ENGL100: Literature in Time : Continuity and Change

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only 
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course - 10 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 5 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 5 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course - 20 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 10 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 10 ECTS Credits

Course Description

This course introduces you to some of the most vital debates in English Studies via a study of an English literary tradition that is constantly being rewritten and challenged, especially in the multicultural, postmodern era of the late twentieth century and beyond. By concentrating on poetry from the late sixteenth century to the present, you will learn about the rich canonical tradition and how each generation of writers has responded to it. You will consider some explicit rewritings of classic texts (for example, a literary reworking of Hamlet or the Victorian novel or of the narrative of the Fall in the Bible), in order to raise issues about what the canon excludes or occludes. Your study of selected plays, short stories and novels in addition to the poetry will broaden your sense of a literary tradition, and introduce you to the practice of close analytical reading of these genres too. As you study, the course will introduce you to some major theoretical approaches and instil some of the essential study skills you will need for your undergraduate programme at Lancaster. By the end of this course, you will have read some of the most celebrated texts in the English language, as well as learning about exciting innovations in contemporary literary theory and practical criticism.

The first term looks at the development of English poetry from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. It seeks to develop skills of close literary analysis and also to give a broader historical picture of the rise of a national literary tradition in the Renaissance and its disintegration in the Modernist period.

The second term moves forward and concentrates on the energy and diversity of contemporary writing. A range of literary genres is covered (poetry, drama, the novel), and attention is given to working-class women, black and Irish writers as well as mainstream English authors. The course also includes a Study Skills component and an introduction to some of the general theoretical issues of reading and interpretation. It is taught by means of two lectures and one seminar a week.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of the course, you will have acquired a range of knowledge and skills as outlined under these three main headings:

LITERARY TRADITIONS AND GENRES

• Increased familiarity with forms of poetry: including ballad, sonnet, couplet, dramatic monologue, free verse forms, concrete poetry (including work on metre).
• Increased awareness of how to read dramatic texts.
• Increased awareness of the novel form.
• Understanding of shorter prose forms (short story, C17th pamphlets, essays).
• An awareness of literary periods/groupings: e.g. 'Renaissance'; 'Metaphysicals'; 'Augustan'; 'Romantics'; 'Victorian'; 'Modernist'; 'Postmodern'; 'Other literatures in English'.

ISSUES

• Awareness of the literary tradition as existing in a process of continuous change in which rewriting and intertextuality are key features.
• Awareness of the canon as selective and the politically charged notions of "value".
• An understanding that the relationship between text, author and reader is not transparent or one directional.
• An awareness of history as discursively constructed and literature as a key element because of its emotive power.
• An understanding of reality as discursively constructed, and texts of all kinds as part of this process.
• An increased awareness of literature as a means of creating a national identity.

SKILLS

• How to read large quantities of text perceptively.
• How to construct an essay argument.
• How to research within the library [and on the web].
• How to construct a bibliography / present work according to scholarly conventions (in line with the English Literature Style Sheet).
• How to use critical writing.
• How to discuss metre and form in verse.

Outline Syllabus

This course introduces you to some of the most vital debates in English Studies via a study of an English literary tradition that is constantly being rewritten and challenged, especially in the multicultural, postmodern era of the late twentieth century and beyond. By concentrating on poetry from the late sixteenth century to the present, you will learn about the rich canonical tradition and how each generation of writers has responded to it, raising questions about what the canon of 'classic texts' excludes or occludes. Study of selected plays, films, short stories and novels in addition to the poetry will develops the practice of close analytical reading of these genres too.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

ENGL101: World Literature

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Terms only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course –  10 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only – 5 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only – 5 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course – 20 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only – 10 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only – 10 ECTS Credits

Course Description

ENGL101 World Literature pushes beyond English as a national literature to situate the study of literature in a global context. The focus is threefold. First, we consider the transformation of canonical English texts in different contexts and media. Second, we start to explore a world literary tradition, examining major texts and stories from outside of the English ‘canon’ including ones originally produced in languages other than English (which we read in translation). Third, we read contemporary world literature in English and in translation. While ENGL100 provides a critical grounding in literary study in English, ENGL101 encourages you to widen literary and critical horizons, and to develop your critical autonomy.

The course will encourage you to become more self-aware and self-reflective as a writer and critic. It will do this by asking you to write not only for assessments, but regularly and self-critically, so you can begin to interrogate your own assumptions and define your own critical standpoint. There is no examination on ENGL101. Instead, there are two coursework essays, which will enable you to experiment with critical form and practice if you wish, and a long project at the end, preceded by a short proposal which you will produce in consultation with your tutor. This long project will enable an in-depth study of texts and issues investigated on the course.

Educational Aims

The course is designed to develop your knowledge and understanding of literature as a worldwide phenomenon that is transformed as it moves across different cultures, languages, and media. ENGL101 will give you a solid grounding in world literatures in English and literatures in translation. On successful completion of the course, you will have developed an understanding of a wide range of issues relating to the cultural processes of translation, transmission, and transcultural writing. Through your own experiences of reading, re-reading, writing, and rewriting you will have become more reflective readers and writers.

On successful completion of the course you will have:

1. a good knowledge of a wide selection of world literature in English
2. a good understanding of the relationship between literature and place
3. a good understanding of how different media create fictional worlds
4. a well-developed facility for making connections between literary texts across time and space
5. a well-developed facility for close reading a wide range of literature
6. developed a more self-conscious critical practice
7. a good knowledge of the relationship between writing and re-writing
8. a more developed understanding of the practices and processes of writing and criticism
9. developed oral and written communication skills in individual and group contexts
10. developed an understanding of the skills and tools of individual study and research, and be able to work towards more independent modes of analysis

Assessment Proportions

• 100% Coursework

ENGL201: The Theory and Practice of Criticism

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course. 
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

Course Aims and Objectives:

What is literature? Who decides? How should we read literary texts? To what extent is the meaning of a text decided by the author, the reader, history or culture? Why does literary criticism still have value? To address these fundamental questions, ENGL 201 introduces students to a range of key concepts in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The module will ask us to re-think familiar concepts such as writing and history, and will extend literary criticism beyond its traditional limits to encompass concepts such as animals, biopolitics and neoliberalism. The module will enable students to deploy theoretical terms and concepts in their own acts of reading, and its overall aim is to make students more rigorous, sophisticated and inventive in their responses to literary and cultural texts.

Educational Aims

You should:

• have developed a wide knowledge of the various contemporary approaches to literary interpretation
• be able to participate knowledgeably in debates over the value and purpose of criticism
• be familiar with the differences between traditional and theoretical assumptions about literature
• be familiar with the debates between different theoretical schools of thought
• be able to deploy theoretical ideas and vocabulary as part of the detailed analysis of literary texts
• have become more sophisticated and discerning in your use of secondary material
• have developed your skills of written and oral communication

Outline Syllabus

Lecturers will assign weekly reading associated with each theoretical concept. As preparatory secondary reading, we recommend: Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (Routledge, 2016).

Assessment Proportions

• 1 x 1,500-word essay (20%)

• 1 x group oral presentation (30%)

• 1 x 4,000-word project (50%)

ENGL202A: Love, Sex and Death in Early Literature

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas term only
• US Credits: 4 US Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

To equip students with good knowledge of the literature of the early period in its various types and genres

To explore significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and to develop a capacity to read these texts closely

To develop an awareness and appreciation of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in the literary texts

To engage in appropriate use of secondary material such as criticism and theory

Educational Aims

Students who pass this module should be able to...

Demonstrate a good knowledge of early literature in its various types and genres

Explain the significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and demonstrate a capacity to analyse those texts closely and critically

Demonstrate awareness of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in literary texts

Engage in critical discussion making appropriate use of secondary material in conjunction with an independent critical response

Outline Syllabus

Course Outline:

Designed to take up and develop Part One’s engagement with pre-1700 texts, this module will focus on the ways in which early literature understood and represented love, sex and death and the connections between them. Reading texts from the late medieval period through to late seventeenth century, we will explore how ideas about love, sex and death were shaped by discourses of religion, science, gender, marriage and the body, and how these changed over time. Our readings will mainly be focused on topics designed to provide us with ingress into the literature, culture and historical vitality of the period. Poetry, prose and drama will be explored, and readings will range from the earthy late medieval play Mankind to Milton’s capacious epic, Paradise Lost, and from the love sonnets of Sidney, Wroth and Donne to the dark and disturbing theatre of John Ford.

