Overview

The MA in English Literature encourages a varied and flexible approach to MA study. Students may choose to range widely in their choice of modules, studying Shakespeare alongside the literatures of North America; women’s writing from 1600 to the present alongside Marxism and Deconstruction; British Victorian texts alongside global literatures. As the list of modules available shows (over), the MA considers an open and wide-ranging catalogue of texts, approaches, and periods.

For students who would like to focus on a particular period or theme, the MA can follow a variety of pathways, including Modern and Contemporary Literature, Shakespeare and the British Dramatic Tradition, Critical Theory, Sexuality and Gender, and Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture. Each pathway features specialist modules to allow in-depth study.

Dissertation

The MA is distinguished by its optional dissertation, a structure that allows students to research a topic at a more complex level than an essay permits. Students apply to write a dissertation and are offered a series of proposal workshops to encourage the development of a sophisticated and feasible project. For further information on the optional dissertation, please click here.

MA Modules

MA Pathways

• Open Pathway
  
• Critical Theory
• Literature and Psychoanalysis
• Romantic and Victorian Literature
• Modern and Contemporary Literature
• Poetry and Poetics
  
• Sexuality and Gender

MA Dissertation