BA in English Literature and Philosophy

Joint Honours in English and Philosophy is a cross-disciplinary course, which develops and assesses skills, knowledge, and understanding across English and Philosophy, typically including a range of major philosophical and literary texts, important concepts, questions, arguments, and methods. The course also fosters an understanding of the relationships between English and Philosophy (through, for example, the compulsory Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism module, as well as optional modules offered by both Departments) and to develop detailed knowledge in either English or Philosophy through the preparation of a Dissertation on a chosen topic. The syllabus is equally weighted between the two subjects, although you may take one module more in one of the subjects (and therefore one less in the other) in year three.

Year 1

You will take three modules in English literature and three modules in Philosophy. The three first-year compulsory English modules introduce you to representative works in the major literary genres (novel, drama, and poetry), including knowledge of a range of writing before 1800. In the three first-year compulsory Philosophy modules, you will encounter the ideas and arguments of some of the major philosophers in the history of the subject, in their own writings; some central theories and arguments in the fields of Logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology, or Philosophy of Mind, broadly understood; some central theories and arguments in the fields of Moral, Political, or Social Philosophy, broadly understood.

Compulsory modules:

In the first year, you will take the following English Literature and Philosophy modules:

• Introduction to Drama
• Introduction to the Novel
• Introduction to Poetry
• Ethics and Values
• Knowledge and Reality
• Reading Philosophy.

Year 2

Subject to your choices of modules within the course, you will acquire and be able to demonstrate broad and detailed knowledge within the disciplines of Philosophy and English, together with an awareness of an increased variety of the ideas, concepts, and contexts relating to these disciplines.

Compulsory modules:

• Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism
• Moral Theory
• One of Philosophy of Mind
• Language, Logic, and Reality
• Modern Philosophy I.

Optional modules :

Another two optional modules from English Literature and one optional module from Philosophy.

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 Philosophy previously included:

• Biomedical Ethics Past and Present
• Science and Religion
• Political Philosophy
• Philosophy of Religion
• Theory, Literature, and Society
• Philosophy of Science
• The Philosophy of Economics and Politics: Theory, Methods, and Values

Year 3

Subject to their choices of modules within the course, students will acquire and be able to demonstrate comprehensive and accurately detailed knowledge within the disciplines of Philosophy and English, exploring particular areas of specialization in-depth, as well as developing an awareness of the limitations of knowledge in each subject

The final year includes a compulsory 12,000-word Dissertation. In English, this will be on a subject of your choice related to English literature. In Philosophy it will be an extensive study or survey of a philosophical problem or author.

Compulsory modules:

One from:

• Dissertation in English 
• Dissertation in Philosophy (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 American Fiction
• Ballads and Popular Romance.

Optional modules in Philosophy previously included:

• Modern Philosophy II
• Philosophical Issues in Contemporary Science
• Aesthetics
• Twentieth-Century European Philosophy
• Applied Ethics
• Issues in Contemporary Ethics
• Gender, Film, and Society
• Metaphysics
• History and Philosophy of Psychiatry
• Ethics in Business Practice
• Formal and Philosophical Logic.