Overview
Top reasons to study with us
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6
6th for English
The Guardian University Guide (2024)
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6
6th for Creative Writing
The Complete University Guide (2024)
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UK Top 20 for History Complete University Guide 2024
Why Lancaster?
- Design your degree, selecting from a wide range of modules, exploring history and literature from the ancient to the modern, and the local to the global
- Study in a city steeped in history, and with the Lake District, home of the Romantic poets, on your doorstep
- Hear from visiting authors and academics at our many literary events, on campus, online, and in Lancaster’s historic Castle Quarter
- Enhance your knowledge in regular small-group seminars with inspiring, world-class scholars
- Graduate with skills in analysis, communication, and persuasion that will make you stand out in the jobs market
Explore a vast range of literary works, from ancient myth to the contemporary graphic novel, and study a host of historical movements, from the fall of Rome to the rise of human rights. Through engagement with texts and artefacts crossing continents and centuries, our interdisciplinary programme will immerse you in both literature and history.
Map your own journey
You will be able to select from a wide range of modules (from ‘Medieval Theatre’ to ‘Urban Gothic’ and ‘The Normans in Italy’ to ‘The Cold War’) and, in your third-year dissertation, be free to explore a literary and/or historical topic or theme of your own choosing. In literature, this could be, say, Renaissance sermons or filmic representations of World War One; in history, this could be, say, a global phenomenon like the Transatlantic Slave Trade or a local story like the Lancashire ‘Witch’ Trials.
Support at every step of the way
We keep our seminars small so that we can really get to know our students. If you choose to write a dissertation, you’ll receive one-to-one guidance from your tutor to deep dive into a topic you’re passionate about.
To supplement your studies, you’ll have a range of opportunities to develop real-world skills that will prepare you for your future career. You might choose to get involved with one of our four student-run literary journals (Cake, Flash, Lux and Errant), giving you invaluable experience in writing or publishing. You may also wish to take part in our schools placement module or our heritage placement module, where past students have worked with organisations like The National Trust and the Duchy of Lancaster.
Careers
Throughout your degree here you will be learning vital professional skills, such as written and oral communication, thinking both critically and creatively, and presenting well-researched arguments.
A degree from Lancaster will help you to develop a versatile, transferable skillset that will open up a plethora of exciting career opportunities.
Some of the sectors you might choose to pursue a career in include:
- Journalism
- Publishing
- Heritage organisations and museums
- Charities
- Marketing
- Teaching
Many Lancaster graduates also choose to go on to further study, undertaking a Master’s degree or PhD.
Lancaster University is dedicated to ensuring that you gain a highly reputable degree. We are also dedicated to ensuring that you graduate with relevant life and work-based skills. We are unique in that every student is eligible to participate in The Lancaster Award, which offers you the opportunity to complete activities such as work experience, employability/career development, campus community and social development.
Visit our Employability section for full details.
Entry Requirements
Grade Requirements
A Level AAB
IELTS 6.5 overall with at least 5.5 in each component. For other English language qualifications we accept, please see our English language requirements webpages.
Other Qualifications
International Baccalaureate 35 points overall with 16 points from the best 3 Higher Level subjects
BTEC Distinction, Distinction, Distinction
We welcome applications from students with a range of alternative UK and international qualifications, including combinations of qualification. Further guidance on admission to the University, including other qualifications that we accept, frequently asked questions and information on applying, can be found on our general admissions webpages.
Contact Admissions Team + 44 (0) 1524 592028 or via ugadmissions@lancaster.ac.uk
Course Structure
Lancaster University offers a range of programmes, some of which follow a structured study programme, and some which offer the chance for you to devise a more flexible programme to complement your main specialism.
Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, and the University will make every reasonable effort to offer modules as advertised. In some cases changes may be necessary and may result in some combinations being unavailable, for example as a result of student feedback, timetabling, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes and new research. Not all optional modules are available every year.
Core
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Literature in Time : Continuity and Change
In this year-long module you will encounter a broad range of literature -- from the Middle Ages to the 21st century, moving from Chaucer, through Shakespeare and Milton, to Virginia Woolf, Alison Bechdel, Paul Muldoon, and many others. You will also encounter a whole range of literary genres including plays, films, short stories, novels, poetry, essays, and the graphic novel. The module is currently focused around themes related to: Englishness and Empire; Authority and Revolution; Gender, Body, and Voice; and Adaptation and Queering. The module concludes with a range of mini-modules relating literary research to real-world scenarios; recent options have included: Mediaeval Manuscripts in the Digital Age; Creating a Literary Podcast; Building Minecraft Worlds for the Teaching of Literature; Creating a Literary Tour; Reading Lancaster Priory; and Re-writing Waiting for Godot.
