Our English Literature programme gives you the opportunity to study a wide range of literary forms, genres and themes, from the early medieval period to the present day. You will gain a detailed knowledge of literatures from a range of historical periods, while also developing skills of textual analysis and critical thinking.

Programme in detail

In Year One, you will develop key skills and subject knowledge that will equip you for more advanced and specialised modules in the later years of the degree. You will explore the ways in which literary texts and themes are rewritten and reinterpreted in different historical and cultural contexts. You will consider how literary texts interact with and speak to their own and other social contexts, what it means to interpret texts, and how meanings emerge from our reading.

Year Two will give you the opportunity to study texts from particular literary periods, ranging from the medieval to the modern. These modules will help you to develop a detailed understanding of the range of literatures written in a particular period, and the ways in which they relate to wider social, artistic and political contexts. Modules in Year Three allow further specialisation, with focus on specific genres, such as children’s literature, Noir, or the Gothic, and on advanced study of literary periods that considers matters such as reception, translation and adaptation. You will also have options to study modules in creative writing.

Year Three also includes an optional dissertation module, which allows you to work on a research project of your own design; and the option to undertake a work placement with an organisation relevant to your degree through the SOTA300 module.

Our graduates leave to take up a very wide range of careers. A number take up jobs in journalism, broadcasting, or advertising; some begin as management trainees in a variety of businesses; others start their careers in retailing, computing, librarianship, the arts or the Civil Service. Many go on to train further as teachers, or as solicitors or accountants; some pursue careers in teaching English as a foreign language.