MA in English Literature

The MA in English Literature, one of the largest and best-known in the UK, allows you to explore your literary passions, with the help and support of one of the leading English departments in the country.

The MA is designed to support your commitment to your academic and professional development. It offers three pathways, which build on the core research strengths of the Department. If you wish to focus on a particular period or literary issue you may follow a single pathway. If you wish to broaden your engagement with English literature, you may choose a combination of pathway and optional units.

All students are taught the specialist skills essential to postgraduate-level research, and the practical skills that academic life now demands. Everyone is expected to enter fully into the wider academic community of the Department and the University.

First Semester

• Introduction to Literary Research (core unit)
• Two Pathway Units

Second Semester

• Pathway Unit
• Third Pathway Unit or half-day Academic Conference Unit
• Optional Unit or half-day Academic Conference Unit or third Pathway Unit

Dissertation

Following successful completion of the taught course, you must complete a dissertation of 15,000 words maximum.

Pathways

• Shakespeare and English Literature
• Roman and Victorian Literature
• 20th-Century and Contemporary Literature

Optional Units

• Aesthetic Possibilities
• Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages
• Charles Dickens
• European Cinema
• Half-day Academic Conference
• Introduction to Old English
• Literature and Medicine
• Modernism and the Body
• Place in Victorian and Recent Fiction
• Post-Colonial Imaginings
• Public Role of the Humanities
• Tradition and Experimentation in 20th-Century European Fiction
• Victorian Afterlives
• Writing for Art