English Literature

Bachelor's degree

In Liverpool

Price on request

Description

  • Type

    Bachelor's degree

  • Location

    Liverpool

  • Duration

    3 Years

  • Start date

    Different dates available

Hear from a tutor and student about studying English Literature at Liverpool Hope.
The degree in English Literature at Liverpool Hope enables you to explore a wide range of canonical and popular texts from the Middle Ages to the present day. Throughout your three years of study you will be taught by staff with research expertise in a broad range of fields, from Chaucer to contemporary popular literature. You will be taught in lectures, seminars, and small tutorial groups by teaching staff with a strong international research profile. You will also have the opportunity to meet with your lecturers for individual feedback and advice. We pride ourselves on offering a challenging and stimulating degree with a wide range of innovative teaching and assessment methods. Our distinctive commitment to small group teaching allows us to help each individual student to develop sophisticated analytical and communication skills through working both independently and in groups. A high proportion of our students attain a 1st or a 2:i degree; this achievement recognises that they have attained highly valued skills enabling them to pursue a wide range of careers after graduation.

Facilities

Location

Start date

Liverpool (Merseyside)
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Hope Park, L16 9JD

Start date

Different dates availableEnrolment now open

About this course

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Entry Requirements
2017 Entry Requirements
The offer level for 2017 entry will be BCC - ABB at A Level or DMM - DDM at BTEC Extended Diploma or 104 - 128 new UCAS tariff points.
In addition, applicants require an A level (or equivalent) in English Literature, English Language or Literature/Language. Applicants with other humanities subjects may also be considered.
UCAS points offers can be achieved in many ways, the following are just a few examples of how you could achieve our entry requirements:
Three A Levels with grades of BCC or above
BTEC...

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Subjects

  • English
  • Poetry
  • Writing
  • Drama
  • Prose
  • Project
  • Teaching
  • American Literature
  • Staff
  • Communication Training