Assessment(s) and Due Dates:

There will be two pieces of assessed work:

- 1 x 900-1000-word close reading exercise due Wednesday of week 5 (25%)

- 1 x 1800-2000-word essay due Friday of week 11 (75%).

Learning Outcomes:

Students who pass this module should be able to...

Demonstrate a good knowledge of early literature in its various types and genres

Explain the significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and demonstrate a capacity to analyse those texts closely and critically

Demonstrate awareness of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in literary texts relating to the themes of love, sex and death

Engage in critical discussion making appropriate use of secondary material in conjunction with an independent critical response

Teaching Programme by week:

Week

Lecture/Seminar

1

Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1450)

2

Anonymous, Mankind (c.1470)

3

John Lyly, Galatea (1588)

4

Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (1591)

5

Flesh, Mind and Mortality in Jacobean Poetry: selections from Lady Mary Wroth, John Donne and George Herbert (1620-30s)

6

Independent Study Week – no lecture/seminar

7

John Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1633)

8

John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666)

9

John Milton, selections from Paradise Lost (1667)

10

John Milton, selections from Paradise Lost (1667)

Set Texts:

The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse and Prose (Broadview Press)

The Booke of Margery Kempe (TEAMS online, via Moodle)

Anonymous, Mankind (TEAMS online, via Moodle)

John Lyly, Galatea (Revels Student Edition)

Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella [on Moodle]

John Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (New Mermaids)

John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. John Leonard (Penguin)

Further Reading:

Surveys and Guides (indicative):

Corrie, Marilyn (ed.), A Concise Companion to Middle English Literature (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014)

Hattaway, Michael (ed.), A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (2 vols) (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)

Keeble, N.H., The Restoration (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002)

Specialist Studies (indicative):

Bennett, Susan and Mary Polito, Performing Environments: Site-Specificity in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

Dollimore, Jonathan, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture (London: Penguin: 1998)

Greenblatt, Stephen, The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began (London: Vintage, 2012)

Kaufmann, Miranda, Black Tudors: The Untold Story (London: Oneworld, 2017)

Normington, Katie, Medieval English Drama: Performance and Spectatorship (Cambridge: Polity, 2009)

Raman, Shankar, Renaissance Literatures and Postcolonial Studies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011)

Waller, Gary, The Sidney Family Romance: Mary Wroth, William Herbert, and the Early Modern Construction of Gender (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993)

Zimmerman, Susan, Erotic Politics: Desire on the English Renaissance Stage (New York: Routledge, 1992)

Further secondary readings will be added to each week’s lecture slides.

Assessment Proportions

Assessment(s) and Due Dates:

There will be two pieces of assessed work:

- 1 x 900-1000-word close reading exercise due Wednesday of week 5 (25%)

- 1 x 1800-2000-word essay due Friday of week 11 (75%).

ENGL202B: Power, Politics and Place in Early Literature

• Terms Taught: Lent and Summer Terms only - Please note, this class is currently full for the 2025/26 accademic year. 
• US Credits: 4 US Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

To equip students with good knowledge of the literature of the early period in its various types and genres

To explore significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and to develop a capacity to read these texts closely

To develop an awareness and appreciation of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in the literary texts

To engage in appropriate use of secondary material such as criticism and theory

Educational Aims

Students who pass this module should be able to...

Demonstrate a good knowledge of early literature in its various types and genres

Explain the significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and demonstrate a capacity to analyse those texts closely and critically

Demonstrate awareness of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in literary texts

Engage in critical discussion making appropriate use of secondary material in conjunction with an independent critical response

Outline Syllabus

Course Outline:

Designed to take up and develop prior engagement with pre-1700 texts, this module will examine literary engagements with and representations of power, politics and place in early literature. We will consider a broad range of genres (prose, poetry and drama), moving from the late medieval period’s interest in spiritual and earthly travel to the episodes of power, revolution and restitution that characterised Stuart rule (1603-1688). The module will examine the literatures of political influence and change from the late fourteenth through to the seventeenth centuries, from John Mandeville’s marvellous journeys through Europe, Northern Africa, Asia and the Holy Land to the fantastical romances of Margaret Cavendish, the brilliant and edgy theatre of Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson to the writings of revolutionaries such as John Milton and Margaret Fell and monarchist libertines like Aphra Behn.

Assessment(s) and Due Dates:

There will be two pieces of assessed work:

1 x 900-1000-word take-home paper completed during week 18 (25%) due Monday

1 x one-question/90-minute examination (75%) examination period

Learning Outcomes:

Students who pass this module should be able to...

Demonstrate a good knowledge of early literature in its various types and genres

Explain the significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and demonstrate a capacity to analyse those texts closely and critically

Demonstrate awareness of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in literary texts relating to the themes of power, politics and place

Engage in critical discussion making appropriate use of secondary material in conjunction with an independent critical response

Teaching Programme by week:

Week

Lecture/Seminar

11

John Mandeville, Mandeville’s Travels (c.1350s-1360s)

12

William Langland, extracts from Piers Plowman (c.1370s)

13

Christopher Marlowe, Edward II (c.1593)

14

Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (1612)

15

The Poetry of Place: Ben Jonson, ‘To Penshurst’; Aemilia Lanyer, ‘The description of Cooke-ham’; Thomas Carew, ‘To Saxham’; John Denham, ‘Cooper’s Hill’; Robert Herrick, ‘The Hock Cart’; Andrew Marvell, the Mower Poems (1611-1681)

16

Independent Study Week – no lecture/seminar

17

Royalist Poetry: Sir John Suckling, Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Katherine Philips (1630s-1660s)

18

Revolutionary Writings: John Milton, Areopagitica; Thomas Edwards, ‘Of Preaching’, from Gangraena; Gerard Winstanley, ‘A Declaration’, ‘The Digger’s Song’; Margaret Fell, Women’s Speaking Justified (1640s-1660s)

19

Margaret Cavendish, Assaulted and Pursued Chastity (1656)

20

Aphra Behn, The Widow Ranter (1689)

Set Texts:

The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse and Prose (Broadview Press)

Sir John Mandeville, The Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford World’s Classics) [Online via the Library]

William Langland, Piers Plowman (c.1370s) [on Moodle]

Christopher Marlowe, Edward II (New Mermaids)

Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (New Mermaids)

Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings (Penguin) [Assaulted and Pursued Chastity]

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko and Other Writings (Oxford World Classics) [The Widow Ranter]

Further Reading:

Surveys and Guides (indicative):

Corrie, Marilyn (ed.), A Concise Companion to Middle English Literature (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014)

Hattaway, Michael (ed.), A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (2 vols) (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)

Keeble, N.H., The Restoration (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002)

Social, Cultural and Political Histories (indicative):

Bennett, Susan and Mary Polito, Performing Environments: Site-Specificity in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

Bradstock, Andrew, Radical Religion in Cromwell’s England: A Concise History from the English Civil War to the End of the Commonwealth (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011)

Coward, Barry, The Stuart Age: England, 1603-1714 (London: Longman, 1994)

Higgins, Iain Macleod, Writing East: The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997)

Hill, Christopher, The Century of Revolution, 2nd ed., (Walton-on-Thames: Nelson, 1980)

Justice, Steven, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994)

Purkiss. Diane, The English Civil War (London: Harper Perennial 2007)

Woolrych, Austin, Britain in Revolution, 1625-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

Further secondary reading will be added to each week’s lecture slides.

Assessment Proportions

Assessment(s) and Due Dates:

There will be two pieces of assessed work:

1 x 900-1000-word take-home paper completed during week 18 (25%) due Monday

1 x one-question/90-minute examination (75%) examination period

ENGL203A: Victorian Experiments

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term Only
• US Credits: 4 US Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

To equip students with good knowledge of the literature of the Victorian period in its various types and genres.

To explore significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and a capacity to read these texts closely.

To develop an awareness of certain historical, literary and culture issues of the Victorian period as they are manifested in the literary texts.

To engage with independent critical responses and perspectives.

To develop the capacity to make appropriate use of secondary material when reading literature.

Educational Aims

Students who pass this module should be able to...

Demonstrate a good knowledge of Victorian literature in its various types and genres.

Explain significant kinds of connection and difference between Victorian literary texts, and demonstrate a capacity to read these texts closely.

Demonstrate awareness of certain historical, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in the literary texts.

Engage in critical discussion making appropriate use of secondary material in conjunction with an independent critical response.

