In addition to your optional modules, you'll either pursue your own interests through a dissertation, or take a Special Subject which involves in-depth study in seminars on a staff-member’s topic of special expertise. Or, you'll continue to learn Latin or Greek.
These modules are based on a member of staff’s research area and are taught entirely in seminar groups, through discussion and student-led activities.
You'll choose three optional modules, from at least two areas of study.
You will write a dissertation, which can be in either English or Classics. You may combine both subjects in one dissertation.
Jason and the Golden Fleece
Jason and Medea, the quest for the golden fleece, the journey of the first ship, Greek civilisation meets Colchian barbarism: the myth that pre-dates Homer and brings together the famous fathers of Homeric heroes (Peleus, Telamon); the gathering of the marvellous, the semi-divine and the ultra-heroic; a quest that replaces war with love.
The central texts will be the Hellenistic Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius and the Roman epic version of Valerius Flaccus, both read in translation, but a wide range of texts, images and films, Greek, Roman and beyond will be part of the module.
This module will explore:
- How myth works in the ancient world
- How representations in different media interact
- When myth-making becomes reception
- How the Greeks represent Greek culture and the barbarian other
- How Roman literature re-appropriates and re-works Greek myth
- How modern versions reflect on and construct the ancient world
Themes include: the Greeks and the other; civilisation and colonisation; Jason and Medea; gender and sexuality (the Lemnian women, Hercules and Hylas); the nature of heroism (Cyzicus and friendly fire); monsters, marvels and magic.
This module is worth 40 credits.
Augustus
The year-long Special Subject module allows you to intensively study one of the most influential figures in Roman history – Augustus.
We examine how, after his victory in the civil wars, Augustus established his rule over the Roman world on a secure and generally acceptable basis. You will pay attention to the ancient sources (studied in translation). These include not only historical and literary texts, but also inscriptions, coins, art and architecture.
This module covers political aspects of the theme, but also Augustus' impact on society, religion, culture, and ideology.
You will have three hours of seminars per week. Assessment is through a combination of coursework essays, formal presentation and exam.
This module is worth 40 credits.
Greek Work, Class and the Economy: Good and Bad Strife
The title (Good and Bad Strife) is derived from the opening lines of Hesiod’s Theogony, in which the poet explains that there are two goddesses called Eris (Strife), one who stirs men to productive labour and another who fosters domestic conflict. We will examine both forms of strife: on the one hand the division of labour in antiquity and attitudes towards work and, on the other, notions of class struggle between a ‘leisured elite’ and a working ‘mass’. This module thus aims to provide students with an introduction to the economic and social history of archaic and classical Greece.
These two areas of endeavour, work and class conflict, are of central importance to the history of the Greek city and a much-contested field of research. We will examine key methodologies that have been applied to the study of ancient society and its economy, including Marxist approaches to class and sociological theories of professions. Students will engage in ongoing debates that are currently shaping our understanding of ancient work. These include recent challenges to the notion that the Greeks believed work to be inherently low-status. How does work affect status in antiquity? Could the ‘elite’ have included not only those who possessed land and slaves but also those who had obtained wealth and status through the practice of a valuable skill? We will thus attempt to broaden the subject of work beyond its usual parameters of agriculture and estate management to include manufacturing and the ‘learned professions’, such as doctors, seers, poets and sculptors. The first semester considers what has been termed ‘the aristocratic ideal’: the concept of a leisured elite of rentiers, the importance of agriculture, the spectre of class conflict and finally the different forms of education (both liberal education and training for specific work). The second semester will cover the existence of a labour market, the division of labour and the role of a professional class of skilled workers in ancient society.
From Petra to Palmyra: Art and Culture in the Roman Near East
This module focuses on the variety of local cults and cultures in the Near East (modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Jordan) under Roman rule. We will zoom in on a number of localities in order to look at social, cultural and religious interactions between Greeks, Romans, Jews, Arabs and various other local cultures through literary, epigraphic, visual and archaeological evidence. In the great urban centres such as Palmyra, Tyre, Damascus, we will observe the adoption of the trappings of Graeco-Roman urbanism and public life (from peristyle temples to honorific statues) and their significance within the Second Sophistic.