Course programme

<div id="tab2" class="tab grid_8 alpha hide-on-small" style="display: block;"> <div class="courseLinks hide-on-medium-down"> <img src="/media/liverpoolhope/styleassets/cssimages/media,975,en.gif" alt="print Icon" style="width : 24px; height : 24px; "> <span><a href="javascript:window.print()">print this page</a></span> <span class="st_sharethis_custom" st_processed="yes"><a href="#">share this course</a></span> </div> <h2>Curriculum</h2> <h2>The English Literature Curriculum</h2> <h3><span>Year 1</span></h3> <ul> <li>In Year 1 you will follow a structured programme of lectures and seminars/ workshops giving you an overview of the genres of poetry, drama, and narrative and introducing you to a range of critical approaches and to the terminology associated with these.</li> <li>You will examine a variety of texts across all literary genres and will be introduced to theoretical approaches that provide different perspectives on these texts. Small-group tutorials are devoted to enhancing your writing skills.</li> <li>There is a range of assessment methods, from the traditional (essay and examination) to the innovative (critical précis and portfolio), that help you to build skills incrementally.</li> </ul> <p>All Literature students will study the following:</p> <p><strong>A</strong><strong>nalysing Prose, Poetry and Drama</strong></p> <p>This is a lecture strand that focuses on a broad range of texts from different generic traditions, providing students with background information and historical context, suggesting ways that such information can be used to enrich the reading of a given text.</p> <p><strong>Critical Approaches to Prose, Poetry and Drama</strong></p> <p>This lecture strand examines the same texts studied for Analysing Prose, Poetry and Drama through the lens of different critical perspectives, examining the implications that their application would have on the interpretation of the texts studied.</p> <p><strong>Close Reading</strong></p> <p>This is an interactive seminar strand that provides an overview of the development of the three traditional generic traditions: prose, poetry, and drama. The prose examined ranges from fairy tale/ fable to the essay, short story, and novel. The poetry selected for close reading introduces students to a range of poetic modes and forms: sonnets, lyrical poetry, narrative poetry, elegiac verse, dramatic monologues.</p> <p><strong>Text and Context</strong></p> <p>Seminars on Text and Context examine the same texts studied in Close Reading seminars, placing them in relation to developing traditions, historical developments, and different critical perspectives.</p> <p><strong>Writing Workshop</strong></p> <p>Through working with different types of writing, such as the journal, précis, review, essay, the Writing Workshop facilitates the development of increasingly sophisticated thinking and the nuances and fine distinctions necessary for effective academic writing.</p> <p>Single Honours Literature students will also study the following:</p> <p><strong>Great Books, Great Ideas</strong></p> <p>This lecture strand provides students with a framework that sets out, in general terms, the significance of particular texts within a developing discourse on a particular issue or theme.</p> <p><strong>Legacies and Transformations</strong></p> <p>This lecture strand examines a range of examples of the way particular themes examined in Great Books, Great Ideas lectures have been studied in a range of literary texts, providing examples and suggestions for further contextual and developmental reading.</p> <p><strong>Text and Idea</strong></p> <p align="left">This is an interactive seminar strand that investigates the development of particular ideas and themes in literature, such as the journey and the search, visions of Heaven and Hell, conceptions of power and utopia, the idea of originality and authorship, thoughts on self and society. Students examine works such as Homer’s <em>The Odyssey </em>(the journey) or chapters from the Bible such as Genesis and Revelations (Heaven and Hell) with a view to understanding the nature of the dynamic elements that are continually referenced within literature and western thought.</p> <p><strong>Textual Legacies </strong></p> <p>This seminar strand provides students with examples of the way elements of the core texts studied in Text and Idea seminars have been employed in subsequent literature. So, for example, a study of the Bible might be followed by exploration of Milton’s <em>Paradise Lost, </em>Blake’s <em>The Marriage of Heaven and Hell </em>or H.G. Wells’s <em>The Island of Dr Moreau</em>.</p> <p><strong>Personal Development Workshop</strong></p> <p>This workshop ensures that students are made aware of the disciplinary and transferable skills that they are developing and helps students develop a secure foundation in the research and creative problem-solving skills necessary for Single Honours study.</p> <h3>Year 2</h3> <ul> <li>In Year 2 you will study particular historical periods in greater detail. At this level, the programme is designed to help you to discover the ways in which knowledge of the literary, cultural, and intellectual history of a period can enrich your understanding of particular authors and texts.</li> <li>Tasks and assessments are designed to help you develop the research and project-planning skills needed for longer and more complex academic projects.</li> <li>Assessments include a single-author study, a comparative essay, synoptic examination, and a problem-based learning exercise.</li> </ul> <p>All Literature students will study the following:</p> <p><strong>English Literature from the Glorious Revolution to the <em>Fin de Siècle</em></strong></p> <p>This lecture strand will examine a broad range of literary texts from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century, examining how literature engages with intellectual, social and political developments over the course of the era.</p> <p><strong>Restoration to Early Romantic Literature</strong></p> <p>In the first term this seminar strand will trace significant aspects of the long eighteenth century, for example concerning the nature of reality and truth, the poetic imagination, the rise of the novel, and the diversity and complexity of poetic forms being used in the early years of Romanticism. The literary and philosophical ideas in evidence within the primary texts will be considered against the backdrop of changing social and political attitudes towards, for example, individual and national identity, and the nature of liberty.</p> <p><strong>Textual Analysis of Nineteenth-Century Literature</strong></p> <p>In the second term the Textual Analysis of Nineteenth-Century Literature seminar strand will examine the development of English literature from the Romantic period, the Victorian era, and the writing of the <em>fin de siècle</em>. Emphasis will be placed on the impact of the French Revolution on English Literature, the development of feminist thinking in the Victorian era, the impact of the publication of Darwin’s <em>On the Origin of Species</em> (1859) and cultural anxieties reflected in gothic literature and detective fiction of the <em>fin de siècle.</em></p> <p><strong>Ma</strong><strong>jor Authors of Pre-Twentieth-Century Literature</strong></p> <p>This tutorial strand focuses on the work of one or two writers within the context of the literature, ideas, and cultural history of their time. The authors examined will vary from year to year, but will include writers such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Dickens, and Hardy.</p> <p>Single Honours Literature students will also study the following:</p> <p><strong>Contextualising the Nineteenth Century</strong></p> <p>This lecture strand will provide more detailed information on the intellectual history of the period (including scientific and social theories) and contemporaneous developments in the arts.