English Language and Literature

In your first year core modules will allow you to develop the skills you need to study language and literature at university level. You’ll choose from core modules exploring poetry, prose and drama as well as literary theory and criticism, and learn to think about the English language in its historical and social contexts.

From this foundation, you’ll build your knowledge and skills in the following year. You’ll choose from core modules covering specific literary periods to give you a sense of how literature in English has evolved over time, while core modules will explore the function of language and the role it plays in society. You’ll also choose from a range of optional modules, from Arthurian legend to stylistics and African literature.

You’ll bring this balanced approach into the final year, when you’ll choose from more period-based core modules and then specialise through your optional modules. You’ll have an even bigger range to choose from such as Seventeenth-century Women’s Writing, the Language of the Media or Fictions of Fallen Women. You’ll also apply the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired to an independently researched final year project, which gives you the opportunity to research a topic of your choice in depth. You could choose to write a traditional dissertation on an English Literature or English Language topic, to try your hand at textual editing, or to produce a creative writing portfolio.

Course structure

These are typical modules/components studied and may change from time to time. Read more in our Terms and conditions.

Modules Year 1

Compulsory modules

• Studying and Researching English 5 credits
• Analysing English 20 credits
• English: Context, Culture and Style 20 credits
• Foundations of English Studies 20 credits

Optional modules

• Prose: Reading and Interpretation 20 credits
• Poetry: Reading and Interpretation 20 credits
• Drama: Reading and Interpretation 20 credits

Year 2

Compulsory modules

• Power of Language 20 credits
• Language in Society 20 credits

Optional modules

• Medieval Literature 20 credits
• Eighteenth Century Literature 20 credits
• Literature of the Romantic Period 20 credits
• Renaissance Literature 20 credits
• Queens, Vikings, poets and dragons: Old English and early medieval Britain 20 credits
• Contemporary Postcolonial Texts 20 credits
• American Danger 20 credits
• Refugee Narratives 20 credits
• Crime Fiction Stylistics: Crossing Languages, Cultures, Media 20 credits
• Language of the Media 20 credits
• Folklore and Mythology 20 credits
• Transformations 20 credits
• Victorian Literature 20 credits
• American Words, American Worlds, 1900-Present 20 credits
• Writing and Gender in Seventeenth-Century England