MA in English Literature 1500-1900
This dynamic programme aims to deepen your understanding of how a wide range of writing was produced, circulated, read and reviewed across four centuries. At the heart of the MA are two complementary modules, Reading the Past I and II. The first of these engages with texts that comment on their own historical moment by themselves reading the past (looking at fields such as eighteenth-century appropriations of Shakespeare, Victorian medievalism, and reworkings of Classical and Biblical texts); the second invites readings that go against the grain of periodization, opening up the ways in which we interpret literary history by interrogating texts produced in culturally transitional decades such as the 1660s, 1790s and the 1890s. Another distinctive feature of the programme is the Manuscript, Print, Digital module, which introduces students to the principles and practice of manuscript study, printed book history and textual editing, giving you the opportunity to work with new digital technologies. Authors typically studied on the MA include Sidney, Shakespeare, Milton, Behn, Blake, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Austen, Gaskell, Rossetti and Wilde.
The Special Collections of the University's Robinson Library and other major archives in the region provide an exciting resource to support the teaching on the programme.
The MA will provide you with an excellent foundation for PhD research and will also enable you to develop skills that are valuable for careers including the creative industries, education, management or publishing.
All students take the following modules (160 credits):
- Reading the Past I and II (2 x 20 credits): provide the conceptual framework for the programme, interrogating the relationship between literature and history.
- Manuscript, Print, Digital (10 credits): examines the principles and practice of manuscript study, printed book history and textual editing.
- Reading Form (10 credits): develops advanced skills in critically evaluating the formal aspects of literary texts.
- Research Methods (40 credits): combines theory and practice, providing essential postgraduate research skills while developing your ability to disseminate your research through oral and written presentation.
- Dissertation (60 credits): 15,000-18,000 word project that allows you to research a subject of your choice emerging from the programme.
Students also choose two 10-credit optional modules (20 credits):
Options likely to be offered in 2011-12 include Cultures of Collecting, Place and Pilgrimage, Republicanism and Memory, and Literary Lifecycles: Birth to Death in Children's Literature.
An informational leaflet is available here (PDF: 471KB).
For further information please contact:
Ella Dzelzainis
Tel: +44 (0) 191 222 7199
E-mail: ella.dzelzainis@ncl.ac.uk