The module concludes with a range of "mini-modules" relating literary research to real-world scenarios; recent options have included: Mediaeval Manuscripts in the Digital Age; Creating a Literary Podcast; Building Minecraft Worlds for the Teaching of Literature; Creating a Literary Tour; Reading Lancaster Priory; and Re-writing Waiting for Godot.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
Optional
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Introduction to Creative Writing
This year-long module is focused on the development of your own writing. You will be encouraged to experiment with various forms and genres, to explore new approaches in drafting and editing your own work, and to develop the gentle art of responding to the work of fellow students. The lectures will introduce you to a range of exciting texts and helpful terminology, and offer insight from published authors. The follow-up workshops allow you to practice technique, mature your voice, and nurture your writerly instincts.
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Literature, Place and Space: Elisions and Environments
This year long module organises your study of literature through the frame of space, exploring a wide range of major ancient, modern, and contemporary texts, all of which relate to such particular places as archive, museum, castle, stage, mountain, sea, border, plantation, stage, glacier, womb etc. Some of the spaces we will have in mind relate directly to the historic city of Lancaster itself and to its wonderful location near to both the Lakes and the coast, and some of the spaces will relate most directly to places far away. You will study texts such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure, Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and Ali Smith’s How to Be Both.
The module concludes with a range of "mini-modules", each one focusing on a very specific place, or kind of place. Options may include: the North, the map, the church, the digital, the desert.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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World Literature
This year-long module seeks to look beyond the boundaries of traditional courses in English Literature by enabling you to explore a wide and exciting range of literatures in English and in translation. These include texts that have influenced the development of literary English, from the Bible and classical figures such as Ovid and Homer, through to Medieval and Early Modern authors such as Dante and Rabelais. It also considers modern and contemporary world authors in translation (such as Kafka, Borges, Salih and Murukami), as well as new-media writing and the graphic novel. The module concludes with a creative-critical project which introduces students to the possibilities afforded here by creative modes of literary criticism.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year
Core
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The Theory and Practice of Criticism
This year-long module enables you to explore both what literary criticism currently is and what it may yet become. You will have the opportunity to consider a whole range of major theoretical and philosophical concepts, such as the body, race, gender, violence, ecology, God, time, death, war, self, and the animal, etc. We currently look at a range of fascinating modern thinkers, ranging from Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, through to more recent figures such as Simone Weil, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Fred Moten, Cornel West, and Sara Ahmed. You will have the opportunity to write in both short and long form, to present orally alongside fellow students, and to explore, if you wish, radically experimental modes of theoretical writing.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
Optional
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America Revisioned
This module explores American writing as part of a 'cultural declaration of independence' in the 19th century, with particular focus on literatures of dissidence and imaginative resistance including radical abolitionist writings. What we call ‘American Literature’ and how we define America and ‘the American experience’ depends on who is writing and to whom. In this module we encounter many different voices, many conflicting and contrasting views, a diversity of complex experience, and a great range of writing in form and style. And we explore such as: What role do different literary forms play in narrating the self? How does American writing seek to establish a new way of looking at the world? And, how and why does literature help shape forms of protest and new critiques of modernity?. Key writers usually include Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Rebecca Harding Davis, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs.
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Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
This module explores colonial writing at the end of empire, the explosion of new national literatures in the era of decolonisation in the middle of the twentieth century, and contemporary writing that draws on and reinvents these decolonising commitments. Our interest throughout will be in how literature reflects and critiques imperial impulses and anxieties, and how literature undertakes the work of cultural, political, and psychic decolonisation. We read both exciting major writers, key to the canon of colonial and postcolonial literature, and new voices that grapple with the ongoing powers of empire and racism.
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Contemporary World Literature: Migration and Displacement
Migration is arguably the defining characteristic of the post-WW2 world. This module explores contemporary creative representations of migration in multiple modes - considering exile, expatriation, travel, urbanisation, and statelessness in literary genres that include fiction, memoirs, poetry and travel writing, as well as some visual media and philosophy. In particular, we critically examine the voluntary nature of migration, emphasising different kinds of displacement. The module, taught in a City of Sanctuary, draws on histories that encompass transatlantic slavery, the Holocaust, postcolonial and climate displacement, travelling cultures, globalisation, and an ongoing ‘refugee crisis.’
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Empire and Liberty: American Literature Pre-1900
This course explores how American Literature has evolved from its colonial origins, with particular emphasis on key writing from the seventeenth to the nineteenth-centuries. What we call ‘American Literature’ and how we define America and ‘the American experience’ depends on who is writing and to whom. We shall encounter many different voices, many conflicting and contrasting views, a diversity of complex experience, and a great range of writing in form and style. We pay particular attention to colonialism and freedom in the literature of early modern America, including rival ideas of self, nation, race and religion. And we explore questions such as: Why does the idea of America as a 'city on a hill' become so vital? How is the 'frontier' imagined? What strategies do writers use to challenge the hegemony of colonialism? Key texts usually include Native American Oral Literature and the writings of De Las Casas, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Wheatley, Jefferson, and Franklin.
