examine a selection of major American writers from the 1830s to the 1880s, and how they were active in describing, shaping, criticising and contesting the emerging American nation
• trace the emergence of modern America, encompassing the years which saw both mass immigration and the growth of urban centres, the wealth of the twenties and the poverty of the thirties, the entrenchment of racial prejudice in the South, and the cultural flowering of the Harlem Renaissance
• complete a dissertation

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

PLEASE NOTE: At Level 5 at least 30 credits must be chosen from those designated by the Department as encompassing pre-1800 literature, and a pass in both Inventing the Nation and the Level 6 Dissertation is compulsory for award of the degree.

Year 1 (credit level 4)

You take four modules (120 credits in total):

Year 1 modules Module title Credits. Introduction to American Literature and Culture Introduction to American Literature and Culture 30 credits

This programme-specific module develops your understanding of the main cultural, historical and political concepts underpinning America and its literatures. It covers five main subject areas, which are explored within a thematic rather than chronological structure: Colonial America, The Founding Fathers, Native Americans, Manifest Destiny, and The South.

30 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. Engaging Poetry Engaging Poetry 30 credits

This provides coverage in both breadth and depth across the genre of poetry, introducing students to a range of poetic and verse forms in English from the early modern period to the present day. Using the structure of the four, five-weekly slots for teaching across the two terms, the module will divide into four individual and yet integrated and coherent parts:

1. Forms of Poetry
2. History of Poetry
3. The Practice of Poetry
4. Close Readings

Chronological issues will blend with more individualised approaches to the reading and understanding of poetry, and due attention will be given to verse forms from medieval to modern lyric. The module will be the starting point for your engagement with both the critical and practical appreciation of poetry and will be supported by the participation of the department’s creative practitioners.

30 credits. or. 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. Year 2 (credit level 5)

You take the following two compulsory modules, of which the first – Inventing the Nation – is core.

Year 2 modules Module title 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. Further Studies in American Literature and Culture Further Studies in American Literature and Culture 30 credits

This module is designed to deepen the understanding developed during the Level 1 Introduction to American Literature and Culture of the main concepts underpinning America and American literature. Four main areas will be covered as this module divides into a thematic rather than chronological study of the nation, its literature and its culture: The American City; Politics and Paranoia; Gender in American Culture; Countercultures. Students will explore these key terms in American culture through the study of a range of different cultural forms, including literature, intellectual history and film. The module will provide the second half of a two-year comprehensive survey of central themes in American cultural history.

30 credits.

You also take two modules chosen from the range of options available within the Department. You must take at least 30 credits from modules encompassing pre-1800 literature.

The modules on offer may differ from year to year, but some examples of modules recently on offer include:

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Year 3 (credit level 6)

You complete the following:

Module title Credits. The Emergence of Modern America: American Literature 1890–1940 The Emergence of Modern America: American Literature 1890–1940 30 credits

This module covers the period from the closing of the frontier in America to the eve of the Second World War; a period that saw both mass immigration and the growth of urban centres, the crash of 1929 and the onslaught of the Great Depression. Through a selection of poetry and fiction, the module traces some of the major themes of the period, such as: the literary and cultural move from Naturalism to Modernism; the Harlem Renaissance; Cubism and Avant Garde Aesthetics; Expatriate Writers and the cult of the Lost Generation; Regionalism; Documentarism and Photography; and the emergence of an American poetic vernacular. The module takes some account of the relation of the visual arts, photography and cinema to literature of the period.

30 credits. BA (Hons) English & American Literature Dissertation BA (Hons) English & American Literature Dissertation 30 credits

6,000-8,000-words, covering some aspects of English and American literature or culture

30 credits.

You also take modules worth a total of 60 credits chosen from the range of Level 6 options available within the Department (a rotation of single-term half-modules is also available at Level 6).

The modules on offer may differ from year to year, but some examples of modules recently on offer include:

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.

30 credits. Approaches to Language and the Media Approaches to Language and the Media 15 credits

In this course, you will learn to analyse a range of media text-types found in advertisements, magazine and newspaper articles, television and photography. Comparative studies with literary texts may also be included. The course will cover a number of approaches to the reading and interpretation of a range of media genres.

You will be asked to reflect upon features of language and consider how they work within texts and across a variety of contexts.

The course will draw on linguistics and discourse analysis. In the analyses undertaken, the ‘linguistic’ features of a text will be understood broadly to include the participants (i.e. the narrators, audience, observers and hearers, etc), audio-visual components, as well the cultural and ideological conditions within which these features occur.

15 credits. Modern American Fiction Modern American Fiction 30 credits

You explore a variety of styles and approaches practised in the American novel and short story since 1945, including African-American and ‘postmodern’ fiction. Principal texts might typically include: R Ford (ed), 'The Granta Book of the American Short Story'; Nabokov, 'Lolita'; Kerouac, 'On the Road'; Ellison, 'Invisible Man'; Plath, 'The Bell Jar'; DeLillo, 'White Noise'.

30 credits. Modern Poetry Modern Poetry 30 credits

The module surveys major trends and figures in English-language poetry since 1945, chiefly in the USA, Britain and Ireland, with close attention to linguistic and formal features characteristic of this period, and to patterns of influence. Authors for study typically include Stevens, Auden, Lowell, Larkin, Ginsberg, Ashbery, Gunn, Hughes, Plath, Hill, Harrsion, Heaney, and Mahon.

30 credits. Modernism & Drama (1880-1930) Modernism & Drama (1880-1930) 30 credits

Whilst modernist drama on the European continent is characterised by a variety of pronouncedly anti-realist tendencies, modern English drama continues the tradition of Realism. The module explores the main contrasts and affinities between these modernist and realist trends, focusing on major