Outline Syllabus

Course Outline: The nineteenth century saw widespread and rapid change across Britain. Responses to these changes varied enormously but looking back on the period it is noticeable how the Victorians were willing to experiment and test the boundaries of what was known. In this module we will explore that interest in experimentation by looking at a range of literature of the period, including novels, short fiction, and poetry.

Assessment(s):

Close reading essay (900-1000 words): 25%

Long essay (1800-2000 words): 75%

Assessment(s) Due Date:

Close reading essay: Monday week 7

Long essay: Monday week 11

Learning Outcomes:

Students who pass this module should be able to...

Demonstrate a good knowledge of Victorian literature in its various types and genres.

Explain significant kinds of connection and difference between Victorian literary texts, and demonstrate a capacity to read these texts closely.

Demonstrate awareness of certain historical, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in the literary texts.

Engage in critical discussion making appropriate use of secondary material in conjunction with an independent critical response.

Teaching Programme by week:

1.Introduction

2. Dramatic monologues: Robert Browning

3. Detection: Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four

4. The unreliable narrator (I): Charlotte Brontë, Villette

5. The unreliable narrator (II): Charlotte Brontë, Villette

6. Reading week

7. Life-writing: Mary Seacole, Wonderful Adventures

8. Word and Image: Christina Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelites

9. Realism vs Gothic: Gaskell, ‘The Grey Woman’

10. HG Wells, The Time Machine

Set Texts:

Brontë, Charlotte, Villette

Browning, Robert, selected poems

Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Sign of the Four

Gaskell, Elizabeth, ‘The Grey Woman’

Rossetti, Christina, selected poems

Seacole, Mary, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands

Wells, H. G., The Time Machine

Further Reading:

Abberly, Will, Mimicry and Display in Victorian Literary Culture: Nature, Science and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination (Cambridge UP, 2020)

Cote, Amy, ‘“A Handful of Loose Beads”: Catholicism and the Fictional Autobiography in Charlotte Bronte’s Villette,’ Nineteenth-Century Literature 75.4 (2021): 473-94.

Kreilkamp, Ivan, Voice and the Victorian Storyteller (Cambridge UP, 2005)

Matus, Jill, Shock, Memory and the Unconscious in Victorian Fiction (Cambridge UP, 2010)

Plotz, John, Semi-Detached: The Aesthetics of Virtual Experience since Dickens (Princeton UP, 2017)

Pond, Kristen, ‘The Ethics of Silence in Charlotte Bronte’s Villette,’ Studies in English Literature 57.4 (2017): 771-97.

Thomas, Ronald, Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science (Cambridge UP, 2003)

Assessment Proportions

Assessment(s):

Close reading essay (900-1000 words): 25%

Long essay (1800-2000 words): 75%

Assessment(s) Due Date:

Close reading essay: Monday week 7

Long essay: Monday week 11

ENGL203B: Victorian Beliefs

• Terms Taught: Lent and Summer Terms Only
• US Credits: 4 US Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

To equip students with good knowledge of the literature of the Victorian period in its various types and genres.

To explore significant kinds of connection and difference between texts, and a capacity to read these texts closely.

To develop an awareness of certain historical, literary and culture issues of the Victorian period as they are manifested in the literary texts.

To engage with independent critical responses and perspectives.

To develop the capacity to make appropriate use of secondary material when reading literature.

Educational Aims

Students who pass this module should be able to...

Demonstrate a good knowledge of Victorian literature in its various types and genres.

Explain significant kinds of connection and difference between Victorian literary texts, and demonstrate a capacity to read these texts closely.

Demonstrate awareness of certain historical, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in the literary texts.

Engage in critical discussion making appropriate use of secondary material in conjunction with an independent critical response.

Outline Syllabus

Course Outline: Given the extensive transformations experienced in the nineteenth century, it is no surprise that writers and thinkers reflected at length on matters of belief. These beliefs ranged from the public to the private, the collective to the individual, and included issues relating to politics, religion, economics, society, Empire, and so on. In this module we will explore some of the ways in which literary writers attended to questions of belief: what people believed, why communities held those beliefs, and the experience of changing one’s beliefs and/or seeing those around you change their beliefs. We will think about such questions by looking at a range of material from the period, including fiction, poetry, and drama.

Assessment(s):

Close reading essay (900-1000 words): 25%

Exam: 75%

Assessment(s) Due Date:

Close reading essay: Friday week 17

Exam: summer term

Learning Outcomes:

Students who pass this module should be able to...

Demonstrate a good knowledge of Victorian literature in its various types and genres.

Explain significant kinds of connection and difference between Victorian literary texts, and demonstrate a capacity to read these texts closely.

Demonstrate awareness of certain historical, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in the literary texts.

Engage in critical discussion making appropriate use of secondary material in conjunction with an independent critical response.

Teaching Programme by week:

1. Introduction

2. Social Mobility: Dickens, Great Expectations

3. Progress: Dickens, Great Expectations

4. Freedom: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, selected poems

5. Freedom: Henry Box Brown, Narrative of Henry Box Brown

6. Reading week

7. Respectability: Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

8. Magic: Victorian fairy tales

9. God: Faith and Doubt (Tennyson and Hopkins selected poems)

10. Ghosts: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

Set Texts:

Brown, Henry Box, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, selected poems

Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations

Hopkins, Gerard Manley, selected poems

James, Henry, The Turn of the Screw

Newton, Michael, ed., Victorian Fairy Tales

Tennyson, Alfred, selected poems

Wilde, Oscar, An Ideal Husband

Further Reading:

Hurley, Michael, Faith In Poetry: Poetry as a Mode of Religious Belief (Bloomsbury, 2017).

King, Joshua, ‘Child Labour and the Idolatry of Nature in “The Cry of the Children” and A Drama of Exile,’ Women’s Writing 27.4 (2020): 404-415.

King, Joshua, Imagined Spiritual Communities in Britain’s Age of Print (Ohio State UP, 2015).

Knight, Mark, Good Words: Evangelicalism and the Victorian Novel (Ohio State UP, 2019).

Knight, Mark and Emma Mason, Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (Oxford UP, 2006).

Krienke, Hosanna, Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Cambridge UP, 2021).

Paroissien, David, ed., A Companion to Charles Dickens (Blackwell, 2008).

Raby, Peter, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (Cambridge UP, 2006).

Schaffer, Talia, Communites of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction (Princeton UP, 2021).

Schramm, Jan-Melissa, Atonement and Self Sacrifice in Victorian Narrative (Cambridge UP, 2012).

Assessment Proportions

Assessment(s):

Close reading essay (900-1000 words): 25%

Exam: 75%

Assessment(s) Due Date:

Close reading essay: Friday week 17

Exam: summer term

ENGL207A: Revolutionary Romanticism

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas term only
• US Credits: 4 US Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

To equip students with a detailed knowledge of core Romantic texts and an historical overview of the period

To develop the ability to make connections between writers and genres

To equip student with a sense of the main theoretical approaches to Romanticism and how to apply them

To develop an understanding of key poetic and philosophical ideas in the period

To develop confidence in articulating ideas and presenting them orally.

Educational Aims

Students who pass this module should be able to...

display a detailed knowledge of core Romantic texts

have an ability to make connections between writers and genres

show a good historical overview of the period

illustrate a sense of the main theoretical approaches to Romanticism and how to apply them

possess an understanding of key poetic and philosophical ideas in the period

have confidence in articulating ideas and presenting them orally.

Outline Syllabus

Course Outline: This module begins by looking at one of the most dramatic events in world history – the French Revolution – and how it inspired some of the most powerful literature of the Romantic period. We examine revolutionary writing of the Romantic period, including the poetry of William Blake and William Wordsworth and the prose of Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Our examination of Wollstonecraft’s novel The Wrongs of Women and her prose work The Rights of Woman considers how the debate over the rights of men expanded to consider women’s education and role.

In the second half of the module, we turn our attention to the emergence of Gothic in the 1790s, which for some critics was a product of the Revolution. We begin with a general introduction to Gothic, examining popular Gothic tales, before looking at two of the most famous Gothic novels of the Romantic period, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The course aims to give students a sense of the diverse range of writers in this period. We will use the close knowledge of key texts to tackle some of the wider, more abstract ideas such as: nature, the imagination, and the sublime. We will also consider literary ideas within a broader social, historical and philosophical context.

Assessment(s):

There will be two pieces of assessed work:

- 1 x 900-1000 word Take Home Exam Paper due Friday week 6 (25%)

- 1 x 1800-2000 word essay due in week 11 (75%)

Both pieces will be formative (receiving detailed feedback and suggestions for improvement) as well as summative (receiving a grade).

