BA (Hons) English Literature

In this module you will consider the role of memory as topic and method in the production of literary texts from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. You will explore current issues in memory studies including, for example, trauma theory, the ethics of memorialisation, collective memory, lieux de mémoire and the role of memory in cultural heritage. Lectures will introduce key critical concepts which will be applied and developed during seminar discussion. This module considers the intersection between literature and cultural memory by interrogating the relationship between event and retrospective presentation. It investigates the use of memory as testimony and its role in constructing narratives of social and cultural history. The range of texts chosen allows you to consider the ways in which memory differently informs both literary style and constructions of individual and communal identity. You will encounter a wide range of genres and issues including, for instance, the Romantic lyric, gothic novel, Modernist novel, Holocaust testimony and twenty-first century theatre.

This module examines the emerging ‘super-genre’ of speculative fiction: a classification that encompasses a range of sub-genres that employ speculative non-realist devices to explore and express contemporary fears and cultural anxieties. It explores the inherently metaphoric nature of the works, foregrounding their capacity to promote political critique and ethical reflection through the imaginative construction of alternative pasts, presents and futures. The illustrative reading will embrace the fluidity and hybridity of the genre by drawing examples from a diverse range of short stories and novels tat display the characteristics of sub-genres such as utopian fiction, dystopian fiction, science-fiction, post-apocalytic projection, the fantastic and alternative history fiction. Individual writers may include, for example, H.G.Wells, Aldous Huxley, Philip K. Dick, Marge Piercy, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood and Emily St. John Mandel. Through a comparative examination of common characteristics and conceptual frames, you will be encouraged to move beyond the limitations of traditional classification and recognise the increasing sophistication of non-mimetic genres as a literary form.

This module provides you with knowledge and understanding of detective fiction by tracing its emergence as a distinct literary genre. It examines the historical, cultural and commercial contexts underlying the rise of the detective stories and considers how the genre adapted as these changed. The module addresses the narrative structure of detective fiction and traces the interplay between the detective, sidekick, supporting characters and reader in advancing the plot and solving the crime. As well as gaining a command of the authors and texts most central to detective fiction, you will critically engage with broader debates in the active field of genre studies. In group discussion and assessment you will develop a working knowledge of a literary genre’s development and evolution in the hands of a variety of authors writing in a range of historical periods.

This module provides you with opportunities to apply your subject-specific and skills and knowledge, being developed throughout the programme, in a transferable manner. To facilitate this, you will develop an enhanced awareness of the transferability of those skills through project-based learning. Suggested projects could take the form of a publication project (print or web), targeted writing project (such as brochure, newsletter or resource pack), or a project relating to a particular industry (such as arts, heritage, education, journalism, etc.), although this is not proscriptive. Guidance will be provided on identifying a suitable project, research methodology, writing to a specific brief, and writing reflectively. You could choose to develop a project in partnership with a local organisation: the English department has a track record of working with community partners, recent examples of which Lincoln Book Festival, a local HR company, and The Lincoln Teenage Market. You would also be further supported by the University’s Careers Service, BG Futures. The module is project-based, in that you will identify and develop your own project in which to apply your skills, and you may use this to explore a specific professional area. It encourages you to explore and reflect the relationship between your academic skills and employability. While the project-based nature of the module invites a wide interpretation of the learning project, equity will be ensured by the emphasis of the assessment on reflective writing, information literacies and tailored forms of communication.

This module examines the impact of women in literature through a variety of literary forms and transnational parallels and contrasts. It highlights identity politics and the ways in which women have fought to change discriminations based on race, gender, class, age, and sexuality. By bringing together several themes other modules have introduced, this module will strengthen your confidence in undertaking independent research. It will equip you with increased research skills and resourcefulness in choosing your area of specialist literary knowledge by exploring women’s writing by weaving a thread of critical enquiry determined by the significance of women’s contributions to literature. In doing so, it follows a chronologic trajectory, which acknowledges the origins of feminism, and an international perspective that encompasses a variety of diverse authors. It will test your knowledge through coursework that facilitates your choice and independent research skills.

