Program Overview

Guided by our supportive teaching staff, who are all part of the university’s thriving literary research culture, you will study the ideas of the most exciting literary writers and critical thinkers involved in contemporary cultural debates, using innovative learning and teaching methods.

Year 1 provides the foundations for your studies of literature with modules designed to develop your skills in reading efficiently, critical analysis, research and writing. This is achieved through the study of a wide range of fiction, poetry and drama from across the historical periods. You will study both literature in its context, as well as the latest literary theories, as two different ways of finding out what and how a text means.

In Year 2, you will study what literature is 'out there' in modules devised to furnish you with a clear overview of the range of the literary periods. Unless you know how literature changed and developed from the beginning, then you cannot understand why it became what it is now. You will learn how and why the dominant literary form, the plays of William Shakespeare and others, turned to the novel as the next dominant literary form. You will explore the Romantic era which changed everything, and was thought to be the highest point of literary achievement.

You will discover why in the twentieth century, once again 'everything changed,' as the Modernists and Postmodernists challenged the expectations of what literature could be. Alongside the coverage modules, you will have a chance to choose two modules which will introduce you to thematic concerns in modules such as Victorian Literature; Children's Literature and Young Adult Fiction; Medieval Literature and Gothic Literature.

In Year 3, you will write a dissertation on the topic of your choice – based on what you’ve learned from the coverage and thematic modules in your second year. This will be a piece which you will work on with your chosen tutor, and will take the whole year to write. Alongside this, you will study Fantasy and Science Fiction, the most popular, and also the most complex and difficult of literary genres. You will choose optional modules closely related to the research interests of teaching staff and engage with cutting-edge developments in the discipline. Topics could be Literature and Film and Women's Writing in the Eighteenth Century.