Year One
Modes of Reading
What is a reader? How is our understanding and perception of a text formed? What does it mean to think critically when we read? This module allows you to explore these questions by putting a spotlight on the question of critical thinking in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries By studying a series of literary texts in relation to some of the most influential literary and cultural theorists of the last hundred you will take your own position on everything from Marxism queer and feminist theory to ecocriticism and postcolonial critique
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Medieval and Early Modern Literature
Taking you from the mythical court of King Arthur to the real world of ambition intrigue and danger in the courts of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I this module introduces you to early literature written in a range of genres (romance epic fabliau) and poetic forms You will study texts like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Thomas More’s Utopia Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Shakespeare’s sonnets to explore some of the period’s highest ideals—‘trawthe’ or integrity—as well as some of humanity’s darkest impulses greed deception revenge and desire
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Epic into Novel
Tracking the transition from the epics of the ancient world to their incarnation as texts of modernity this module introduces you to some of the most influential and formative works of world literature You will study central texts of the classical world such as Gilgamesh Homer’s Iliad Virgil’s Aeneid and Catullus; ancient epics from India and Africa; Milton’s Paradise Lost; as well as responses to ancient epic by Tennyson Margaret Atwood Seamus Heaney and Maria Dahvana Headley Reading across history and cultures between languages and genres you will develop the skills to analyse narrative character and style
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Modern World Literatures
This module introduces you to the defining concerns styles and contexts of modern world literature from 1789 to the present You will encounter concepts like Romanticism modernity gothic and postcolonialism through novels short stories poetry and drama from revolutionary France to Meiji era Japan industrial Britain to the decolonizing Caribbean Your reading might include Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein Lu Xun’s story of China in transition 'Diary of a Madman' or Clarice Lispector’s haunting meditation on life in Rio de Janeiro The Hour of the Star
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Year Two
Literature in Theory
In your second you will study our core module ‘Literature in Theory’ in which you develop the ideas you explored in ‘Modes of Reading’ This interdisciplinary module asks why and how we study literature Readings lectures and seminars focus on specific themes such as authorship the literary marketplace literature in relation to politics power data and the environment and the relationship of race gender sexuality and class to our study of texts and knowledge Teaching juxtaposes short theoretical texts with literary and cultural readings including visual and media texts such as Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts Booker T Washington’s Up from Slavery and Amitav Ghost’s In An Antique Land
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Choose an option on pre-1900 literature
To give your degree historical breadth and depth we invite students to take one of our many options on pre-1900 literature The range of modules varies each and examples include Romantic and Victorian Poetry The Nineteenth-Century Novel Crime Fiction Nation and Empire Britain 1850-1947 American Horror Story US Gothic Cultures 1790-present Eighteenth-Century Literature Seventeenth-Century Literature Austen in Theory George Eliot and Sociology Literature and Revolution 1640-1660 Literature and Empire Britain and the Caribbean to 1900 English Literature and Feminisms 1790-1899 The Classical Tradition in English Translations Arthurian Literature Asia and the Victorians
Your choice
Alongside Literature in Theory and a pre-1900 module you can choose two further modules from the department on anything you're interested in; and one of these modules can be taken from another department Our students often enjoy modules in History Film and Television Studies Philosophy Theatre and Performance Studies the Warwick Writing Programme Warwick Business School Politics and International Studies and beyond
Year Three
Independent Research
In your final you will undertake independent research on your modules Alongside one option in Global Literature (see below) you have free choice of three further modules from the department on anything you're interested in including our Dissertation module One of these modules can be taken from another department Our students often enjoy modules in History Film and Television Studies Philosophy Theatre and Performance Studies the Warwick Writing Programme Warwick Business School Politics and International Studies and beyond Throughout your final you will be supported in your research by our Academic Research workshops that will guide you through the process of identifying your argument working with sources and writing essays
Choose an option on global literature
To ensure your degree covers literature written in English from all over the world we invite students to take one of our many options on global literature The range of modules varies each and examples include The Global Novel New Literatures in English Commodity Fictions World Literature and World Ecology Literature and Empire Britain and the Caribbean to 1900 Twentieth-Century Avant Gardes Yiddish Literature in Translation Asia and the Victorians American Horror Story US Gothic Cultures 1790-present Alternative Lifeworlds Fiction Science Fiction Fantasy and the Weird Disasters and the British Contemporary Devolutionary British Fiction The Novel Now
Optional modules
Optional modules can vary from to Example optional modules may include
American Horror Story
The English Nineteenth Century Novel
Literature Environment Ecology
Tales of Terror Gothic and the Short Form
US Writing and Culture 1780-1920
Romantic and Victorian Poetry
Queering the Literary Landscape
Devolutionary British Fiction
Ecopoetics
Shakespeare and Selected Dramatists of his Time
Alternative Lifeworlds Fiction
Literature and Empire
American Poetry
Jane Austen
Early Modern Drama
Women and Writing
The Classical Tradition
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