Modules

Year 1
Core modules:
Introduction to Drama introduces the work of, and critical debate about, a wide historical range of drama and dramatists writing in English, typically covering work from the following areas: the medieval, early modern, Restoration and Augustan, Romantic, Victorian, and twentieth and twenty-first century: post-medieval dramatists to be covered might include, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Behn, Gay, Shelley, Wilde, Shaw, Beckett, Kushner and Butterworth.

Introduction to the Novel introduces ways of reading English novels and various contexts for studying them. You will be familiarised with strategies for engaging with fictional texts formally as well as historically, by situating the novels studied in their distinctive cultural environments while also being taught the ways in which novelistic form and technique have changed over time.

Introduction to Poetry introduces a wide range of poems by poets writing in English from the early modern to the contemporary periods including some American poetry. You will develop your understanding of traditional major verse forms, modes of organisation and genres (e.g. blank verse, the couplet, the stanza, lyric, elegy, sonnet, epic, pastoral, ode, open form).

Ethics and Values provides a structured introduction to moral philosophy, including applied ethics, by exploring key moral concepts and showing how they influence moral practices and theories.

Knowledge and Reality introduces philosophical problems in epistemology (the study of knowledge), and metaphysics (the study of reality and ourselves).

Reading Philosophy allows you to acquire an understanding of the issues of interpretation and comprehension in reading primary authors, through a detailed study of four thematically related texts.

Year 2
Core modules:
Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism introduces the presuppositions and principles of literary criticism and issues of knowledge, value and ideology arising from the practice of reading. You will develop an independent critical sense in your own practice of reading, contextualised against the history of theory and criticism.

Moral Theory examines morals and ethics. It provides a detailed study of important moral theories past and present, covering areas that include consequentialism, contractualism, rights and virtue, morality and personhood, moral realism and expressivism.

Examples of optional modules:
Philosophy of Mind; Language, Logic, and Reality; Early Modern Philosophy; Political and Social Philosophy; Renaissance Literature; Victorian Literature; American Poetry; Modern Poetry; Contemporary US Fiction and the Question of Genre.

Year 3 (Year 4 if undertaking a placement year or year abroad)
Core module:
The final year includes a Dissertation in either English Literature or Philosophy. The dissertation is an extended creative and advanced research project requiring either high level literary analysis, or intensive critical engagement with your own philosophical position and argument.

Examples of optional modules:
Restoration and 18th Century Literature; Literature of the Romantic Period; Old English; American Fiction; Twentieth-Century European Philosophy; Applied Ethics; Issues in Contemporary Ethics; Metaphysics.

Assessment methods

Most modules on the degree will be assessed by essays and end-of-year examinations. The final year will culminate with a dissertation.

Tuition fees

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