This module offers a survey of the development of western drama from the late 19th century to the present day. You will be introduced to dramatists such as Ibsen, Brecht, Williams and Beckett, alongside key developments and debates in dramaturgical theory and practice. You will be required to think comparatively about theatrical style and ideological expression, relating approaches such as realism, expressionism and absurdism to thematic structures of cultural dissidence, moral subversion and political engagement. Individual plays will be considered as theatrical events as well as written texts so attention will also be paid to the specific theatrical and institutional contexts of individual works, and you will be examine visual and video materials relating to staged performances. Specialist workshop sessions will be scheduled to introduce and enhance the digital literacies required for the practical assessment.

This module will introduce you to the generic and thematic diversity of the Victorian period (1837-1901). It considers a range of texts from across the period, from poetic forms to late-Victorian drama. The selection of texts combines some of the most familiar works of Victorian literature with lesser-known and recently neglected writings. It also studies Victorian social, cultural and scientific debates and considers the emergence and significance of a variety of genres, including (but not limited to) the social problem novel, serial fiction, sensation fiction, and comedy. This module emphasises the specific historical, socio-cultural contexts of the Victorian era to reflect on the ways in which Victorian writers negotiated ground-breaking ideas, discoveries, and significant events. It will encourage you to question current preconceptions about the nature of 'Victorianism' and what it represents, and engage with contemporary key Victorian scholarly debates. Teaching will focus on further developing the analytic skills acquired on the degree so far, and applying them in relation to illustrative examples of historicist analysis, debating skills, and nuanced interpretation. In the assessment you will deploy a historically informed approach to issues in context and test sustained research and analytic skills in the form of a written assignment.

Dispelling any notion that this notable branch of literature is simply 'books for kids', 'Literature & Childhood: Grimm Neverlands' examines texts from the eighteenth century right to the present day. During the module we explore a whole range of sub-genres, such as fairy tales, picture books, fantasy and animal stories, as well as poetry for and about children. Literature and Childhood will provide you with knowledge and understanding of cultural contexts, origins of literary form, and constructions and appropriations of 'the child'. Teaching will pay attention to a range of different theoretical approaches that can be used in the study of literature written for children and/or about childhood. The range of issues considered will be supported by directed research and discussion tasks, some of which will be carried out independently. The module develops the conceptual and theoretical foundations laid at level 4.

This module allows you to develop writing skills in a number of genres, and understand and apply a range of techniques required for the craft of writing. It begins by exploring examples of a number of fictional genres and styles, including letters and diurnal fiction, retrospective/memoir, reportage, and dialogue. You will develop your own voice through sessions that emphasise sharing work and constructive peer critique. Teaching will consider planning and execution, considerations such as audience, and the opportunities literature presents for creative intervention in contemporary or historical issues or debates. The module will encourage you to consider the wider social, cultural and ethical implications of literary praxis, and to assume agency through your creative contributions to important cultural conversations. Teaching will be interactive and workshop-focussed: while some significant generic examples may be introduced, the sessions will be practice-based and student-led. The assessment requires you to produce a body of original writing and reflect critically on your own creative practice.

This module is organised around key frameworks for the understanding of human and cultural identity; likely to include gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, subculture and social class. The exploration of such frameworks is supported by theoretical materials designed to introduce you to key literary and cultural concepts (such as ideology, patriarchy, heteronormativity, performativity, otherness, diaspora, and hybridity). Literary texts will be drawn from a variety of genres, periods, and cultures, and you will be required to identify, and reflect upon, the correlations between identity and its literary and/or aesthetic expression. Through both seminar discussion and the assignment tasks, you will be encouraged to adopt a pluralistic and comparative approach to the topic, crossing textual and discipline boundaries in your exploration of the interlaced operations of cultural classification and individual self-definition.