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Literature, Film, and Media
This year-long module explores the adaption of literature to film and other media. We currently focus on how Austen’s so-called ‘classic’ Pride and Prejudice is adapted to classical Hollywood cinema, and how Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been adapted to both postmodern Hollywood and Bollywood cinema. We also explore the trajectories between Carroll’s Alice books and film animation, and how Dante’s Inferno has been adapted to a videogame. We study a range of other literary texts and media, ranging from children’s fiction to horror, social realism to science fiction, poetry to graphic novels, and reverential adaptations to outright parodies. The module includes a creative project that enables you to produce your own work of adaptation. This may take many forms – written, (audio)visual, digital, or three-dimensional -- and/or take the form of a game, or production, or performance, etc.
The details of this module (for example, the materials studied) vary from year to year.
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Love, Sex and Death in Early Literature
This module focuses on the ways in which early modern English 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 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 are 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 Philip Sidney, Mary Wroth, and John Donne to the dark and disturbing theatre of John Ford.
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Power, Politics and Place in Early Literature
This module examines early modern literary representations of power, politics and place. We 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 examines 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, and 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.
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Revolutionary Romanticism
We begin by understanding the full historical context of the French Revolution and the extraordinary impact this had on all areas of literature and thought. We examine revolutionary writing of the Romantic period, including the poetry of Anna Barbauld, William Blake, and William Wordsworth, and the prose of Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft. The second half of the term turns its attention to the emergence of the Gothic in the 1790s, and dives into this popular and lasting form.
The course aims to give students a sense of the diverse range of writers in this period. We use close knowledge of key texts to tackle broader, 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.
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Romantic Subjectivity and the Self
On this course we examine the relationship between politics and poetics for second-generation poets Anna Barbauld and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and then the remarkable and shocking slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, and the orientalism of S. T. Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey. Finally, the course moves inward to explore the core theme of subjectivity and the self, a theme that finds expression in both positive and negative ways in Byron, Keats, Clare, and Smith.
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Victorian Beliefs
Given the extensive transformations experienced in the nineteenth century, it is no surprise that Victorian 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 explore: 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. The authors we study will change from year to year but might include figures such as Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Christina Rossetti.
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Victorian Experiments
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 explore that interest in experimentation by looking at a range of literature of the period, including novels, short fiction, and poetry. We think about experimentation thematically (e.g., science, spiritualism, vivisection) and formally (e.g., narrative perspective, fantasy, dramatic monologues, and sprung rhythm). The authors we study change from year to year but might include figures such as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, H.G. Wells, Charles Kingsley, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Browning, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Vernon Lee.
Core
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Your Year Abroad
In your third year you will study at one of our international partner universities. This will help you to develop your global outlook, expand your professional network, and gain cultural and personal skills. It is also an opportunity to gain a different perspective on your major subject through studying the subject in another country.
You will choose specialist modules relating to your degree and also have the opportunity to study other modules from across the host university.
Places at overseas partners vary each year and have historically included Australia, USA, Canada, Europe and Asia.
During your degree you’ll spend a year as a registered student at one of our approved partner universities in North America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand or Europe.
Optional
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21st Century Theory: Literature, Culture, Criticism
In 21st Century Theory, we will build upon the general introduction to critical and cultural theory given on ENGL201 by focusing on one specific theme in contemporary theory: biopolitics. To explore biopolitics – or the politics of life itself – we will examine a selection of classic theoretical works by Michel Foucault, Georgio Agamben and others and then read them alongside some key literary and filmic texts from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go to the Batman Trilogy. This course will seek to address the following questions. What exactly is biopolitics? How have theorists, novelists and film-makers imagined such concepts as sovereign power, bare life, the state of exception and so on? To what extent might it be possible to resist the biopolitical hold over our political imaginary?
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Between the Acts: Inter-War Writing, 1919-1939
The course will begin with writing that looks back to the First World War, and end with writing that anticipates the Second World War. In between, you will explore and interrogate the inter-war ‘moment’ through close attention to texts by such as D.H. Lawrence,Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and W H Auden. The course will focus on many of the great themes of the period such as exile, unemployment, Englishness, eugenics, militarisation, and political commitment, as well as many of the great cultural motifs of the period such as borders, radios, planes, cars, trains, cameras, and telephones. Close attention will also be paid to many of the great intellectual debates of the period such as the nature of history, the role of the State in everyday life, and the place of literary experimentation in time of war.
The details of this module (for example the texts or authors studied) may vary from year to year.