Assessment(s) Due Date:

Assessment 1: Take Home Exam Paper Friday 12.00 noon week 6

Assessment 2: Monday 12 noon Week 11

Learning Outcomes:

Students who pass this module should be able to...

Display a detailed knowledge of core Romantic texts

Have an ability to make connections between writers and genres

Show a good historical overview of the period

Illustrate a sense of the main theoretical approaches to Romanticism and how to apply them

Possess an understanding of key poetic and philosophical ideas in the period

Have confidence in articulating ideas and presenting them orally.

Teaching Programme by week:

Part One: Revolutionary Romanticism

Week 1:Introduction to British Romanticism and Handout of revolutionary poems to be provided on Moodle

Week 2: Revolutionary Writing: Burke, Paine and the Pamphlet Wars (extracts)

Week 3: William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Songs of Innocence and Experience

Week 4: Mary Wollstonecraft: Maria or The Wrongs of Woman and extracts from Vindication of the Rights of Woman (in the Anthology).

Week 5: Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads, ‘Preface’ and selection of poems

Week 6: Independent Study Week; Take Home Exam Paper

Part Two: The Gothic

Week 7: Introduction to Gothic: Terror vs Horror - Extracts from Mysteries of Udolpho and read ahead for next few weeks.

Week 8: Gothic Tales: ‘Sir Bertrand: A Fragment’, ‘Raymond: A Fragment’, ‘The Ruins of the Abbey of Fitz-Martin’ (available on MOODLE)

Week 9: Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey

Week 10: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

Set Texts:

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Period, vol. D, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al (2012). For poetry by William Blake and William Wordsworth and prose by Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman, in Mary and the Wrongs of Woman, ed. Gary Kelly (Oxford World Classics edition).

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, ed. Marilyn Butler(Penguin Classics edition).

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818 Text, ed. Marilyn Butler (Oxford World Classics Edition).

Further Reading:

On Romanticism

Ashfield, Andrew; De Bolla, Peter, The sublime: a reader in British eighteenth-century aesthetic theory (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Butler, Marilyn, Romantics, rebels, and reactionaries: English literature and its background, 1760-1830 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1981)

Curran, Stuart, The Cambridge companion to British romanticism (2nd ed, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Duff, David, The Oxford handbook of British romanticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)

Garnai, Amy, Top of Form

Top of Form

Revolutionary imaginings in the 1790s: Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Elizabeth Inchbald (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

Mahoney, Charles A companion to romantic poetry (Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)

Mccalman, Iain, An Oxford companion to the Romantic Age: British culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford ; New York, Oxford University Press, 1999)

Mellor, Anne K., Romanticism & gender (London, Routledge, 1993)

Prickett, Stephen, England and the French revolution (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Macmillan Education, Context and commentary, 1989)

Ruston, Sharon, Romanticism: An Introduction (London: Continuum, 2007)

Stabler, Jane, Burke to Byron, Barbauld to Baillie, 1790-1830 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave, Transitions, 2001)

On the Gothic

Botting, Fred, The gothic (London, Routledge, The new critical idiom, 1996)

Clery, E.J., The rise of supernatural fiction, 1762-1800 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge studies in Romanticism, 1995)

Clery, E.J.; Women's gothic: from Clara Reed to Mary Shelley (British Council, Tavistock, Northcote House, Writers and their work, 2000)

Gamer, Michael, Romanticism and the Gothic: genre, reception, and canon formation (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000)

Hogle, Jerrold E., The Cambridge companion to Gothic fiction (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge companions to literature, 2002)

Punter, David, A New companion to the gothic (2nd ed, Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell, Blackwell companions to literature and culture, 2012)

Assessment Proportions

Assessment(s):

There will be two pieces of assessed work:

- 1 x 900-1000 word Take Home Exam Paper due Friday week 6 (25%)

- 1 x 1800-2000 word essay due in week 11 (75%)

Both pieces will be formative (receiving detailed feedback and suggestions for improvement) as well as summative (receiving a grade).

Assessment(s) Due Date:

Assessment 1: Take Home Exam Paper Friday 12.00 noon week 6

Assessment 2: Monday 12 noon Week 11

ENGL207B: Romantic Subjectivity and the Self

• Terms Taught: Lent and Summer terms only - Please note, this class is currently full for the 2025/26 accademic year.
• US Credits: 4 US Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Must have completed an Intro level English Literature course.

Course Description

To equip students with a detailed knowledge of core Romantic texts and an historical overview of the period

To develop the ability to make connections between writers and genres

To equip student with a sense of the main theoretical approaches to Romanticism and how to apply them

To develop an understanding of key poetic and philosophical ideas in the period

To develop confidence in articulating ideas and presenting them orally.

Educational Aims

Students who pass this module should be able to...

display a detailed knowledge of core Romantic texts

have an ability to make connections between writers and genres

show a good historical overview of the period

illustrate a sense of the main theoretical approaches to Romanticism and how to apply them

possess an understanding of key poetic and philosophical ideas in the period

have confidence in articulating ideas and presenting them orally.

Outline Syllabus

Course Outline: This module explores the dynamic relationship between politics and poetics in the Romantic period, beginning with the radical and reformist voices of Anna Barbauld and Percy Bysshe Shelley. We consider how their poetry engages with revolution, social justice, and the power of literature to inspire change. We then turn to some of the most remarkable and unsettling narratives of the period—the firsthand accounts of enslavement by Olaudah Equiano and Mary Prince—examining how these texts challenged prevailing attitudes and shaped abolitionist discourse. Alongside these, we explore the influence of orientalism in the works of S. T. Coleridge and Thomas De Quincey, considering how the Romantic imagination constructed and responded to the 'exotic' other. In the final part of the module, we move inward, investigating Romantic explorations of subjectivity and selfhood in the poetry of Byron, Keats, Clare, and Charlotte Smith. We trace how these poets explore the inner self, memory, melancholy, and the natural world, often reflecting on personal experience and the limits of poetic expression. Through close reading of key texts, we will engage with broader themes such as nature, the imagination, and the shifting boundaries of selfhood, situating Romanticism within its wider social, historical, and intellectual contexts. Assessment: There will be two pieces of assessed work: - 1 x 900-1000 word Take Home Paper Monday week 16 (25%) - 1 x Examination in the summer term (75%) Both pieces will be formative (receiving feedback and suggestions for improvement) as well as summative (receiving a grade). Assessment(s) Due Date: The first piece of assessed work (900-1000 word Take Home Paper to be done in week 16 (25%)) will test students' proficiency in combining discussion of secondary criticism and historical research with their close reading of primary texts. The second piece of assessed work (Examination in the summer term (75%)) will test students' capacity to marshal the knowledge and understanding developed in the course of studying this module in an examination answer addressing comparatively two primary texts studied. Learning Outcomes: Students who pass this module should be able to... display a detailed knowledge of core Romantic texts have an ability to make connections between writers and genres show a good historical overview of the period illustrate a sense of the main theoretical approaches to Romanticism and how to apply them possess an understanding of key poetic and philosophical ideas in the period have confidence in articulating ideas and presenting them orally Teaching Programme by week: [NB: Most of these texts are in the Norton Anthology] Week 11: Anna Barbauld, Poems in the Norton Anthology including ‘The Mouse’s Petition’ and ‘Eighteen Hundred and Eleven’ Week 12: Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Mutability’, ‘To Wordsworth’, ‘Ozymandias’, ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, ‘England in 1819’, ‘Ode to the West Wind’, ‘To a Sky-Lark’. Week 13: Thomas Clarkson, 'Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species,' and Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative. Week 14: Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, ed. Sara Salih (London: Penguin, 2000) [or Link to text online]. Week 15: S. T. Coleridge, ‘Kubla Khan’; P. B. Shelley, ‘Ozymandias,’; Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, pp. 567-80 Week 16: Independent Study Week Week 17: Byron: ‘Manfred’ Week 18: Charlotte Smith poems in the Norton Anthology or as advised Week 19: John Keats, read Odes and Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (Feb. 3 1818) [on Wordsworth’s poetry), letter to Richard Woodhouse (Oct. 27 1818) [‘A Poet has no identity’] in the Norton Anthology. Week 20: John Clare, please read poems in the Norton Anthology Week 21: Revision Lecture and seminar Week 22: Revision drop-in sessions Set Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Period, vol. D, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (2018) Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, ed. Sara Salih (London: Penguin, 2000) Further Reading: Bainbridge, Simon, ed. Romanticism: A Source Book (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) Clery, E. J., Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: Poetry, Protest and Economic Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) Crawford, Rachel, Poetry, Enclosure, and the Vernacular Landscape, 1700-1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) Labbe, Jacqueline M., Charlotte Smith: Romanticism, Poetry, and the Culture of Gender (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003) McCarthy, William, and Olivia Murphy, eds., Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Bucknell University Press, 2014) Morgan, Alison., Ballads and Songs of Peterloo (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018) Nagle, Christopher Carl, Sexuality and the Culture of Sensibility in the British Romantic Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) O'Neill, Michael, Romanticism and the Self-Conscious Poem (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) Poole, Robert, Return to Peterloo (Manchester: Manchester Centre for Regional History, 2014) Roe, Nicholas, Keats and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) Ruston, Sharon, Romanticism: An Introduction (London: Continuum, 2007) Stabler, Jane, Byron, Poetics, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) Youngquist, Paul, Race, Romanticism, and the Atlantic (Burlington, VT: Routledge, 2013)

