MA in English Literature
The School of English is renowned for the excellence of its research and teaching in all areas of English literature, from the medieval period to the contemporary.
For those applicants aiming to specialise in particular fields of literary study, specific named pathways in the following subject areas will be available:
The programme blends compulsory elements, which extend and develop research skills and explore research issues such as the nature of archival study, genre and textuality, the relationship between print and manuscript, interdisciplinary, and questions of cultural and political context, with an optional element that enables period-specific specialisation. Authors and areas to be studied on these period-specific modules may include: early modern drama, including Shakespeare and Jonson; John Donne, John Milton, Katherine Phillips and 17th century poetry; Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen and the novel; Lord Byron and Romantic poetry; Oscar Wilde and Victorian and fin-de-siecle literature; James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Modernism; DH Lawrence and regional literature; and a range of contemporary poets and novelists, such as Ian McEwan, Paul Muldoon, Alice Oswald, and Derek Walcott.
All Masters students in the School of English join a lively and thriving postgraduate community. In addition to dedicated taught courses, students are also offered the following opportunities:
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library and IT training
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participation in general postgraduate research seminars
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lectures by visiting academics
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in-sessional support for international students
Course structure
Full-time students normally complete the course within one year; part-time students must take between 24 and 36 months to complete. The MA consists of taught modules totalling 120 credits (which are taken during the autumn and spring semesters) and a 60 credit dissertation module (undertaken over the summer period). Full time students normally take 60 credits of taught modules in each semester; part-time students normally take 30 credits.
All modules will be team-taught by a range of experts in the field. All students will also be assigned an individual supervisor for their independent dissertation project.
This MA programme, with its specialised pathways, provides excellent preparation for future research at doctoral level. As well as receiving research skills training as part of the degree, students will have the opportunity to explore a diverse range of literary genres and to investigate textual and critical issues involved in the study of literature in their cultural and historical context. Topics covered will include: questions of genre; establishing and challenging a literary canon; the idea of the archive; notions of orality and performance; the relationship between manuscript and print cultures; and editorial practice and politics.
The course structure below reflects the modules that will be taught and assessed in the academic year 2011/12. The course structures are updated in April of each year to show the course content for the following academic session. If you have any queries concerning the course structure please contact the PG Administrator at english-postgrad@nottingham.ac.uk .
September to June
All pathways
Students must take all modules in this group:
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Q34533 What is Literary Research?
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Q34532 What is a Text? (Research Issues in Literature I)
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Q34537 Research Methods in Literature and Drama
Long Nineteenth-Century pathway
Students take either these two modules:
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Q34523 Literature and Identity c. 1789-1914
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Q34536 Popular Literature in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries
Twentieth-Century and Contemporary pathway
OR these two modules:
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Q34534 Modernism: Inside and Outside
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Q34525 Literature in Britain Since 1950
Open pathway
There is also the opportunity to take an open pathway MA rather than the more specialised pathways outlined above. In this pathway you have the chance to study any two of the optional modules listed above.
June to September
Assessment
All taught modules are assessed by written work of between 3,000 words (for a 15 credit module) and 6,000 words (for a 30 credit module) which is set towards the end of the semester in which the module is taught; the dissertation module is assessed by written work of 12,000-15,000 words. The dissertation is a major piece of advanced independent research, which you complete over the summer under the supervision of a specialist in your chosen area. We will provide you with advice and guidance while you select and refine your area of study, and offer close supervision and support as you complete your research and your MA.
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