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Bible and Literature
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; what the Bible does to a literary text. We will explore questions such as: in what ways does awareness of the Bible provoke more profound readings of a literary text? and does rewriting refine or subvert the Bible? We currently study work by such as Margaret Attwood, William Blake, Thomas Hardy, Angela Carter, John Donne, and Sylvia Plath, as well as Terence Mallick’s film The Tree of Life.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Children in Horror Fiction and Film
This module will focus upon the motif of ‘the child’ within 20th and 21st century horror fiction and film, and aims to explore the cultural significance of this motif through analysis of themes such as innocence and evil, psychic powers, child abuse, parenting, technology and grief. 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 both historical and psychological levels. We currently explore literary texts such as Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898), Daphne du Maurier, Don’t Look Now (1973), and Stephen King, The Shining (1977), and films such as The Bad Seed (1956), dir. Mervyn LeRoy, The Exorcist (1973), dir. William Friedkin, and Hereditary (2018), dir. Ari Aster.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Contemporary Literature in English
This module explores different kinds of contemporary literature: postmodern, Gothic, postcolonial/world, post-9/11, feminist/queer, experimental, etc. Beginning in the 1950s, we consider the explosion of new literatures from the decolonising/newly postcolonial world and the rise of new literary forms in the post-war period. Recurrent themes include borders, margins, haunting, apocalypse, rewriting, migration, and metamorphosis. Texts currently studied include Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958), Alan Moore,?& D. Gibbons, Watchmen (1987), Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places (2000), Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000), Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (2003), Marlene NourbeSe Philip, Zong! (2008), Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot, Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes (2012), and Sally Rooney, Normal People (2018).
The details of this module (for example the texts or authors studied) may vary from year to year.
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Contemporary Middle Eastern Literatures
The twenty-first century has seen the emergence of Middle Eastern literature in English and translation as one of the most exciting new areas of world literature. The region has experienced, so far this century, the ‘war on terror’, revolutions and wintery aftermaths, civil wars, sectarian violence, the rise and fall of ‘Islamic State’, and an ongoing refugee crisis. On this course, we will explore some of the shapes and styles of contemporary Middle Eastern literature, the concerns and aspirations that drive it, and its growing international visibility. We will study novels, short stories, and new genres from the region, in English and in translation. No prior knowledge is needed.
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Culture, Heritage and Creative Industries: Work Placement
Course Outline:
This module is run by the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, with the support of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Engagement team and the central Careers Team. It aims to enhance students’ employability by providing an assessed work placement opportunity as an optional module It will also encourage students actively to think about the transferability of skills gained through the study of English Literature and/or Creative Writing.
The Department, via the FASS Engagement team, will set up a number of work placements in the (broadly defined) culture, heritage and creative sectors: with, for example, publishers, museums, newspapers, heritage sites, and arts venues. Students may alternatively source their own work placements, subject to prior discussion with the FASS Placements provider. Information on how to source a placement will be circulated to all enrolled students during summer.
Recent placements include: Copywriter at Copify; Publishing and Editorial Intern at Saraband; Project Assistant at Lancaster City Council; Communications Assistant at Three Left Feet Theatre Company.
Students must be prepared to pay their own transport/accommodation costs, though a small Departmental contribution toward travel can be applied for. It is expected that placements will be either close to Lancaster University or to the student’s home; many placements occur remotely. Students typically work for 30-40 hours with their host organization (not all of which will necessarily be on-site) in the Lent term.
They maintain contact with both the departmental course convenor and FASS placements team throughout the placement period. Placement providers are required to complete risk assessment and health and safety forms and to ensure an induction process. Both students and placement providers are required to sign a Learning Agreement.
Please note that you cannot take both this module and ENGL 376 Schools Volunteering.
Please also note that the maximum number of students on this course is fixed, and that in fairness to students, and in dialogue with the FASS Placements Officer, we have chosen to set up a selection process. If you choose this course, you will be sent an online form to complete as an application. The criteria will be enthusiasm, commitment, and having aspirations which can be realistically met on this module. You do not have to have prior placement experience, but it is fine if you do.
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Dissertation Unit
Course Aims and Objectives:
The final-year Dissertation is your opportunity to devise, research, and explore a topic of your own choice through a programme of directed independent study. You will be helped to begin your thinking at the end of your second year and then, through your third year, you will develop your research, thinking, and writing, as you build toward a maximum of 10,000 words. You will be supported throughout by your appointed supervisor, with whom you will have four 40-minite one-to-one tutorials. In addition, there are two overview lectures (one in the Michaelmas Term and one in the Lent Term) as well as four research skills seminars.