</p> <p><strong>Me</strong><strong>dieval to Early Modern Literature</strong></p> <p align="left">In the first term this seminar strand examines the poetry, prose and drama of the late medieval and early modern periods. Close examination of authors such as Chaucer, the Gawain-poet, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson and Donne will underpin an interrogation of the traditional historiographical and critical divisions between medieval and Renaissance periodization.</p> <p align="left"><strong>American Literature</strong></p> <p align="left">In the second term, seminars on American Literature trace the impact of Romantic writers and theorists on the writers and literary productions of the American Renaissance. As American literature begins self-consciously to differentiate itself from English literature while influenced heavily by it, the resulting borrowings of literary forms such as the historical novel, the sentimental novel, and the gothic tradition will be traced; and the transformations that occur as these are used to treat native subjects will be examined. The rise of realism will also be examined in relation to the development of social novels in England.</p> <p><strong>A</strong><strong>rchival Research and Publishing History: Problem Based Learning.</strong></p> <p>This tutorial strand is designed to provide single honours students with training on the use of archival resources and exposure to issues related to the production, publication, and reception of a particular text. This tutorial strand will examine, as appropriate, manuscript variations, serialisation, illustrations, the production of different editions, the marketing of the text, contemporary reviews and subsequent re-evaluations, reader responses, and literary responses to selected literary texts.</p> <h3>Year 3</h3> <ul> <li>In Year 3, you will engage with current critical issues, theories, and methodologies. You will evaluate the implications and possibilities made available by different approaches and theories in relation to the understanding of particular texts, genres, and themes.&nbsp;</li> <li>You will interrogate the nature and formation of the literary canon through detailed analysis of a wide range of genres, focusing primarily on 20th century and contemporary literature.</li> <li>There is a wide range of innovative assessment methods available at this level including portfolio, synoptic examination and extended research essay.</li> </ul> <p>All Literature students will study the following:</p> <p><strong>Modernism and Literature</strong></p> <p>This lectures strand will help to contextualise Modernist literature through an interdisciplinary approach, positioning it in relation to the intellectual history of the period (including scientific and social theories), contemporaneous developments in the arts, and reflections from the period of the role and nature of art/literature and the artist/writer in society.</p> <p><strong>Modernism</strong></p> <p align="left">In seminars on Modernism students examine and analyse a range of texts from England, Ireland, and the United States written during the Modernist period such as those by James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Ernest Hemingway. These texts will be examined through close readings that will enable students to develop their own understanding of the textual strategies, stylistic innovations, and thematic concerns of the literature of this period.</p> <p align="left"><strong>Honours Seminar</strong></p> <p align="left">In the second term, students also participate in an Honours Seminar. There is an element of choice introduced here as students can focus upon contemporary issues in criticism or historicizing literature. Here, issues explored will include the use and misuse of primary and archival resources, the problematic nature of master narratives of history, and the necessarily partial and distorted nature of any context constructed for the interpretative framing of a text. Combined Honours Students conduct an extended research project based on their Honours Seminar work. Recent research project titles include:</p> <ul> <li>‘Experimental Responses to Romance, Desire and the Love Plot’</li> <li>‘Your Novel Has Leveled Up: Shared Concepts and Properties in Experimental Novels and Video Games’</li> <li>‘The Unverdorben and the Norma(l): Variations of Irony in Martin Amis’s&nbsp;<em>Time's Arrow</em>&nbsp;and Graham Rawle's&nbsp;<em>Woman’s World</em>’</li> </ul> <p><strong>Theoretical Models and Research Methods</strong></p> <p align="left">A tutorial strand on Theoretical Models in the first term enables students to examine some of the formative theories that informed modernist thinking and practice, such as those of Freud and Bergson. In the Second term, the tutorial strand focuses on Research Methods, helping students to develop and implement their research and project planning skills as they pursue their extended research project or dissertation.</p> <p align="left">During Year 3, Single Honours Literature students also study the following:</p> <p><strong>Canon Formation and Critical Controversy</strong></p> <p>This lecture series provides students with a systematic exposure to thinking about the practice and process of canon formation, critiques of different models of culture, and frameworks for the analysis and positioning of popular literature.</p> <p><strong>Contemporary Issues and Critical Practice</strong></p> <p>This lecture series on Contemporary Issues and Critical Practice allows students to examine recent theoretical approaches such as trauma theory, the maturing of postcolonial perspectives and the examination of intersectionality in relation to the construction of identity, the contribution of disability studies to the understanding of literature, and the now common awareness of the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of literature.</p> <p><strong>The Problem of Popular Literature</strong></p> <p align="left">In the first term the seminar series on Popular Literature interrogates ideas of cultural hierarchy and generic fixity. These seminars focus on a particular popular genre such as the detective story, examining the dynamics of textual practice in relation to the conventions of the genre studied. A central element of this seminar strand involves critiquing the possibilities and limitations of readings of the texts and genres by particular critics.</p> <p><strong>Contemporary Issues and Critical Practice</strong></p> <p>This seminar/workshop, which accompanies the lecture strand on Contemporary Issues and Critical Practice,is designed to make students more self-conscious of their own research and critical practice as they pursue their dissertations.</p> <p align="left"><strong>Dissertation</strong></p> <p>Single Honours students receive one-to-one tutorials during Year 3 as they conduct sustained, supervised independent study in the form of a dissertation and showcase this research in an Honours Conference. Dissertations completed in recent years include:</p> <ul> <li>‘The Rise of the Novel and the Exploration of Societal Development: Gender and Class in Richardson, Edgeworth and Austen’</li> <li>‘The Evolution of Serialisation as a Method of Publication from Charles Dickens’s <em>The Pickwick Papers </em>to his final novel <em>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</em>’</li> <li>&nbsp;‘Back from the Front: Rediscovering Self and Society in First World War Literature’</li> <li>‘High Spirits – the Beautiful and the Drunk: Representations of Alcohol in the Short Fictions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’</li> <li>‘Marriage and the Mid-Twentieth-Century American Dream in Richard Yates’s <em>Revolutionary Road</em>, Edward Albee’s <em>Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf</em>? And Arthur Miller’s <em>Death of a Salesman</em>’</li> </ul> <h2>You may also be interested in...</h2> <p><a href="http://www.hope.ac.uk/undergraduate/undergraduatecourses/creativewriting/">Creative Writing</a></p> <p><a href="/undergraduate/undergraduatecourses/dramaandtheatrestudies/">Drama &amp; Theatre Studies</a></p> <p><a href="/undergraduate/undergraduatecourses/englishlanguage/">English Language</a></p> <p><a href="/undergraduate/undergraduatecourses/mediaandcommunication/">Media &amp; Communication</a></p> </div>

English Literature

Price on request