Program Overview

The writers of Britain and America are deeply connected. Often they employ the same language, address the same readers, and share the same cultural reference points. But at the same time, the two traditions differ sharply in their typical values and tones of voice. This programme allows you to experience these continuities and distinctions.

In your study of English literature, you’ll have the chance to discover a wealth of writers from Chaucer to the present day – from medieval romance via Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, the Brontës, and James Joyce, to novelists and poets who are still writing now. You’ll explore diverse traditions from across the globe and tackle a heady mix of genres, which currently range from epic to children’s literature, crime writing to lyric poetry, tragedy to biography. You might find yourself honing the perfect essay, experimenting with new forms of critical writing in one of our creative-critical modules, or gaining experience of careers like journalism or publishing which draw on your literary training.

You’ll also be studying the landmarks of American literature. Alongside writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville you'll read abolitionist works by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass. Towards the end of the century, you'll discover contemporaries of Mark Twain and Henry James such as Charles Chesnutt and Pauline Hopkins. At the height of the twentieth century, you'll explore the dizzy heights of postmodernism all the while keeping up with the radical decolonising work of writers like Leslie Marmon Silko and Nobel-prize winner Toni Morrison. After this firm grounding, you’ll launch yourself into more specialist areas of study, like contemporary American fiction, journalism or comics. You’ll have the chance to immerse yourself in both the big canonical American classics and in areas that are unique, contemporary, interdisciplinary, or cutting-edge.