On the other hand, we will explore alternative “pockets” of non-Hellenisation such as the lava lands of southern Syria with their distinct style of art and architecture in black basalt. ‘Oriental’ gods feature prominently in this module: We will explore their great sanctuaries (Temple of Jupiter at Heliopolis-Baalbek, Temple of Bel at Palmyra, Temple of Zeus at Damascus) in terms of architecture and ritual, and investigate their iconographies (Jupiter Heliopolitanus, Bel, Baalshamin, Atargatis of Hierapolis and myriads of other local gods). In contrast to Judaism and Christianity, there is a colossal lack of literary sources for these gods, and as a consequence, our understanding of their function and character hinges on how their worshippers depicted them in reliefs, statues, figurines and paintings.
The Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian war lasted for more than 25 years. It came to involve much of the Greek world, as diverse states and peoples felt compelled to become allies of either Sparta or Athens. The scale of this struggle, and its repercussions, make it a highly significant period of Greek history.
You will answer key questions about this conflict, including:
- Why and how did it start?
- Why did it last so long?
- How was it fought?
- How was it won?
- What were its consequences?
In particular, we will examine the disproportionate role that one man, the Athenian historian Thucydides, plays in shaping our knowledge and understanding of this conflict. How far can we use other authors and types of evidence to get beyond this hugely significant, but imperfect source?
This module is worth 20 credits.
Writing History in Ancient Rome
This module will examine the writing of narrative histories in ancient Rome and their importance in the study of Roman history, particularly in the late Republic and Imperial periods. The works of ancient historical writers differ significantly from modern historians in their approach to evidence, narrative, and impartiality, and we need to be aware of these differences when using these texts as sources. This module will therefore consider the importance of the works of historians like Livy, Tacitus, and Ammianus not only as sources for the study of history, but as literary works in their own right, examining issues of historical accuracy and reliability alongside generic conventions, narrative structures, and issues of characterisation.
Religion and the Romans
Religion was central to all aspects of Roman life, but did the Romans really 'believe'?
This module explores the traditions and rituals that operated in Roman society, from the earliest stages of archaic Rome, to the advent of Christianity. It will help you to make sense of customs and practices that could baffle even the Romans themselves, alongside showing how the religious system controlled Roman social, political and military activities.
You will examine evidence drawn from the late Republic and early Principate, and use literature and images from the Augustan period as a central hinge for studying the dynamics of religion in Rome.
Topics covered include:
- The definition of 'religion' and comparative studies
- Early Rome and the origins of religion
- The calendar temples and other religious buildings
- Priesthoods and politics
- Sacrifice
- The deification of the emperor
- Foreign cults in Rome
- The supposed 'decline of religion'
- Early Christianity
This module is worth 20 credits.
The World of the Etruscans
When Rome was still a small town, and before Athens became a city of international significance, the Etruscan civilisation flourished in Italy and rapidly gained control of the Mediterranean.
But who were the Etruscans? The Greeks and the Romans regarded them as wealthy pirates, renowned for their luxurious and extravagant lifestyle and for the freedom of their women. Archaeology, however, tells us much more about their daily life and funerary customs, their religious beliefs, their economy, their language, and their technical abilities and artistic tastes.
In this module, you will examine visual and material culture, as well as epigraphic and literary sources, in order to lift the shroud of mystery that often surrounds the Etruscans. You will also place them in the context of the wider Mediterranean world in the 1st millennium BC, examining their exchanges with the Near Eastern kingdoms, their cultural interactions with Greece and the Greek colonial world, and their role in the early history of Rome.
By exploring Etruscan cities and cemeteries from the 9th to the 3rd centuries BC, with their complex infrastructures and technologies, lavish paintings, sculptures and metalwork, you will discover a most advanced civilisation that shared much with the classical cultures and yet was very different from them.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Britain in the Later Roman Empire (c. 250-450)
This module examines Britain in the later-Roman Empire. It is a fascinating period of prosperity, integration, and sophistication. Yet it is also marked by rebellion, civil war, and the sundering of the links that had bound Britain to the continent so deeply for so long.
We will cover from the crisis that marked the middle years of the 3rd century, to the disappearance of Roman power in the early 5th, and the rapid economic collapse and social transformation that followed.
