BA (Hons) English

Module: 4EN007

Credits: 20

Period: 1

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

This module will examine the shorter fiction and literature of well-known and canonical authors as a means of introducing a range of authors in a digestible fashion whilst also considering the short story as a distinct literary form. We will discuss a range of short literary material to show the contribution that such literature can make to the canon. We will investigate the formal characteristics of the short story – plot (or its frequent absence), narrative technique, arrangement of scenes, tone, and how the structure determines the treatment of a range of contemporary ideas: time and consciousness, subjectivity, alienation, sexuality, body and gender, fantasy, imperialism and immigration.

Module: 4EN010

Credits: 20

Period: 1

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

This course introduces a number of key texts in medieval and Old English literature through the lens of the medieval animal. You will encounter a range of fantastic beasts in English and European textual and visual cultures from the tenth to sixteenth centuries, and learn the critical skills to analyse them. In doing so, you will examine the importance of animals in forming human and civic identities – including in our own city’s Anglo-Saxon name.

Module: 4EN004

Credits: 20

Period: 1

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

This module will examine literature as both a source of, and challenge to, different forms of individual, social and national identities. It will seek to address questions concerning the processes of readers' subjectivity and identification, the constructedness of identity and the relationship between literary expression and national identities. In addition, whose identity is under scrutiny when we read literary texts? The author or the reader? Who is the ‘I’ in literary meaning and should we move from the interpretation of texts to the interpretation of interpretations?

Module: 4EN008

Credits: 20

Period: 1

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

This module introduces you to the principles of drama in performance. Aided by theatre professionals the module takes you through the practicalities and theory of putting on a play: interpretation, staging, directing, producing and acting. Using the Arena Theatre's stage and resources, you'll take key scenes from the page to the stage.

Module: 4HU002

Credits: 20

Period: 1

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

The module aims to introduce students to key theoretical and methodological issues through an exploration of popular culture. The module explores the relationship between popular cultural forms and identity, and how culture can be perceived as both an expression of and resistance to dominant norms

Module: 4EN009

Credits: 20

Period: 1

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

This module will explore a broad selection of poetry from different periods of literary history with an emphasis on learning techniques for formal analysis (close reading), creative expression (writing poetry), and performance. We will consider aspects of reading, writing, and performing poetry, including form, rhythm and meter, diction, figurative language and sound. We will also consider the development of particular genres (e.g. the ballad, the sonnet) and forms (e.g. blank verse, free verse) over time, from the medieval period to the present, with an emphasis on the horizon of reader expectations that accrue around poetic forms and genres.

Module: 5EN007

Credits: 20

Period: 2

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

This module offers a critical and creative engagement with literature written for children, designed for Creative Writing and English students. In studying the historical trajectory of children’s literature, students will be encouraged to analyse texts in relation to their cultural, social and gendered contexts, and mindful of the changing politics of childhood as an identity category. What did ‘childhood’ mean in different eras, and what was the literature intended for them meant to do?

Module: 5EN001

Credits: 20

Period: 2

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

This module aims to provide both a thorough introduction to the main areas of contemporary literary criticism and theory, and to equip students with a set of theoretical terms and concepts that will enable them to understand what is at stake in current debates in critical and cultural theory.

Module: 5EN008

Credits: 20

Period: 2

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

This module explores the development of novel tradition, in terms of both narrative form and as a vehicle for social commentary, from its origins in the eighteenth century through the Victorian period.

Module: 5HU002

Credits: 20

Period: 2

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

The module examines literary and cultural responses to political debates and to key moments in social history. Particular reference will be made to the impacts of socio-cultural change and political movements on popular literature and culture, and how such productions have been used to advance or resist various ideological interests. Issues addressed will include the relationships between various types of representation and their claims to truth and authenticity, the impact of social, commercial, political and moral issues on cultural production; the significance of the audience; the role(s) of culture within social formations, with particular reference to practices of collaboration, recuperation, and resistance.

Module: 5EN004

Credits: 20

Period: 2

Type: Core

Locations: Wolverhampton City Campus

This module explores the social, political and philosophical contexts of the English Renaissance through its literary culture, concentrating on work of Shakespeare and Milton - the two literary giants who bookend this period of literary history.

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