MA in English Language and Literature

This module is a core course in language and linguistics. It introduces and then develops key terms, theories, frameworks, ideological approaches and methodologies required in linguistic study and research. The module includes overviews of the major branches of language and linguistics study, and requires participation in the research community. It includes a research methods component and exemplifies many aspects of professional research dissemination. It also encourages critical evaluation, reflection and response to linguistic thinking and analysis, and provides an opportunity to practise presenting professional research.

This 20-credit module addresses the question “What is literature?” by introducing key critical methodologies and theoretical frameworks that have been developed to study literary and dramatic texts. The principal objective is to encourage the students to use a variety of methodologies in the analysis of literary texts and to be reflexive as a literary critic. The module helps you feel confident in your ability to use different critical and theoretical frameworks to read literary texts. For this reason, the range of the module is purposely broad. Each Unit introduces a particular critical methodology or theoretical framework, and works through significant issues by examining a particular author, period or genre, ranging broadly over literatures from the fourteenth century to the present day.    

This module examines popular literature written in Britain during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Students can expect to encounter works from a variety of different genres such as the gothic, detective fiction, early science fiction and/or fantasy. In addition to exploring a range of literary forms (which may include poetry, short and long prose fiction, and/or drama), the module will relate these to other media and cultural activities of the period, including stage spectacle and the visual arts. In addition to considering key works in their cultural and historical contexts, students will also be encouraged to relate module material to social, political and theoretical issues of continued relevance in the twenty-first century (e.g., colonialism and postcolonialism, power and authority, gender and sexuality, as well as attitudes and anxieties over science and technology). In this way, the module will introduce a range of interesting and influential works in a context that encourages critical engagement from different perspectives and that highlights the ongoing social relevance of the material under consideration. 

This module explores the use of linguistic frameworks to investigate literary texts. Through a series of practical analyses, students will be introduced to a range of linguistic explorations of poetry, prose, and drama from a wide range of historical periods. The course will invite students to use the analyses as an occasion for the critical evaluation of the various approaches to language and literature, to investigate the notions of literariness and interpretation, and to consider the scope and validity of stylistics in relation to literature and literary studies. The range of key research methods and methodologies in stylistics will be studied.

This module will explore the relationship between literary texts and cultural concepts of modernity. Students will be introduced to a selection of texts from the 16th century to the present day, and a range of ideas and literary practices relating to innovation and to modernity/ ‘the modern’. Topics for discussion might include: early modern aesthetics; novelty and the eighteenth-century novel; modern gothic; Romantics and revolution; art, industry, and society; modernism; writing about the war. Writers to be considered will vary from year to year.  

This module focuses on the empirical study of linguistic texts in relation to their contexts of use, with an emphasis on grammatical analysis. It explores how grammar is used as a system of resources for making meaning in context. Essential concepts and categories of grammar from various theoretical perspectives are introduced as analytical tools for exploring how users of a language explore and represent the world around them, interact with each other through the language, and organise what they say or write. Through learning to analyse the grammatical patterns of various texts and how they are organised, students are enabled to make explicit statements about the language in use, taking into account contextual factors related to culture and situation. Applications of such analysis to areas such as critical evaluation of literary and non-literary texts, language pedagogy, academic development, and workplace practices are consequently explored.

Students will choose a topic in consultation with the MA Course Convenor and an appropriate supervisor. The topic will normally be based on interests and skills the students have developed in the course of the modules already studied.