You will take an interdisciplinary approach, combining archaeological and historical evidence, and will be expected to familiarise yourself with a wide range of evidence.
We will examine:
- the political framework of the later-Roman Empire
- the textual and archaeological evidence for Britain’s society and economy
- the barbarian peoples who threatened and interacted with it
- the question of how it ended up leaving the Roman Empire
You will also consider the integration of different types of source material, thinking about Britain’s place in the wider world in a broader context.
This module is worth 20 credits.
The Silk Road: Cultural Interactions and Perceptions
This is a discipline-bridging cross-campus module, involving colleagues from across the School of Humanities.
The Silk Road will be presented as a range of archaeological, historical and scientific themes. Broad cultural themes will be balanced with the presentation of specific case studies, such as:
- The definitions of the Silk Roads
- Byzantine, Islamic and later medieval Silk Roads
- Luxury production
- Trade and exchange from the Roman and later periods
- Ming Dynasty links with the West
Scientific techniques for the analysis of materials, and their role in the interpretation of trade and exchange along the Silk Roads, will also be considered. This could be between, for example, China, central Asia, Scandinavia and the Middle East.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Oedipus Through the Ages
You will explore the ancient evidence for the myth of Oedipus and selected representations of the myth in the post-Classical world. In terms of evidence, you will have the opportunity to explore ancient drama and other poetry as well as visual culture and mythographic writings. In terms of post-Classical representations, there will be a particular focus on performance and on modern popular culture, including (but not necessarily limited to)
- film
- popular mythology books,
- material aimed at children,
- on-line representations,
- humour
Intermediate Latin or Greek: 1 and 2
Continue your study of Latin or Classical Greek, following on from the beginners’ level modules.
You will thoroughly consolidate the vocabulary and grammar of your chosen language and begin the detailed linguistic and literary study of an unadapted Latin or Greek text.
In Latin, you will typically read a text such as Cicero’s Pro Archia, or a book of Virgil or Ovid.
In Greek, the text might be a complete speech by Lysias or selections from a longer text such as the Odyssey or a Greek tragedy.
The assessment for these modules emphasises comprehension and analysis of grammatical structures over memorisation and translation.
Each module is worth 20 credits.
Advanced Latin or Greek: 1 and 2
You will study prose and verse texts in your chosen language, building on the skills you learned in the Intermediate modules.
By this stage you will be at or above A-level standard, and will benefit from being taught together with first-year students who have an A-level in the language.
The modules may involve in-depth study of a single text, or may cover a group of texts representative of an author, genre, period, or theme. They will combine literary and linguistic discussion with consideration of the historical and social background.
The texts covered change each year. In Latin, recent modules have focused on the following topics:
- Flavian personal poetry (Martial and Statius)
- The emperor Claudius (Suetonius and Tacitus)
- The Cupid and Psyche story from Apuleius’ novel Metamorphoses
- Ethnicity and Empire in Latin Epic (Virgil and Silius Italicus)
- The Power of Love (Ovid and Propertius)
In Greek, recent topics have covered:
- Tragedy (Sophocles’ Antigone)
- Selections from Homer’s Iliad
- Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe
- Plutarch’s Life of Antony
- Paradoxography (a portfolio of texts exploring the weird and marvellous)
Each module is worth 20 credits.
Beginners Greek for second and third years: 1 and 2
This module is for complete beginners to Greek. It covers the same material as in ‘Beginners' Greek: 1’ and ‘Beginners Greek: 2’ and lets you take up the language at a later point in your degree.
Emphasis is placed on learning to read Greek. You will:
- Get an introduction to the grammar and vocabulary of classical Greek
- Be supported to translate passages adapted from classical Greek texts
This module is worth 20 credits.
Beginners’ Latin or Greek for second and third years: 1 and 2
These two modules are for complete beginners. They are also suitable if you have already done some study of Latin or Classical Greek (up to GCSE level). They cover the same material as ‘Beginners’ Latin or Greek 1’ and ‘Beginners’ Latin or Greek 2’. They just let you start your chosen language at a later point in your degree.
You’ll get an introduction to the grammar and vocabulary of your chosen language and you will be supported to analyse and understand basic sentences and to translate short passages.
There is no speaking and listening element - the main focus will be on reading text.