Assessment Proportions

Assessment:

There will be two pieces of assessed work:

- 1 x 900-1000 word Take Home Paper Monday week 16 (25%)

- 1 x Examination in the summer term (75%)

Both pieces will be formative (receiving feedback and suggestions for improvement) as well as summative (receiving a grade).

ENGL208: Literature, Film, and Media

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year course - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year course - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have completed an Intro level English Literature module.
  • This is a strict quota module, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Aims and Objectives:

This course surveys formal, generic, historical, cultural, narrative, and theoretical relationships between literature and film across a range of periods, genres, and cultures, paying particular attention to the practice and analysis of literary film adaptation.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of the module, students should have a firm grasp of the basic history, theory, and genres of literature's relationship to film, be able to address both formal and cultural aspects of literary film adaptation, and understand how adaptations function as creative-critical and interpretative works. Students will develop skills in interdisciplinary analysis and in writing across disciplines. In the practical component, they will grapple with issues in the practice as well as the analysis of interdisciplinary relations.

Outline Syllabus

Required reading/viewing

Students should view set films/television shows and read set texts before the sessions that discuss them. Set books are available for discounted purchase from the university bookstore and in the library; most of our set films are available via the library's Box of Broadcasts; the library also has DVD copies. Students may purchase films on DVD, as they purchase books, or access them via various online services.

Set Texts

• Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice (free e-texts widely available)
• Berman, Shari Springer and Robert Pulcini, American Splendor screenplay (on MOODLE)
• Briggs, Raymond, Ethel and Ernest
• Carroll, Lewis, Alice's adventures in Wonderland (free e-texts widely available)
• Cocteau, Jean, 'Poetry and films' (on MOODLE)
• Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness (free e-texts widely available)
• Dick, Philip K., 'The Minority Report' (on MOODLE)
• Dix, Andrew, Beginning film studies (second edition)
• Harris, Thomas, The Silence of the Lambs
• Lovecraft, Arthur, 'Oh, whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad' (on MOODLE)
• Pekar, Harvey, any of his American Splendor comics
• Proulx, Annie, 'Brokeback Mountain' (on MOODLE)
• Shakespeare, William, Romeo and Juliet (free e-texts widely available)
• Stoker, Bram, Dracula (free e-texts widely available)

Other required and optional readings will be posted on MOODLE.

Set Films

• Adaptation, 2002
• Alice in Wonderland, 1951 (Disney)
• Alice in Wonderland, 2012 (dir. Tim Burton)
• American Splendor, 2003
• Apocalypse Now, 1979
• Brokeback Mountain, 2005
• Ethel and Ernest, 2016
• La Belle et la Bête, 1946
• Minority Report, 2002
• Pride and Prejudice, 1940
• Ramleela, 2013
• Rear Window, 1954
• The Silence of the Lambs, 1991
• What We do in the Shadows, 2014
• Whistle and I’ll Come to You, 1968 (Miller) and 2010 (Emmony)
• William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, 1996 (Luhrmann)

Other required and optional viewing will be posted on MOODLE.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

Full Year Indicative:

• Michaelmas Term: 1500-word essay due Friday at noon of week 10 (25% of the module mark)
• Lent Term: creative project portfolio due Monday at noon of week 17 (25% of the module mark)
• Summer Term: a creative project accompanied by a 3000-word critical essay due Tuesday at noon of Week 21 (creative project 25%; critical essay 25%).

ENGL306: Shakespeare

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.  
• US Credits:
  • Full Year - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent / Summer Only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.

Course Description

Course Outline:

Ben Jonson claimed of Shakespeare ‘he was not of an age but for all time.’ This course examines Shakespearean drama and poetry in its own time: as a platform in which early modern debates about agency and government, family, national identity, were put into play, and in relation to how we perceive these issues now. The stage was and is a place in which questions of gender, class, race, gain immediacy through the bodies and voices of actors. By examining texts from across Shakespeare’s career, we will explore their power to shape thoughts and feelings in their own age and in ours. We will consider Shakespeare’s manipulation of genre (poetry, comedy, history, tragedy and romance) and the ways the texts make active use of language (verse, prose, rhyme, rhythm) and theatrical languages (costume, stage positions) to generate meaning. The course will consider how, in the past and in the present, Shakespeare’s texts exploit the emotional and political possibilities of poetry and drama

Educational Aims

On successful completion of the course, you should have:

• acquired an enriched understanding of Shakespeare’s historical context and a grasp of the ways in which this shaped his plays.
• have a perception of the place of the Shakespearean theatre in Elizabethan and Jacobean politics and its importance as the sight of struggle over interpretations of the state, the family, gender and identity.
• acquired an informed idea of the actual design and conventions of Shakespeare’s playhouse, and an awareness of how these determined his texts.
• become familiar with contemporary critical debates about the plays, and to be prepared to apply theoretical concepts to analysis of them.
• developed an appreciation of how Shakespeare’s drama continues to be a global force in the present, especially through its representation in cinematic forms.

Outline Syllabus

Set Text:

We recommend a properly annotated edition of the Complete Works such as the RSC William Shakespeare Complete Works, ed. Bate and Rasmussen; The Arden Shakespeare, Complete Works ed. Ann Thompson, David Scott Kastan and Richard Proudfoot or The Norton Shakespeare: International Student Edition, edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al., 3rd edition (W.W. Norton, 2015) Vacation Reading: The full list of plays for next year's syllabus will be finalised in the summer in the hope that we can see some in performance. Vacation reading should start with the following, which will be included: As You Like It, Measure for Measure, Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV Part 1, Troilus and Cressida, The Tempest. For further information, see Professor Alison Findlay (County Main B94)

Assessment Proportions

• Assessment:

• 1 x 3,000-word essay (40%);

• 1 x scripted presentation (1,500 words) 10%;

and either

• 1 x 3 hour final examination (50%)

or

• Project (50%)

ENGL309: Modernism - Then and Since

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year course
  • Michaelmas Term only - Please note, this module is currently full for the 25/26 academic year.
  • Lent / Summer Term only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course 
• US Credits:
  • Full Year - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Only - 4 Semester Credits
  • Lent Summer Only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full year - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
  • Lent / Summer Only - 7.5  ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Must have significant previous studies in English Literature

Course Description

This course will trace the evolution of English (including American) literature in a period of social and political change stretching from the Boer War to the Cold War, from the Edwardian era to the Space Age. It will explore the dynamics of literary history, focusing on the strain of radical experimentation that characterizes so much twentieth-century writing. We will examine the ways in which modernist writers from Eliot to Woolf renewed and re-shaped the language of literature; we shall consider how some representative post-modernist writers (Beckett and Pynchon) addressed the problem of how to follow their formidable literary predecessors. The first term's work considers writers working in, and sometimes against, the British context (including New Zealand and Ireland); the second term considers those working in, and sometimes against, the American context. Given the transnational nature of Modernism, this in turn begs the question of whether primary allegiance was owed to nation, or to art.

Educational Aims

Students who successfully complete the course will acquire detailed knowledge of the evolution of literature from the early twentieth century to the emergence of postmodernism.

Outline Syllabus

Primary Texts (in order of study)

NB. With the exception of just the four asterisked titles, all texts can be found, if you wish, online or on Moodle.