Almost anything is possible: some students explore famous literary names or themes, whilst others explore obscure figures and unusual topics; some draw on the University Library’s special collections or those housed within The Ruskin Library, whilst others go way beyond Lancaster to develop their research; some are inspired by the medievalism of historic Lancaster or the Romanticism of nearby Lake District, whilst others are drawn to the far textual shores of the digital world; some build towards MA study, whilst others build toward the world of work; and, finally, some write in classic literary critical styles, whilst others push the boundaries of literary studies in all sorts of new and startling ways.
Recent topics have included:
- Living in Liminality, Finding Yourself: Muslim Women's Boundary Negotiation and
Identity Formation
- How is the Value of Sacrifice Presented in Post-War Japanese Literature?
- A Storm in Five Acts: King Lear, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Walter Benjamin
- Academia and Ecclesia: Following the Academy After the Church
- Playing with Time: Queer Temporality in Video Games
- “Out of the ash / I rise” : An Exploration of the Editing of Sylvia Plath’s Posthumous
Publications and Legacy
- A Divine Being and a Fallen World: Milton's Justification of God's Ways to 17th Century
England
- Virginia Woolf’s Paintings: Visual Arts and the Figure of the Artist in the Writings of
Virginia Woolf
- Understanding the Effects of War on Children through World War Two Literature
- Green Romanticism: An Ecocritical Reading of William Wordsworth and Mary Shelley
- Kaleidoscopic Epistemology in the world of Anna Kavan
- “You'll be hungry all the time”: Food and Hunger in Jim Crace and Samuel Beckett
- RS Thomas: Post-Romanticism and Spirituality
The details of this module may vary from year to year.
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Gothic Entanglements: Bodies, Spaces, Texts
This year-long course offers an in-depth exploration of the Gothic mode from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century. It is split into five sections: Defining, Localising, Salvaging, Haunting and Transforming. These themes have been chosen to enable the combination of traditional Gothic concepts (ghosts, monsters) with new theoretical ideas addressing a range of topics including gender, sexuality, decolonisation, and environmental crisis. A small selection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts, incorporating both canonical and less familiar works, introduce key concepts and establish a foundation for approaching a diverse and challenging collection of contemporary works. These will cover anglophone writing in a variety of literary forms, including long and short-form fiction, drama, and the graphic novel. Asking the question of what Gothic *does*, rather than what Gothic *is*, the module aims to challenge preconceived opinions, boldly enter difficult territories, and show how Gothic may be used as a critical tool to address some of the most pressing questions facing contemporary Western culture.
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Jane Austen
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.
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Literary Film Adaptations, Hollywood 1939
Film historians consider 1939 to be ‘the greatest year in the history of Hollywood,’ a year in which 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. Texts currently studied include John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937), Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1846), and Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and films such as Mr Smith Goes to Washington, dir. Frank Capra, Gunga Din, dir. George Stevens, and Gone with the Wind, dir. Victor Fleming.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Literature and Religion at the Fin de Siecle
Friedrich Nietzsche was far from alone in suggesting that God had died by the end of the nineteenth century; however, the literature of the fin de siècle (c. 1880-1914) paints a very different picture from the one offered by those who suggest that religion simply disappeared. A number of prominent writers in the period converted to Catholicism, whilst others explored the permeable boundaries between orthodox belief and esoteric spirituality. Those who turned to literature to think about religion did so in a wide variety of ways: experimenting with form, narrating religious experience, exploring the relationship between spirit and matter, and thinking about religious practice in ways both conventional and bizarre. Texts currently studied include: Oscar Wilde, Salome, G. K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown, and poetry produced by the Decadent movement.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Literature and the Visual Arts
Is it possible to ‘read’ a painting? Can an artist interpret a poem in paint? This module 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; the advent of photography; and, finally, the fusion of word and image in graphic novels including texts such as 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.
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Medieval Theatre: Drama Before Shakespeare
What did theatre look like before Shakespeare? How were devils and vices, divinity and virtue, coronations and carnivals staged during the Medieval period? This module will introduce you to a range of medieval drama, including mystery cycles, civic pageantry, morality plays and interludes, as we explore the weird and wonderful drama of towns, cities, and courts, and look at some of the earliest professional companies to identify the distinctive features of medieval English theatre. As well as reading texts, you will watch recordings of modern performances of medieval theatre. NB No prior knowledge of Middle English is required --the use of modern translations is encouraged to aid understanding.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Modernism - Then and Since
This course examines the early twentieth-century explosion of literary experimentation known as Modernism. Often this explosion is understood as a movement that ends around 1939; however, this course explores the ways in which Modernism continues, through and beyond the Second World War, as a restless spirit of experimentation. The course, then, has two parts. In the Michaelmas Term we explore ‘Modernisms Then’ (c1900 to c1939) where all students study major modernist texts – these usually include work by such as T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and authors involved in the Harlem Renaissance. In the Lent Term we explore ‘Modernisms Since’ (c1939 on) where each student chooses two 4-week min-modules from a range of options – these options usually include such options as: ‘British Migrant Modernisms;’ ‘The Woodcut Novel: Stories Without Words’; ‘Late American Modernisms’; and ‘Godot On – The Later Samuel Beckett.’