If you take these modules in your second year, you can continue onto the ‘Intermediate’ modules in your third year. Note: this is mandatory for Classics BA students.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Depending on your module choices in your first and second year, you will choose three modules in your final year in English that cover at least two areas of study.
The modules we offer are inspired by the research interests of our staff and as a result may change for reasons of, for example, research developments or legislation changes. You will be able to choose modules based on the indicative topics below.
The Self and the World: Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century
The years from 1660 to 1830 are enormously important, especially in terms of the representation of the self in literature: Milton promoted the idea of the poet inspired by God; Pope and Swift mocked the possibility of anyone truly knowing their self; Wordsworth used poetry to explore his own life; and Byron and Austen provided ironic commentaries on the self-obsessions of their peers. This period also saw the rise of the novel (a form that relies upon telling the story of lives), a flourishing trade in biography, and the emergence of new genre, autobiography. This module will look at some of the most significant works of the period with particular reference to the relationship between writers and their worlds. Topics might include: the emergence, importance and limitations of life-writing; self- fashioning; the construction – and deconstruction - of the ‘Romantic’ author’; transmission and revision; translation and imitation; ideas of the self and gender; intertextuality, adaptation, and rewriting; creating and destroying the past; and writing revolution. Texts studied will range across poems, novels and prose.
Contemporary Fiction
Explore the novel from the late twentieth century onwards, in Britain and beyond.
We will concentrate on the formal operations and innovations of selected novelists, considering how the contemporary socio-historical context influences these questions of form. Topics considered include:
- an interrogation of the ‘post-consensus novel’
- an exploration of postcolonial texts which represent the transatlantic slave trade
- the cultural politics of late twentieth-century and twenty-first century Scottish literature
Contemporary fiction is focused on writing emerging from Britain and closely-related contexts in the post-war period. This module offers strands structured around a number of political, social and cultural frameworks in Britain. These include:
- formal analysis and literary innovations in Britain
- temporalities and the representation of time
- issues of gender, race and class
- histories of colonialism and slavery
- national traditions and politics of state
- the country and the city
- postmodernism
This module particularly explores the network of relationships between context, content and form, supported by related literary and cultural theory and philosophy.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Making Something Happen: 20th Century Poetry and Politics
This module introduces key modern and contemporary poets.
You will build a detailed understanding of how various poetic forms manifest themselves in particular historical moments. Unifying the module is an attention to poets’ responses to the political and ideological upheavals of the 20th century.
The module will include such (primarily) British and Irish poets as:
- W.B. Yeats
- T.S. Eliot
- W. H. Auden
- Dylan Thomas
- Ted Hughes
- Sylvia Plath
- Wislawa Szymborska
- Tony Harrison
- Seamus Heaney
- Derek Mahon
- Adrienne Rich
- Geoffrey Hill
- Jo Shapcott
- Patience Agbabi
- Alice Oswald
Some of the forms examined will include: the elegy, the pastoral (and anti-pastoral), the ode, the sonnet (and sonnet sequence), the ekphrastic poem, the version or retelling, the villanelle, the parable and the sestina.
To develop a more complete perspective on each poet’s engagement with 20-century formal and political problems, we also examine these figures’ writings in other modes. This includes critical essays, manifestos, speeches, and primary archival materials such as letters and manuscript drafts.
Grounding each week will be readings on poetry and the category of the ‘political’ from an international group of critics, including such thinkers as Theodor Adorno, Charles Bernstein, Claudia Rankine, Peter McDonald, Angela Leighton, Christopher Ricks and Marjorie Perloff.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Single-Author Study
This stranded module provides students with a detailed introduction to the major works of a single author (e.g. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence). Students will select one author to study from a range on offer. They will then have the opportunity to consider in detail important thematic and stylistic aspects of their chosen author’s work, taking account of the chronological development of his/her writing practice (if relevant), and his/her relationship to key historical and literary contexts.
The Gothic Tradition
This module focuses on the connections between literary texts, politics, and relevant historical/cultural contexts in gothic texts. You may cover:
- poetry
- novels
- graphic novels
- films
Examples include The Haunting of Hill House (both Shirley Jackson’s novel and the Netflix adaptation), The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez, and Saga of the Swamp Thing by Moore, Bissette and Totleben, and The Visions of the Daughters of Albion by William Blake.
