BA in English Literature and History

Joint Honours in English and History is a cross-disciplinary course, which develops and assesses skills that are common to both disciplines alongside others that are specific to each. The course offers the opportunity to acquire a range of both literary-critical and historical knowledge, develops the ability to deploy and contextualize a number of subject-specific skills in each discipline, and locates these skills and forms of knowledge in relation to one another.

Year 1

In the first year, you will take three modules in English literature and three modules in History.

Compulsory modules in English:

• Introduction to Drama
• Introduction to the Novel
• Introduction to Poetry
• Romance and the Literature of Chivalry
• Myth and Epic of the North
• English: Language, Use, Theory
• Classical and Biblical Backgrounds to English Literature.

Optional modules in History (previous examples include):

• Beyond the Northlands: The Vikings and their World
• Decline and Crisis: Europe 1300-1500
• Early Modern England: A Social History
• Society and Culture in China under Ming and Qing Dynasties
• Reformation Europe
• The Century of Revolution
• Making History
• The Birth of Western Society, 300-1050 AD

Year 2

In English, you have a wide choice from among lecture and seminar modules but must take either Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism or Shakespeare. In History, you are offered modules that provide time-depth and focus on a closely defined period and modules that are broader and more wide-ranging, typically offering a widely delimited chronological and geographical approach.

Compulsory modules in English:

EITHER / OR

• Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism
• Shakespeare

(although both may be selected).

Optional lecture modules in English (taught by weekly lectures and four one-hour tutorials) have previously included:

• Chaucer
• Old English
• Old Norse
• Old French
• Renaissance Literature
• Victorian Literature
• The literature of the Modern Period
• American Poetry.

Optional seminar modules in English (taught by fortnightly two-hour seminars) have previously included:

• Modern Poetry
• Literature in England and Wales, 1066-1300
• Germanic Myth and Legend
• The Australian Legend
• Toni Morrison: Texts and Contexts
• John Milton
• Evelyn Waugh
• Shakespeare’s History Plays
• The Brontes (a maximum of one may be selected).

Optional modules in History (previous examples include):

• Conversations with History
• Hard Times: British Society, 1818-1902
• Robin Hood
• The Book of Hours in Medieval Life and Art
• The Court: Art and Power in Early Modern Europe
• Selling the Tudor Monarchy
• Political Culture in Japan since 1688
• Soviet Socialism in the Cold War: The USSR, 1945-1991
• From Vikings to Crusaders: The Formation of the Scandinavian Kingdoms, 900-1200
• Colonial British America, 1600-1776

Year 3

In English, the combination of a range of optional lecture modules and Special Topics is designed to broaden and deepen your knowledge base and analytical skills. In History, the syllabus encourages the detailed study and analysis of historical events, trends, and problems by means of a Special Subject (requiring the close study of a highly specialized topic using primary source materials) and a Dissertation. The third-year also includes the possibility of choosing ‘reflective’ modules which oblige students to study a particular historical problem that will lead them to reflect upon the problematical nature of the historical enterprise, on its technique, historiography, and subjectivity.

Compulsory modules:

One from:

• Dissertation in English
• Dissertation in History (40 credits).

Optional lecture modules in English (taught by weekly lectures and four one-hour tutorials) have previously included:

• Old English
• Old Norse
• Old French
• Restoration and 18th Century Literature
• The literature of the Romantic Period
• Post-War Fiction and Poetry
• American Fiction
• Medieval Literature.

Optional Special Topics in English (taught by fortnightly two-hour seminars) have previously included:

• Literature, Cinema, and Neuroscience
• Shakespeare on Film
• US Cold War Literature and Culture
• Writing Prose Fiction
• Fictions of Terrorism
• B. Yeats
• Keats and Shelley
• Elizabeth Bishop and Twentieth-Century Verse
• A Society of Equals? Literature, Culture, and Equality
• Creative Writing Poetry
• Writing Mountains in the Early Twentieth Century
• Seamus Heaney
• Jewish AmericanFiction
• Ballads and Popular Romance.

Optional modules in History (previous examples include):

• A World Turned Upside Down: Radicalism in the English Revolution
• From War to Cold War: US Foreign Policy, c. 1944-1948
• Politics and Polemics: Medieval German Kings and their Chroniclers, c. 1024-1125
• Revolution and History
• The Ruin of the World: Roman to Barbarian Gaul, 400-500
• Medieval Iceland: Settlement, Sagas, Civil War
• Popular Cultures in Early Modern England 1500-1640.