At a time of climate emergency, this module asks how literature reimagines the environment and our relationship to it. You will begin by studying literatures produced in the early stages of the industrial revolution in order to understand some of the causes of our current environmental crisis, including fossil fuel production, major transport networks and other infrastructures, urbanisation, and global food supply chains. Literature not only represents these developments, but also imaginatively responds to the environmental changes that result from them. Poetry and fiction, in particular, call attention to alternative ways of conceiving of and responding to our surroundings, from evoking nostalgia for pastoral lands unaffected by industry to presenting utopian visions of environments for the future. This module will develop your understanding of the range of literary forms that imaginatively respond to environmental change. You will examine elegies that express despair at environmental change, creative essay prose that fosters environmentalist action, and speculative fiction that promotes ecological utopias. Teaching will focus on enhancing knowledge and understanding of key literary texts and environmental debates and issues from the eighteenth century until today. The assignment will ask you to develop critical arguments that bring your understanding of environmental literatures to bear on pressing ecological and environmental questions in the environmental humanities today.

This module has a dual focus: literature written for young adults and the presentation of young adults in literature. By introducing and discussing texts from different time periods, the concept of adolescence is framed within historic and academic frameworks. The teaching will give you the opportunity to hone discussion skills (e.g. in workshops or seminar session scenarios) as well as to refine presentation skills in advance of the final assessment. The module develops ideas introduced at levels 4 and 5, such as gender and sexuality, while building upon your knowledge of literature and childhood.

This module offers a final opportunity for you to extend your critical engagement with modern writing through an examination of some of the most significant writers, movements, and innovations in literature since the end of the second world war. Through a variety of genres and literary forms, the module will examine divergent representations and responses to this unsettling period, from disillusioned expressions of national or political decline to progressive visions of renewal through cultural hybridity and reinvention. Central strands of investigation will likely include: challenges to realism and aesthetic experimentation; the rise of apocalyptic imaginaries and the arrival of the Anthropocene; multiculturalism and globalisation; and the deconstruction of self and subjectivity. Lectures and seminars will test and enhance the literary-critical skills acquired at levels 4 & 5 through an engagement with relatively complex literary works, contexts and theoretical frameworks, paying particular attention to the development of independent critical argument in advance of the final assessment. The inclusion of different national literatures within the module acknowledges the significant impact of international exchanges during the period as well as providing a means of investigating the increasingly global contexts and concerns of late 20thand 21stcentury literature.

This module promotes detailed knowledge of the major developments in English Literature occurring during the Romantic period. With its emphasis on the cultural contexts of literary, poetic and dramatic language this module enables you to discuss critically changing modes of expression in relation to political, philosophical, aesthetic and social contexts. It includes some consideration of visual art and print culture, building upon your exposure to other instances of this on other period or genre modules. The teaching pays particular attention to primary resources in terms of social, cultural and literary contexts, by examining texts written in response to idea championed by revolutionaries, reformers and Enlightenment thinkers. In view of the final assessment the module facilitates the building of research context and skills.

This module explores a range of literary and other texts associated with the cultural and artistic developments of Modernism during the early decades of the twentieth-century. It will introduce you to the diverse strands of Modernism, as exemplified by writers such as Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Ernst Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, and William Faulkner. In addition, it will contextualise these literary achievements amidst the cultural and historical contexts of modernity, examining areas such as colonialism, the artistic avant-garde, modern alienation & the metropolis, gender and sexuality, and the impact of the First World War. Workshops and seminars will pay particular attention to the relationship between cultural transition and aesthetic innovation, further enhancing your close reading skills and historicist methodologies. There will be specific sessions dedicated to the introduction and enhancement of digital literacies to help you prepare for the hypertext assessment.

This module requires you to devise and undertake a dissertation on a subject of interest and to prepare, in written form, a substantial literary critical essay, including a proposal and reference list. It draws on research skills imparted on earlier, research-led modules, but requires you to impart these in a more independent and critically advanced manner. This module will deepen and refine your knowledge of your chosen specialist area and offers insights into the construction of longer pieces of analytical written work and the ways in which arguments are honed across them. The teaching pays particular attention to supporting you in your research and writing processes. This support includes taught whole-group sessions at the beginning, midpoint and end of the module, feedback sessions, and tutorial provision delivered by individual tutors.