You will explore various critical and theoretical approaches to literature, film, comics, adaptation, and popular culture. The module also seeks to decolonise Gothic Studies, including work by creators from a wide range of backgrounds who identify with a diverse range of subject positions.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Island and Empire
While the vexed questions of British identity and its relationship to empire have been at the forefront of political debate in the last decade, they have also been integral to literary production for many centuries. This module interrogates English and British representations of colonisation and empire, within Great Britain and Ireland and with particular reference to India. Well known writers such as Edmund Spenser, Jonathan Swift, Walter Scott, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and Salman Rushdie, will be set against less familiar voices, to consider the ways in which dominant narratives come about and can be challenged.
Oscar Wilde and Henry James: British Aestheticism and Commodity Culture
Henry James and Oscar Wilde had a passionate dislike of each other, as well as very different values. Even so, they moved in similar circles. Both men found themselves at the centre of British cultural and intellectual life, experimenting within the same set of literary, critical and theatrical modes.
This module uses the writings of Oscar Wilde and Henry James, alongside some of their contemporaries, to examine changes in literary culture and the practices of literary composition in the late 19th century.
We will explore:
- The role of new technology in literary creativity
- The growth of mass and 'celebrity' culture
- The development of consumerism and resulting commodification of literary art
- The changing relationship of art to politics
- Anxieties about artistic originality and plagiarism
- Attempts (via censorship) to police literary expressivity
You will study a range of texts by Wilde and James, including drama, fiction and criticism. These will be compared with pieces by a number of their contemporaries (including Walter Pater and William Morris), in order to assess both the modernity and radicalism of their writings.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Modern Irish Literature and Drama
Examine 20th century Irish literature and drama.
Taking the Irish Literary Revival as a starting-point, you will consider authors in their Irish and European context. Such authors include:
- W.B. Yeats
- J.M. Synge
- Lady Gregory
- James Joyce
- Seán O'Casey
- Seamus Heaney
- Brian Friel
- Marina Carr
We focus on reading texts in relation to their social, historical, and political contexts.
This includes tracking significant literary and cultural responses to Irish experiences of colonial occupation, nationalist uprising and civil war, partition and independence, socio-economic modernisation, and the protracted period of violent conflict in Northern Ireland.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Reformation and Revolution: Early Modern literature and drama 1588-1688
Literature and Drama across the early modern period contributed to, and was often caught up in, dramatic changes in social, political, and religious culture which changed the way that people experienced their lives and the world around them. This module gives students the opportunity to read a wide range of texts in a multitude of genres (from drama, to prose fiction, pamphlets and poetry) in their immediate contexts, both cultural and intellectual. This module will situate the poetry, prose and drama between 1580 and 1700 against the backdrops of civil war and political revolution, scientific experimentation, and colonial expansion; in doing so, it will ask how the seventeenth century forms our current understandings of the world. Students will be encouraged to read widely, to develop a specific and sophisticated understanding of historical period, and to see connections and changes in literary and dramatic culture in a period which stretches from the Spanish Armada of 1588 to the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688.
Songs and Sonnets: Lyric poetry from Medieval Manuscript to Shakespeare and Donne
Through the exploration of lyric poetry, this module examines cultural and literary change from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. It will consider the rise of ‘named poet’, the interaction of print and manuscript culture, the representation of love, and the use of the female voice. It will develop further students’ confidence in handling formal poetic terminology and reading poetry from this period. It will also enable students to think pragmatically about the transmission of lyric in modern editions, and about how best to represent the form.
One and Unequal: World Literatures in English
This module examines the late twentieth and early twenty-first century globe through its correlates in fiction. The primary materials for the module will be post-war Anglophone works drawn from a wide geographical range across the world. After introducing the history of the idea of world literature, these works will be situated within a series of theoretical ‘worlds’: world literary systems; post-colonial criticism; cosmopolitanism; world ecologies; resource culture; literary translation theory. The module will also attend to critiques of 'world literature’ as a concept.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language
The module is designed to provide students with an understanding of the process of English Language Teaching (ELT) and of the theoretical underpinnings of this practice. In this module students will learn the principles behind the learning and teaching of key aspects and skills of English, including:
- vocabulary
- grammar
- reading
- writing
- speaking
- listening
- intercultural communicative skills
Students will also learn how to apply these theoretical principles to the development of teaching materials. This module will therefore be of interest to students who want to pursue a teaching career, and in particular to those interested in teaching English as a second or foreign language.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Language and the Mind
Speaking, listening, reading, and writing are a complex set of behaviours that are a fundamental part of our daily lives. And yet they remain difficult to fully explain.