• Imagist poetry
• T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
• D. H. Lawrence, 'St Mawr'
• Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
• Katherine Mansfield, short stories
• James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• W. B. Yeats, selected poems
• *Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
• Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• *Ernest Hemingway, Fiesta
• Robert Frost, selected poems
• Selected poetry and prose of the Harlem Renaissance
• William Carlos Williams, selected poems
• Wallace Stevens, selected poems
• *John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
• *Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 50% (1500 word exercise 10%; 3000 word essay: 40%)
• Exam: 50%

ENGL324: Urban Gothic in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Fiction

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only - Please note, this module is currently full for the 25/26 academic year.
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: I recommend reading as many of the novels as you can, but especially Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor and Jeff Vandermeer’s Finch, since those are the longest texts. 

Course Description

This course explores twentieth and twenty-first century writing about the city that uses Gothic generic conventions and modalities. Cities are ostensibly places of shelter and refuge, but these sites have also always been ambiguous. Gothic is characterised by a concern with vulnerable bodies within confining environments, subjected to threatening forces both visible and intangible. The built environments of Gothic are often plastic and mutable, the setting an animate, changeable, and malevolent force. We will explore the 'architectural uncanny' and the 'urban sublime', and consider how traditional elements of Gothic fiction are pressed to new ends in response to changing sensory, social and political contexts of urban space and place. We will ask how these texts imagine sensory geographies of the city, how they unsettle the binary between urban and rural, how they represent assemblages of the human and non-human, posthuman biotechnological transformations of the body, and concerns over environmental catastrophe, structural inequality, histories of trauma and gendered dimensions of urban experience. We will work with a range of critical approaches to urban gothic, drawing from literary criticism, Gothic studies, cultural geography and sociology of urban space. While most sources will be textual, these will be complemented with reference to screen media, fine art, graphic novel and UrbEx photography.

Outline Syllabus

Course Structure

• Week 1 – Post-apocalypse at the turn of the century: H. G. Wells, War in the Air (1908)
• Week 2 – The urban uncanny of the Second World War: Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943)
• Week 3 – Mid-twentieth-century eco-horror: John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids (1951)
• Week 4 – Psychogeography and flânerie: Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor (1985)
• Week 5 – Cyberpunk: Blade Runner, dir. Ridley Scott, Final Cut (Warner, 2008), and William Gibson, ‘Burning Chrome’ (1982)

[First assignment due by noon on Friday Week 5]

• Week 6 – Independent Study Week.
• Week 7 – Simulation and Illusion: Dark City, dir. Alex Proyas (New Line Cinema, 1998), and Benôit Peeters and François Schuiten, 'The Fugitive' (1989), reprinted in Samaris and the Mysteries of Pâhry (2017), pp. 69-77.
• Week 8 – Haunted cities: trauma and memory: Patrick McGrath, Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now (2005)
• Week 9 – Biopunk and the urban weird: Jeff Vandermeer, Finch (2009)

[Final essay due: Monday Week 10, at 12 noon]

• Week 10 – Salvage: adaptation and future directions for urban Gothic[and in-class 3-minute presentations]

Set Texts

Students will be asked to purchase the novels listed below. Any edition is welcome.

• Ackroyd, Peter, Hawksmoor (1985)
• Gibson, William, ‘Burning Chrome’ (1982)
• Greene, Graham, The Ministry of Fear (1943)
• McGrath, Patrick, Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now (2005)
• Vandermeer, Jeff, Finch (2009)
• Wells, H. G., War in the Air (1908)
• Wyndham, John, The Day of the Triffids (1951)

The following text will be digitised and available on Moodle, along with a range of secondary reading pertinent to each week:

• Peeters, Benôit and François Schuiten, 'The Fugitive' (1989), reprinted in Samaris and the Mysteries of Pâhry (2017), pp. 69-77.

We will also watch the following films:

• Blade Runner, dir. Ridley Scott, Final Cut (Warner, 2008).
• Dark City, dir. Alex Proyas (New Line Cinema, 1998)

Assessment Proportions

• 1 x 1,000 word written exercise (20%, due Week 15, Friday 12 noon)
• 1 x 3,000 word essay (70%, due Monday Week 20, 12 noon; this may optionally include a creative component for people who wish it)
• 3-minute informal class presentation in Week 20 (10%).

ENGL331: Jane Austen

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only - Please note, this module is currently full for the 25/26 academic year.
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:   Must have significant previous studies in English Literature This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline:

This module will give students the opportunity to study all the major works of one of the most celebrated novelists in English literary history. It will combine close attention to the stylistic textures and narrative strategies of Jane Austen's fiction with broader consideration of key themes and preoccupations such as friendship, desire, matchmaking, snobbery, illness, resistance, transgression and secrecy.

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts

• Emma
• Mansfield Park
• Northanger Abbey
• Persuasion
• Pride and Prejudice
• Sense and Sensibility

Vacation Reading

Students may find it useful to read Emma, which is Austen's longest and most intricate novel, before the course gets underway.

Week-by-week summary

1. Introductions
2. Northanger Abbey
3. Sense and Sensibility
4. Pride and Prejudice
5. Mansfield Park (I)
6. Independent study week
7. Mansfield Park (II)
8. Emma (I)
9. Emma (II)
10. Persuasion

Secondary reading

• Butler, Marilyn, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas
• Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen
• Johnson, Claudia, Jane Austen : Women, Politics, and the Novel
• Kirkham, Margaret, Jane Austen, Feminism, and Fiction
• Miller, D.A., Jane Austen, Or the Secret of Style
• Tanner, Tony, Jane Austen
• Wiltshire, John, The Hidden Jane Austen
• Woolf, Virginia, 'Jane Austen'

You are particularly encouraged to make use of anthologies of critical writings on Austen, such as the Macmillan casebook series, where you'll be able to sample a range of critical responses to her work. For further information see Dr Michael Greaney (County Main B98)

Assessment Proportions

• 100% Coursework

Assessment: 1000-word essay (20%), 3500-word essay (80%)

ENGL365: Science Fiction in Literature and Film

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.
  • This is a strict quota courses, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students.

Course Description

Course Outline:

This course will trace the development of science fiction (SF) in literature and film, providing an insight into the conventions of the genre and, in particular, how the key themes of the science fiction genre have been successfully adapted for the screen. Texts have been chosen from a range of historical periods to enable a consideration of the cultural and historical contexts in which key science fiction texts were produced, and how this effects their development. The course will analyse in detail the formal and generic characteristics of the science fiction novel and short story, and will provide an introduction to the visual aspects of the science fiction film. The course will be organised through a thematic concentration on the themes of time and space travel. It will encompass narratives of time travel, evolution, temporal dislocation and also stories that formally incorporate atemporality. It will consider journeys, encounters, species and ontologies. It will offer discussions about questions of human subjectivity, gender, race, transcendence, love and loss. The module will also constitute an ongoing investigation of the relationship between science fiction film and 'literary' SF texts, considering both how the genre is represented through the cinematic form and what happens in terms of narrative structure, plot and characterisation when presented in an audiovisual format.

Educational Aims

On satisfactory completion of the course the students will:

• have an understanding of the place of narrative and theme within science fiction in film and literature, and will be able to link the texts/films they have studied to key theoretical concepts.

• understand the relationship of science fiction films and texts to specific historical contexts.
• have learned to extend their understanding by applying concepts to films and texts not specifically studied in seminars
• produce a piece of writing that synthesizes the information offered in the weekly seminars with the students’ own comprehension of the narratives.

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts:

• H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)
• Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979)
• Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019)
• Nnedi Okorafor, Binti (2015)
• Ted Chiang, 'Story of Your Life' (1999)

Set Films:

• La Jetée (1962)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
• Twelve Monkeys (1997)
• Arrival (2016)

For further reading, see the course Moodle site.

Vacation Reading:

Please read as much as possible from the above list in preparation for the course. I have chosen shorter texts wherever possible. At the very least, you should read the Wells and Butler novels on this list before the course starts.