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Monstrous Bodies: Romantic Period Poetry and Prose
Exploring a range of texts and genres from 1790s to the 1820s, this module will consider the importance of the physical human body, in both health and sickness. Examining the historical context in which these texts were written, we will look at such topics as illness, death, doctors, medical treatments, recreational drug use, pregnancy, disability, physical strength, sexuality, sensuality, health, race, gender, physiognomy, and phrenology. We shall consider such questions as: how did Romantic poets and prose writers imagine the body? what did they think of the distinction between the mind and body or between the body and soul? how was the body understood medically? and how are people made ‘monsters’ in the period, and for what political purposes? The module will explore how bodies are not to be thought of as neutral or ahistorical but instead as historically-contingent sites of dispute.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Performing Death, Desire and Gender
How are acts of desire, murder, fake and ‘real’ deaths represented on stage in early modern drama and how are these experiences gendered? This module will explore both the construction and deconstruction of death, desire, and genders, by focusing on performance. The performativity of gender, on stage and beyond, was materialised in the theatres of early modern England where boys played female roles, thus often representing both female desire and same-sex desire at the same time. We will study texts by Marlowe, Middleton, Heywood, Webster, Wroth as well as some contemporary productions and film adaptations. We will also engage in some short practical explorations -- such as getting the text ‘on its feet’; and the module will culminate in a series of short presentations and performances by the group. No previous experience of (or expertise in) acting is necessary.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Postcolonial Environments
It’s an illuminating fact that the very phrase ‘climate change’ was first deployed by colonising thinkers who wanted to transform local environments to serve their purposes. Today, it is clearer than ever that the catastrophic effects of global climate change will be most keenly felt by the global poor, especially in colonised or postcolonial spaces. This module explores how postcolonial writing, from a variety of locations, grapples with environmental change, crisis and collapse, especially the looming spectres of the so-called ‘Anthropocene.’ We’ll read established and emerging voices from Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. Texts currently studied include: Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, J M Coetzee, Life and Times of Michael K, and V S Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Premodern Gothic
It has been argued that the Gothic, and the rise of the Gothic novel, is part of a history that goes back to long before the eighteenth century. This module therefore coins the term ‘Premodern Gothic’ to consider 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 (ghosts, vampires, castles, darkness, magic, terror, and wonder etc.) long before the rise of the Gothic novel. Texts currently studied include: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, and Thomas Nashe’s The Terrors of the Night.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Schools Volunteering Project
This module is run as a partnership between the Department of English Literature & Creative Writing and the University’s Schools Outreach Office, and normally involves a 10-week placement in a local school. This will usually include classroom observation, teacher assistance, and the opportunity to design and develop a teaching-related ‘special project’ to be conducted with a designated group of students or the class as a whole. This will enable you to develop confidence in communicating your subject, as well as an increased awareness of the roles of schools and universities in educational processes and structures.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Science Fiction in Literature and Film
This module will trace the development of science fiction (or 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. It will encompass narratives of time travel, evolution, and temporal dislocation, and consider journeys, encounters, and species, as well as questions of human subjectivity, gender, race, transcendence, love, and loss. Work currently studied include texts such as: H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895), Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979), and Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019); and films such as: La Jetée (1962) 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), and Arrival (2016).
The details of this module (for example the texts or authors studied) may vary from year to year.
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Shakespeare
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.
As part of their assessment for this course, students may opt to take part in a full-scale public performance of one of the plays we have studied; this is usually staged at Lancaster Castle.
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The Byron-Shelley Circle
This module examines the work of three of the great writers of the Romantic period: the poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, and the novelist Mary Shelley. Famously, these three writers lived and worked together during the summer of 1816, an episode that produced two of the dominant myths of modern literature – Frankenstein (in Mary Shelley’s novel) and the Vampire (in a story based on Byron by another member of the group, John Polidori) – both of which we will examine. Throughout their careers these writers were engaged in a creative and critical conversation with each other that addressed major themes including: conceptions of the heroic; the possibilities of political change; literary, scientific and biological creation; empire, slavery, and the East; transgressive love; gender roles; and the Gothic. The module will provide an opportunity to study in detail these writers’ works, and to consider them within their historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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The Places and Spaces of Children’s Literature from the 18th to the Early 20th Century
This module is centred upon understanding Children’s Literature as a genre which evolves over time and doing so in the context of the places and spaces of fiction. Our two core themes are: first, the gradual move away from highly didactic reading that must teach children a clear moral lesson, towards reading for pleasure and enjoyment; and, second, the effect of this shift on spatial representation in the texts. We will compare the relationship between realist and fantastic spaces and consider the reason so many children's books are "bridge" texts that start and end in the real with the main narrative set in a fantasy world. Texts usually studied include: Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Robinson Crusoe (1719), The Water Babies (1852), Peter Pan (1901), The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937), and The Borrowers (1952).