When you hear ‘FIRE’, you immediately look for an exit and start moving. Yet all that a speaker has done is produce a string of sounds. Your mind distinguishes these from the murmuring of other voices, feet clomping on the floor, and any background music. Your mind matches the sounds f-i-r-e with a word, retrieves the meaning, and relates them to the current circumstances and responds accordingly.
How does the mind do this? And what makes our minds so special that we can do this? On this module, we begin to address these questions.
You will consider:
- Is there a language gene?
- What makes human language different from animal communication?
- What is the relationship between thought and language?
- Does everyone talk to themselves? What purpose does our inner voice serve?
- How do we learn language? And does cognition underpin our ability to learn language?
- What do language deficits tell us about language and the brain?
- How do we understand and produce speech, words, and sentences?
- What is the best way to teach children to read?
- How is sign language similar to/different from spoken language?
This module is worth 20 credits.
Advanced Stylistics
This module offers an advanced study of the language of literary texts and how it impacts reading and interpretation. It bridges the gap between the literary and linguistics aspects of our BA degrees. It also equips you with skills that will be useful in the teaching of English, or for a career in publishing.
You will study:
- literary style and technique
- the style of poetry and narrative
- the representation of characters' voices and consciousness
- the style of difficult texts, such as surrealism
- the history of literary style
You will learn to explain how style contributes to meaning and interpretation, and why texts affect you in different ways.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Discourses of Health and Work
This module explores the vital role that discourse plays in various communicative domains in healthcare and workplace settings. Students will explore these domains through a variety of contemporary frameworks for examining discourse and communication, including critical discourse analysis, multi-modal discourse analysis, and interactional sociolinguistics.The module offers the opportunity to analyse and reflect on the discourses of healthcare and the workplace, as two crucially important domains of social and professional life. To this end, professional and healthcare discourses will be investigated through a range of genres and communicative modes, including face-to face communication advertising, media discourse and digital interactions. The module offers a rich resource for discourse-based studies of language in professional and social life and enables students to examine the strategic uses of communicative strategies in specific social settings.
Language and Feminism
This module provides comprehensive knowledge of feminist theory, as applied to a series of language and linguistic contexts.
You will explore a range of analytical approaches to language, including conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, and interactional sociolinguistics. You will also respond to, and critically engage with, contemporary real-world problems associated with gender and sexuality, through the consideration of discourse-based texts.
Topics covered include:
- gender and sexual identity construction in a range of interactive contexts
- sexist, misogynistic, homophobic and heteronormative representations in texts
- feminist theory from the 1970s to the present, with particular focus on contemporary approaches to gender theory
This module is worth 20 credits.
English Place-Names
The module uses the study of place-names to show the various languages – British, Latin, French, Norse and English – that have been spoken in England over the last 2000 years.
You will learn how place-name evidence can be used as a source for the history of English, including:
- its interaction with the other languages
- its regional and dialectal patterns
- its changing vocabulary
We also consider the interdisciplinary contribution that place-names offer to historians and geographers.
For this module's assessment, you can choose a geographical area of particular interest.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Old English Heroic Poetry
This module gives an opportunity to those who already have a basic knowledge of Old English language and literature to explore some of the astonishing range of texts from the earliest stages of English literature. The texts studied are heroic and Christian. Themes include Germanic myth and legend, heroic endeavour, Christian passion. A study of the epic poem Beowulf — its characters, its themes, its ‘meaning’ — is essential to the module. Texts are read in Old English (with plenty of help given).