Seminar Topics:

• Week 1: Introduction – What is science fiction? (Moodle texts)

• Week 2: Beginnings I – Text: Wells, The Time Machine (1895) (plus selected film clips)

• Week 3: Travelling Back – Text: Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979)

• Week 4: Loops – Texts: Chris Marker (dir.), La Jetée (1962) and Terry Gilliam (dir.), Twelve Monkeys (1997)

• Week 5: Timelines – Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019)

• Week 6: Independent Study Week

• Week 7: The Journey Out – Text: Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

• Week 8: – Text: Nnedi Okorafor, Binti (2015)

• Week 9: Contact – Text: Jonathan Frakes (dir.), Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

• Week 10: Beginnings II – Texts: Ted Chiang, ‘Story of Your Life’ (1999) and Denis Villeneuve (dir.), Arrival (2016)

Further critical reading

Science Fiction

• Aldiss, Brian W. (1973) Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson)
• Baker, Brian (2014), Science Fiction: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism (London: Palgrave Macmillan)
• Booker, M. Keith and Anne-Marie Thomas (2009) The Science Fiction Handbook (Chichester, Oxford and Walden MA: Wiley-Blackwell)
• Bould, Mark, and Sherryl Vint (2011) The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction (London: Routledge)

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

Assessment: 1 x 1,000 word essay/ seminar paper (20%). This will be an analysis of a film sequence or literary text corresponding to the week’s text – students to choose / be allocated particular weeks to write on (to be posted up on Moodle site in time for class discussions); 1 x essay (3,500 words) (80%).

ENGL377: Literary Film Adaptations, Hollywood 1939

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term Only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota courses, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline:

Film historians consider 1939 to be 'the greatest year in the history of Hollywood': in that year, 365 films were released and 80 million tickets sold. This module considers how literature and film interact and conflict in that year to construct mythologies of the American past and present in the context of the Great Depression and on the eve of the Second World War. The module also considers the context of Hollywood, the functions of motion picture palaces, American film's relationship to British literature, and more.

Educational Aims

By the end of the course, successful students will have developed:

• a good knowledge of the literary film adaptations of the period in its various types and genres, an understanding of significant kinds of connection and difference between literature and film, and a capacity to read these texts and films closely
• an awareness of certain historical, political, literary and cultural issues of the period as they are manifested in the literary texts and films
• independent critical responses and perspectives in general, and a capacity to make appropriate use of secondary material such as criticism, historical information, and theory
• their existing skills (both oral and written) in the analysis of ideas, presentation of arguments, and well-expressed handling of complex issues

Set Texts

• John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937)
• Rudyard Kipling, 'Gunga Din' (1892); Soldiers Three (1888)
• Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1846)
• Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind (1936)
• Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz (1900)

See MOODLE for further required reading.

Set Films

• Of Mice and Men, dir. Lewis Milestone
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, dir. Frank Capra (based on an unpublished story by Lewis R. Foster, 'The Gentleman from Montana')
• Gunga Din, dir. George Stevens
• Wuthering Heights, dir. William Wyler
• Gone With the Wind, dir. Victor Fleming
• The Wizard of Oz, dir. Victor Fleming

Note: All of our films except for Of Mice and Men are available on Box of Broadcasts (via the LU Library).

Of Mice and Men is available on Kanopy, another streaming service you can access via the library. See MOODLE for further viewing suggestions.

Outline Syllabus

• John Steinbeck, Of mice and men (1937)
• Rudyard Kipling, ‘Gunga Din’ (1892); Soldiers three (1888)
• Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1846)
• Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the wind (1936)
• Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz (1900)
• See MOODLE for further required reading.

Set Films

• Of Mice and Men, dir. Lewis Milestone
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, dir. Frank Capra (based on an unpublished story by Lewis R. Foster, ‘The Gentleman from Montana’)
• Gunga Din, dir. George Stevens
• Wuthering Heights, dir. William Wyler
• Gone with the wind, dir. Victor Fleming
• The Wizard of Oz, dir. Victor Fleming

See MOODLE for further viewing suggestions.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

Assessment: 1 x 3500-word critical essay (80%), 1 x 1000-word film poster analysis (20%)

ENGL378: Children in Horror Fiction and Film

• Terms Taught:
  • Lent / Summer Terms only - Please note, this module is currently full for the 25/26 academic year.
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.
  • This is a strict quota module, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline:

This module will focus upon the motif of 'the child' within 20th and 21st century horror fiction and film. Students will expand upon key critical and theoretical skills and apply these skills to popular fiction and film adaptation, using the motif of the child as a focus for this. The module will also encourage students to interrogate texts from a range of theoretical perspectives such as cultural materialism, psychoanalysis, and feminism in order to reveal how and why representations of the child in the horror genre supply an important cultural, psychological, and political point of reference for literary studies.

More specifically, the module aims to explore the cultural significance of the motif of the child in horror fiction and film through analysis of themes such as innocence and evil, psychic powers, child abuse, parenting, technology and grief. We will analyse the process of adaptation from novel to film and examine how issues relating to gender are crucial to the horror genre. The module will develop in students a sophisticated ability to think critically and analytically about how an exploration of popular fiction and film can reveal deep cultural anxieties and fixations at a historical and psychological level.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:

• identify and comment on the cultural, political and psychological importance of the trope of the child in horror fiction and film
• relate key themes explored to gender issues
• apply key theoretical and critical skills to the texts discussed
• think critically about the ways in which adaptation from novel to film can ‘change’ a text

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts

• Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
• William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist (1971)
• Daphne du Maurier, Don't Look Now (1973)
• Stephen King, The Shining (1977)
• Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones (2002)

Set Films:

• The Bad Seed (1956), dir. Mervyn LeRoy
• The Innocents (1961), dir. Jack Clayton
• Don't Look Now (1973), dir. Nicholas Roeg
• The Exorcist (1973), dir. William Friedkin
• The Shining (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick
• The Ring (1998), dir. Hadeo Nakata and (2002), dir. Gore Verbinski
• The Sixth Sense (1999), dir. M. Night Shyamalan
• The Lovely Bones (2010), dir. Peter Jackson
• Hereditary (2018), dir. Ari Aster

Course Structure

Week 1 – 'The Bad Seed'? Introduction and The Bad Seed (1956), dir. Melvyn LeRoy

Week 2 – 'The Evil or Innocent Child': Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898) and film version The Innocents (1961), dir. Jack Clayton.

Week 3 – 'The Death of a Child': Daphne du Maurier, Don't Look Now (1970) and film version (1973), dir. Nicholas Roeg.

Week 4 – 'The Possessed Child': William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist (1971) and film version (1973), dir. William Friedkin.

Week 5 – 'The Psychic Child': The Sixth Sense (1999), dir. M. Night Shyamalan.

Week 6 – Independent Study Week

Week 7 – 'The Abused Child and Imagination': Stephen King, The Shining (1977) and film version (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Week 8 – 'Children and Technology': Adaptations of Kojo Suzuki's novel, The Ring (1991). A comparison of the film version (1998) dir. Hadeo Nakata and (2002), dir. Gore Verbinski.

Week 9 – 'That Red Riding Hood Thing': Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones (2002) and film version (2010) dir. Peter Jackson

Week 10 – Hereditary (2018), dir. Ari Aster

Assessment Proportions

• Exercise (1,000 words): 20%
• Essay (3,500 words): 80%

ENGL385: Literature and the Visual Arts

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Terms only - Please note, this module is currently full for the 25/26 academic year.
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

What is the role of literature in an age that is dominated by images? Is it possible to 'read' a painting? Can an artist interpret a poem in paint? This course addresses the complex relationship between literature and the visual arts, tracing key debates in aesthetic theory from Romanticism to the twenty-first century. Literature and the Visual Arts will begin with an introduction to key critical terms and an examination of the painting-inspired poetry of, for example, John Keats and W. H. Auden. Subsequent seminars will explore the work of figures such as William Blake, John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites who blur the distinction between literature and art; the revival of the Pop Art tradition and postmodern narrative practices; and, finally, the fusion of word and image in graphic novels including Art Spiegelman's Maus and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. The module will draw on the unique resources of the University's Ruskin Library and rare book archive.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of this modules, you should be able to:

• demonstrate a detailed understanding of the historic relationship between literature and the visual arts
• show an advanced awareness of narrative style and genre in ?image texts' and other media inspired by the visual arts
• display an awareness of the philosophical, cultural and social contexts that inform texts studied on the course
• construct clear and critically informed interpretations of literary texts that engage with visual media and visual texts that engage with literature

Outline Syllabus

• Benjamin, Walter, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, trans. by J. A. Underwood (London: Penguin, 2008)
• Blake, William, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [Facsimile edition], ed. Sir Geoffrey Keynes (Oxford: OUP, 1975)
• Birch, Dinah, (ed.) John Ruskin: Selected Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
• Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis (London: Vintage, 2008) [Complete text]
• Smith, Ali, Autumn (London: Penguin, 2017)
• Spiegelman, Art, The Complete MAUS (London: Penguin, 2003)

Other seminar material will be made available as handouts and via Moodle

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

ENGL387: Victorian Popular Fiction

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Terms only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English.
  • This is a strict quota module, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

The course will be centred upon one key text each week but we will be making connections across and between texts and genres as well. (Is Treasure Island an adventure story or a work of children's fiction?) Within each session we will explore texts in terms of overlapping themes within a genre and the issues they raise for how we interpret the subject (Colonialism/ Imperialism/ Gender/Education) as well as thinking about issues of narrative structure and voice and the involvement of the reader. The module will also encourage students to consider the differences made by different forms of representation (e.g. serialisation for adventure stories; illustrations alongside the story for Holmes; initial dramatic representation of Peter Pan). It will be taught by an initial short presentation each week and then workshop type activities. Students may also be expected to contribute informal presentations.