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Urban Gothic in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Fiction
This course explores twentieth and twenty-first century texts about the city that use Gothic generic conventions and modalities. The built environments of the Gothic are often plastic and mutable, the setting for animate, changeable, and malevolent forces. 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. While most sources will be textual (currently: Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor (1985), N. K. Jemisin, How Long ‘Til Black Future Month (2018), Caitlín R. Kiernan, 'Goggles (c.1910)' (2012), and Patrick McGrath, Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now (2005)) these will be complemented with reference to screen media, fine art, graphic novel and UrbEx photography.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Victorian Gothic
In the Victorian period, the decaying castles, corrupt priests and ancestral curses that were so prominent in the first phase of the Gothic novel gave way to an increased emphasis on spectral and monstrous others: ghosts, witches, werewolves, vampires, mummies and other creatures of the night. The module will explore these phenomena in their historical, cultural and literary contexts, with particular focus on emerging discourses of gender, sexuality, colonialism and class. The module will pay special attention to visual aspects of the Gothic, examining book illustration, painting and photography from the period and their relationship with Gothic texts. Students will be asked to consider the relationship between newly emergent forms of modernity (from medical discourses to photography) and the preoccupation with history and the past that is a generic feature of the Gothic. Texts will comprise a selection of novels and short fiction, with additional images and extracts from contextual works provided online and in class.
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Victorian Popular Fiction
This module is centred upon three new genres which emerge in the mid-late Victorian period: Detective Fiction; The Adventure Story; and Children’s Fiction. Why do these new forms appear when they do? What determines them? We will spend three weeks on each, focussing on key texts and writers within the emerging genre, and looking at how certain conventions, principles, and core concerns develop for new genres as well as considering issues of literary status and canonicity. 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; these themes include: Colonialism, Imperialism, Gender, and Education. Texts currently studied include: R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island, J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, F.H. Burnett, The Secret Garden, and E.E. Nesbit, Five Children and It.
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
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Women Writers of Britain and America
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf famously asks, ‘what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister?’ 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; and 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 different representations of female experience. Texts currently studied include: Pat Barker, Regeneration (1990), Jackie Kay, The Adoption Papers (1991), Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987), Sarah Waters, The Night Watch (2006), and Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere Journals (1800-3).
The details of this module (for example, materials studied) may vary from year to year.
Fees and Funding
Our annual tuition fee is set for a 12-month session, starting in the October of your year of study.
Our Undergraduate Tuition Fees for 2024/25 are:
Home | International |
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£9,250 | £23,750 |
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Additional costs
There may be extra costs related to your course for items such as books, stationery, printing, photocopying, binding and general subsistence on trips and visits. Following graduation, you may need to pay a subscription to a professional body for some chosen careers.
Specific additional costs for studying at Lancaster are listed below.
College fees
Lancaster is proud to be one of only a handful of UK universities to have a collegiate system. Every student belongs to a college, and all students pay a small college membership fee which supports the running of college events and activities. Students on some distance-learning courses are not liable to pay a college fee.
For students starting in 2023 and 2024, the fee is £40 for undergraduates and research students and £15 for students on one-year courses. Fees for students starting in 2025 have not yet been set.
Computer equipment and internet access
To support your studies, you will also require access to a computer, along with reliable internet access. You will be able to access a range of software and services from a Windows, Mac, Chromebook or Linux device. For certain degree programmes, you may need a specific device, or we may provide you with a laptop and appropriate software - details of which will be available on relevant programme pages. A dedicated IT support helpdesk is available in the event of any problems.
The University provides limited financial support to assist students who do not have the required IT equipment or broadband support in place.
Study abroad courses
In addition to travel and accommodation costs, while you are studying abroad, you will need to have a passport and, depending on the country, there may be other costs such as travel documents (e.g. VISA or work permit) and any tests and vaccines that are required at the time of travel. Some countries may require proof of funds.
Placement and industry year courses
In addition to possible commuting costs during your placement, you may need to buy clothing that is suitable for your workplace and you may have accommodation costs. Depending on the employer and your job, you may have other costs such as copies of personal documents required by your employer for example.
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What is my fee status?
The fee that you pay will depend on whether you are considered to be a home or international student. Read more about how we assign your fee status.
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Fees in subsequent years
Fees are set by the UK Government annually, and subsequent years' fees may be subject to increases. Read more about fees in subsequent years.