Dreaming the Middle Ages: Visionary Poetry in Scotland and England
The genre of dream-vision inspired work by all the major poets of the Middle Ages, including William Langland, the Pearl-Poet, and Geoffrey Chaucer. The course will aim to give you a detailed knowledge of a number of canonical texts in this genre, as well as ranging widely into the alliterative revival, and chronologically into the work of John Skelton in the early sixteenth century. The course will depend upon close, detailed reading of medieval literary texts, as well as focusing on the variety and urgency of issues with which dream poetry is concerned: literary, intellectual, social, religious and political.
The Viking Mind
Our images of Vikings come largely from the Icelandic sagas. These present a Viking Age of daring exploits, global exploration and bloody feuds, as carried out by valiant warriors and feisty women. But how accurate are the sagas when it comes to understanding what really happened in the Viking Age? Can they provide an insight into the Viking mind?
This module explores Norse and Viking cultural history, using an interdisciplinary approach grounded in the study of texts.
Topics covered include:
- The Viking Age and Viking society
- Exploration and diaspora
- Gender, marriage and family
- Religion and belief
- Outlaws
- Poetry
- The supernatural
Your one-hour lectures will provide the evidence base for discussion in the two-hour, student-led seminars. The seminars also include some language work.
Assessment for this module is by a one-hour exam of comment and analysis, and a 3000-word project on a topic of your choice in consultation with a tutor.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Songs and Sonnets: Lyric poetry from Medieval Manuscript to Shakespeare and Donne
Through the exploration of lyric poetry, this module examines cultural and literary change from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. It will consider the rise of ‘named poet’, the interaction of print and manuscript culture, the representation of love, and the use of the female voice. It will develop further students’ confidence in handling formal poetic terminology and reading poetry from this period. It will also enable students to think pragmatically about the transmission of lyric in modern editions, and about how best to represent the form.
Modern Irish Literature and Drama
Examine 20th century Irish literature and drama.
Taking the Irish Literary Revival as a starting-point, you will consider authors in their Irish and European context. Such authors include:
- W.B. Yeats
- J.M. Synge
- Lady Gregory
- James Joyce
- Seán O'Casey
- Seamus Heaney
- Brian Friel
- Marina Carr
We focus on reading texts in relation to their social, historical, and political contexts.
This includes tracking significant literary and cultural responses to Irish experiences of colonial occupation, nationalist uprising and civil war, partition and independence, socio-economic modernisation, and the protracted period of violent conflict in Northern Ireland.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Changing Stages: Theatre Industry and Theatre Art
Peter Pan, Les Misérables, Hamilton... just a few of the iconic productions that started life in London’s West End, or on Broadway in New York. But why and how did they become so successful?
The 20th and 21st centuries have seen major changes in the way theatre is financed, produced and presented, both on stage and on screen. This module explores the fascinating world of theatre production, covering:
- the development of long-running, commercial productions
- the role of the theatre producer in making theatre
- subsidised theatre
- touring and national theatre companies
- reviewing cultures
- relationship between the theatre and film industries
- the advent of the mega-musical
Examining the mainstream and the fringes, we apply case studies including Shakespeare in production, new plays, revivals, and international hits like the ones listed above, illustrating how theatre responds to changing contexts and audiences.
This module is worth 20 credits.
Reformation and Revolution: Early Modern literature and drama 1588-1688
Literature and Drama across the early modern period contributed to, and was often caught up in, dramatic changes in social, political, and religious culture which changed the way that people experienced their lives and the world around them. This module gives students the opportunity to read a wide range of texts in a multitude of genres (from drama, to prose fiction, pamphlets and poetry) in their immediate contexts, both cultural and intellectual. This module will situate the poetry, prose and drama between 1580 and 1700 against the backdrops of civil war and political revolution, scientific experimentation, and colonial expansion; in doing so, it will ask how the seventeenth century forms our current understandings of the world. Students will be encouraged to read widely, to develop a specific and sophisticated understanding of historical period, and to see connections and changes in literary and dramatic culture in a period which stretches from the Spanish Armada of 1588 to the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688.
Joint Honours students have the option of writing an individual research project in their final year in the School of English. This will give you the chance to work on a one-to-one basis with a supervisor on an agreed area of study to produce a detailed and sustained piece of writing. This can be on a topic of language, literature or performance, or there is the option of undertaking a project-based dissertation, which will suit those students interested in applied or 'hands on' aspects of English as a discipline. The topics available build on the school’s engagement with local theatres and literacy projects.