Outline Syllabus

Set Texts

Wherever possible, buy either the Oxford Worlds Classics or Penguin Version of the text so that we are all working from the same edition in class (otherwise it becomes difficult to cross-reference). AVOID Wordsworth editions for the most part. Conan Doyle, The Original Illustrated Strand Sherlock Holmes: Facsimile Edition (paperback) is worth getting. Cheap but gives ALL works and original illustrations. Includes The Hound of The Baskervilles, though you can also buy this in World Classics/Penguin editions.

• W. Collins, The Moonstone (Worlds Classics, Penguin edition) [Start reading early – quite long!]
• R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island (Worlds Classics or Penguin)
• H.R. Haggard, King Solomon's Mines (Oxford Worlds Classics or Penguin)
• J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (Buy Penguin edition which gives two different forms of the story)
• Rudyard Kipling, Kim (Oxford World Classics or Penguin)
• FH Burnett, The Secret Garden
• E.E. Nesbit, Five Children and It (Puffin Classics) and The Wouldbegoods [tricky to get hold of I will provide excerpts]

Assessment Proportions

• 100% Coursework

Assessment: 20% essay 1000 words, 80% essay 3500 words.

Assessment 1 [Week 6]:

• Comparative Analysis Task for Detective or Adventure Fiction – Students can either undertake a close analysis of a choice of passages from two of the texts studied up to Week 6 OR opt to write a comparative piece which applies a particular concept or theoretical approach to two texts from the same genres.

Assessment 2 [End of Term]:

• 3,500 Word Essay

ENGL388: Bible and Literature

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Terms Only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.
  • This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students.

Course Description

Course Outline:

In this module we will look at a selection of biblical texts alongside literary works that appropriate, rewrite and subvert them. We will be thinking about the Bible as literature; the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and literature; and what the Bible does to a literary text. By the end of the course you should be more familiar and knowledgeable about the Bible, its genres, ideas and narratives, and be able to appreciate its literary qualities. You will develop skills of exploring the relation between a literary text and the biblical text it invokes: in what ways does awareness of the Bible provoke more profound readings of a literary text? Does rewriting refine or subvert the Bible? Throughout the course we will also have in focus issues related to reading, interpretation and adaptation that will be relevant to your wider studies.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of the course, you will be able to

• demonstrate an understanding of the character, genres and variety of texts in the Bible

• show a detailed knowledge of a selection of biblical books

• display an understanding of different literary approaches to biblical texts

• show an awareness of the differences between devotional and secular uses of the Bible in literary works

• display an awareness of a range of critical and theoretical approaches to the use of the Bible in literature and the different reasons why writers invoke the Bible

Outline Syllabus

Biblical works:

Please read from the Bible widely. Specific texts we will discuss are: Genesis (especially chapters 1-4 and 30); 1 and 2 Samuel (especially chapters 11 and 12); Job; Song of Songs; Matthew 26-27. Please read these in the King James Version (these are available cheaply in second hand books shops and are identifiable by a preface ‘To the Most High and Mighty Prince James’).

Literary works:

• Margaret Attwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
• William Blake, Illustrations to the Book of Job
• Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve
• Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd (preferred: Norton Critical edition, 1986)
• The Tree of Life, Dir. By Terence Mallick
• John Milton, Paradise Lost, books 4 and 9
• Mark Twain, The Diary of Adam and Eve (preferred edition: Hesperus, 2002)

A selection of poetry invoking the Passion narrative including – Poems available on Moodle: John Donne, 'Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward', Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'The Windhover', Christina Rossetti, 'Good Friday'; Emily Dickinson, '"Remember me" implored the Thief'; Sylvia Plath, 'Mary's Song'; Geoffrey Hill, 'Canticle for Good Friday'.

Assessment Proportions

• Essay(s): 100%

Assessment: 1 x 1,000-word close reading exercise (20%) and 1x 3,500-word essay (80%).

ENGL389: Women Writers of Britain and America

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature.
  • This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students.

Course Description

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf famously asks, 'what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister?' and goes on to explore the obstacles to literary success that she might have encountered. This module follows Woolf's lead by seeking to redress the historical marginalisation of women writers in the English literary canon through an exploration of how women have come to writing at different historical moments, what they have chosen to write, and how. A selection of texts from the 17th century through to the 21st, encompassing autobiographical forms, the novel, poetry and drama, are used to examine relationships between gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity and literary production, and to explore continuities, connections and disparities between representations of female experience. The module is historical in terms of both the range of primary texts it addresses, and in the history of feminist theoretical and critical approaches it provides. It is structured generically, in order to facilitate formal analysis of the texts under consideration.

Educational Aims

By the end of the course, successful students will have developed:

• an informed knowledge and understanding of women's writing from different genres and from a range of historical periods
• their ability to contextualise literary material and its production and reception
• an understanding of genre theory
• an awareness of different theoretical and critical approaches, including an awareness of their historical specificity and political currency
• their ability to make appropriate use of secondary material such as criticism and theory in assessed work

Outline Syllabus

Set texts will include:

• Jane Austen, Persuasion (London: 1818)
• Pat Barker, Regeneration (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990)
• Vera Brittan, Chronicle of Youth: Great War Diary 1913-1917 ed. Alan Bishop (London: Phoenix, 2000) [Moodle]
• Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, The Convent of Pleasure (1668) [Moodle]
• Carol Ann Duffy, The World’s Wife (London: Picador, 2000/revised edition 2010)
• Jackie Kay, The Adoption Papers (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1991)
• Toni Morrison, Beloved (London: Chatto and Windus,1987)
• Dorothy Osborne, Letters (1652-3) [Moodle]
• Sarah Waters, The Night Watch (London: Virago, 2006)
• Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (London: Hogarth Press, 1929)
• Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere Journals (1800-3) [Moodle]

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%
• Assessment: Short in-class individual presentation/submission: 20%; 3,500-word essay: 80%

ENGL391: Premodern Gothic

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • Must have significant previous studies in English Literature
  • This is a strict quota course, and there will be only a limited number of places (if any) available to visiting students

Course Description

Course Outline

'[T]he Gothic', as Nick Groom argues, 'was not simply a reaction to the Enlightenment, and the rise of the Gothic novel is part of a longer history' (Groom, 2012, p.xiv). In coining the term Premodern Gothic, this innovative half-unit considers some of the ways in which a range of generically diverse texts produced in England between c.1450 and 1600 engage with Gothic tropes and sensibilities – e.g. ghosts, vampires, castles, darkness, magic, terror and wonder - before 'the rise of the Gothic novel'.

Educational Aims

On completion of the module, students should have…

• engaged closely with a range of generically distinct forms of premodern writing and their relationship to Gothic tropes and sensibilities
• acquired an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts of the texts studied on the module
• engaged with digital research techniques and methodologies through the use of Early English Books Online

Outline Syllabus

Students will be asked to purchase Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Broadview, 1992), Medieval Ghost Stories (Boydell and Brewer, 2006), Titus Andronicus (any edition), Hamlet (any edition) and The Faerie Queene (Penguin, 1979). The other primary texts will be offered as scanned texts via MOODLE and links to scholarly electronic archives. Students will be expected to bring hard and/or e-copies of all set texts to the weekly seminars.

Set Texts:

• Anon., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Broadview, 1992)
• Anon., Medieval Ghost Stories, ed by Andrew Joynes (Boydell and Brewer, 2006)
• William Baldwin, Beware the Cat [EEBO: online]
• Thomas Nashe, Terrors of the Night [EEBO: online]
• William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (any edition)
• William Shakespeare, Hamlet (any edition)
• Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed by Thomas P. Roche (Penguin, 1979)
• Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (Project Gutenberg; online)

Vacation Reading:

I recommend that you read Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto before Week 1.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework 100%

Assessment: 1 x 1,500-word essay (30%) 1 x 3000 word essay (70%)