Scholarships and Bursaries
You will be automatically considered for our main scholarships and bursaries when you apply, so there's nothing extra that you need to do.
You may be eligible for the following funding opportunities, depending on your fee status:
Unfortunately no scholarships and bursaries match your selection, but there are more listed on scholarships and bursaries page.
Scheme | Based on | Amount |
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Based on {{item.eligibility_basis}} | Amount {{item.amount}} |
We also have other, more specialised scholarships and bursaries - such as those for students from specific countries.
Browse Lancaster University's scholarships and bursaries.
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English Literature and Creative Writing
- Chinese Studies and English Literature BA Hons : T1Q3
- English Language and Creative Writing BA Hons : Q3WV
- English Language and Creative Writing (Placement Year) BA Hons : Q4WV
- English Language and Literature BA Hons : Q302
- English Language and Literature (Placement Year) BA Hons : Q303
- English Language and Literature (Study Abroad) BA Hons : Q306
- English Literature BA Hons : Q300
- English Literature (Placement Year) BA Hons : Q301
- English Literature (Study Abroad) BA Hons : Q307
- English Literature and Creative Writing BA Hons : QW38
- English Literature and Creative Writing (Placement Year) BA Hons : QW39
- English Literature and Creative Writing (Study Abroad) BA Hons : QW40
- English Literature and History BA Hons : QV31
- English Literature and History (Placement Year) BA Hons : QV32
- English Literature and Philosophy BA Hons : QV35
- English Literature and Philosophy (Placement Year) BA Hons : QV34
- English Literature and Philosophy (Study Abroad) BA Hons : QV38
- English Literature and Politics BA Hons : QL32
- English Literature and Politics (Placement Year) BA Hons : QL33
- English Literature and Politics (Study Abroad) BA Hons : QL34
- English Literature with Creative Writing BA Hons : Q3W8
- English Literature with Creative Writing (Placement Year) BA Hons : Q3W9
- English Literature with Creative Writing (Study Abroad) BA Hons : Q3W7
- Film and Creative Writing BA Hons : PW38
- Film and Creative Writing (Placement Year) BA Hons : PW39
- Film and Creative Writing (Study Abroad) BA Hons : PW40
- Film and English Literature BA Hons : PQ33
- Film and English Literature (Placement Year) BA Hons : PQ34
- Film and English Literature (Study Abroad) BA Hons : PQ35
- Fine Art and Creative Writing BA Hons : WW18
- Fine Art and Creative Writing (Placement Year) BA Hons : WW19
- Fine Art and Creative Writing (Study Abroad) BA Hons : WW20
- French Studies and English Literature BA Hons : RQ13
- German Studies and English Literature BA Hons : RQ23
- Spanish Studies and English Literature BA Hons : RQ43
- Theatre and Creative Writing BA Hons : WW48
- Theatre and Creative Writing (Placement Year) BA Hons : WW49
- Theatre and Creative Writing (Study Abroad) BA Hons : WW50
- Theatre and English Literature BA Hons : WQ43
- Theatre and English Literature (Placement Year) BA Hons : WQ44
- Theatre and English Literature (Study Abroad) BA Hons : WQ45
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History
- Chinese Studies and History BA Hons : T1V1
- English Literature and History BA Hons : QV31
- English Literature and History (Placement Year) BA Hons : QV32
- French Studies and History BA Hons : RV11
- German Studies and History BA Hons : RV21
- History BA Hons : V100
- History (Placement Year) BA Hons : V101
- History (Study Abroad) BA Hons : V103
- History and International Relations BA Hons : VL12
- History and International Relations (Placement Year) BA Hons : VL13
- History and International Relations (Study Abroad) BA Hons : VL14
- History and Philosophy BA Hons : VVC5
- History and Philosophy (Placement Year) BA Hons : VVC6
- History and Philosophy (Study Abroad) BA Hons : VVC7
- History and Politics BA Hons : LV21
- History and Politics (Placement Year) BA Hons : LV22
- History and Politics (Study Abroad) BA Hons : LV23
- History, Philosophy and Politics BA Hons : V0L0
- History, Philosophy and Politics (Placement Year) BA Hons : V0L1
- History, Philosophy and Politics (Study Abroad) BA Hons : V0L2
- Medieval and Early Modern Studies BA Hons : V125
- Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Placement Year) BA Hons : V126
- Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Study Abroad) BA Hons : V127
Important information
The information on this site relates primarily to 2024/2025 entry to the University and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.
The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.
More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our legal information.
Our Students’ Charter
We believe in the importance of a strong and productive partnership between our students and staff. In order to ensure your time at Lancaster is a positive experience we have worked with the Students’ Union to articulate this relationship and the standards to which the University and its students aspire. View our Charter and other policies.
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