The following is a sample of the typical modules that we offer as at the date of publication but is not intended to be construed and/or relied upon as a definitive list of the modules that will be available in any given year. Due to the passage of time between commencement of the course and subsequent years of the course, modules may change due to developments in the curriculum and the module information in this prospectus is provided for indicative purposes only.
Core
Academic Community
This module offers an introduction to key issues and skills in English for those making the transition to university-level study and emphasises points of intersection between the diverse disciplines contained within the study of English at Nottingham. Taught in small groups by your Personal Tutor, you are encouraged to explore—critically and reflectively—what it means to be a student of English, and will be supported in developing a toolkit of study, research and communication skills which can be transferred to other modules.
Learning objectives:
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- To introduce key issues of university study in general and the discipline of English in particular to students making the transition from school to university.
- To enable you to develop your understanding of the intersections between different branches of the discipline of English.
- To enable you to reflect on and begin to develop effective skills for study and research, reflective writing, and oral presentation.
- To provide knowledge and understanding of elements of the literary, cultural and historical contexts for literature, language and drama.
Beginnings of English
This module introduces you to the varied languages, literatures and cultures of medieval England (c.500-1500). You will read a variety of medieval texts which were originally written in Old English, Middle English and Old Norse. We study some texts in translation, but we also introduce you to aspects of Old and Middle English language to enable you to enjoy the nuance and texture of English literary language in its earliest forms.
We will read texts in a variety of genres, from epic and elegy, to saga, romance and fable. We will discuss ideas of Englishness and identity, and learn about the production and transmission of texts in the pre-modern period.
Learning objectives:
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- To introduce you to linguistic vocabulary and terminology.
- To enable you to become proficient in reading Old English and Middle English.
- To give you an understanding of the complexities of English grammar, past and present.
- To give you an understanding of the origins of English, and its development over the medieval period.
- To familiarise you with the themes and genre of medieval English literature.
Drama, Theatre, Performance
This module explores the extraordinary variety of drama in the Western dramatic tradition. You will examine dramatic texts in relation to their historical context, moving from the theatre of ancient Greece, English medieval drama, the theatre of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the Restoration stage, to nineteenth-century naturalism. In addition to texts produced by writers from Sophocles to Ibsen, you will also consider a variety of extra-textual features of drama, including the performance styles of actors, the significance of performance space and place, and the composition of various audiences.
You will study selected plays in workshops, seminars and lectures, during which we will explore adaptation and interpretation of the texts through different media resources.
You will also have the opportunity to engage in practical theatre-making, exploring extracts from the selected play-texts in short, student-directed scenes in response to key questions about performance.
Learning objectives:
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- To provide you with an understanding of drama as a performance medium, in which real people and objects are presented to other people in real, shared space.
- To introduce you to a range of historical performance conventions, including Ancient Greek tragedy and nineteenth century naturalism.
- To enable you to recognise and analyse the varied elements which constitute performance.
- To provide you with knowledge and understanding of the social, historical and cultural contexts of various play-texts.
Language and Context
This module teaches you about the nature of language, as well as how to analyse it for a broad range of purposes, preparing you for studies across all sections of the School.
During the weekly workshops you will learn about levels of language analysis and description, from the sounds and structure of language, through to meaning and discourse. These can be applied to all areas of English study, and will prepare you for future modules. Weekly lectures and seminars provide the Context part of the module. In the lectures you will see how the staff here in the School of English put these skills of analysis and description to use in their own research. This covers the study of language in relation to the mind, literature, culture, society, and more. The seminars will then give you a chance to think about and discuss these topics further.
Learning objectives:
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- To provide you with methods of language analysis and description for each linguistic level (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse)
- To prepare you for conducting your own language research across your degree
- To introduce you to the areas of research and study within the School, with particular focus on psycholinguistics, literary linguistics, and sociolinguistics
Studying Literature
This module introduces you to some of the core skills for literary studies, including skills in reading, writing, researching and presentation. The module addresses topics including close reading, constructing an argument, and handling critical material, as well as introducing you to key critical questions about literary form, production and reception. These elements are linked to readings of specific literary texts, focused on poetry and prose selected from the full range of the modern literary period (1500 to the present).
Across the year you will learn about different interpretive approaches and concepts, and will examine literary-historical movements and transitions.
Learning objectives:
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- To introduce you to selected literary texts, to deepen your imaginative engagement and analytic response.
- To provide you with a basis of knowledge, working methods and appropriate terminology for subsequent work at university level.
- To provide you with knowledge and understanding of the literary, cultural and historical contexts for literature from the period 1500 to the present, and the relationship between period and genre.
Optional English modules
Creative Writing Practice
This module introduces you to the process of writing drama, poetry and fiction by engaging in a variety of forms of reading, writing and performance practice. Activities include creative and analytical responses to published writing, writing exercises in poetry, drama and fiction, and revision of work written over the course of the module. The poetry content includes imagery, line and metre, and poetic form; the fiction content includes character, narrative, and point of view; the drama content includes scene, dialogue and character. The module also includes material on the contexts of writing, including: publication, performance and literary interviews.
Learning objectives:
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- To guide you in the practice of the process of writing, including using notebooks and making revisions.
- To develop your skills in writing and reading to develop an awareness of literary contexts and creative and aesthetic possibilities.
- To provide knowledge and understanding of elements of poetry (rhythm, imagery, and poetic form), fiction (character, narrative and point of view) and drama (scene, dialogue, character).
Regional Writers
This module introduces you to the work of selected regional writers, including Nottinghamshire writers (e.g. DH Lawrence), considering how their work engages with regional landscapes, the literary and industrial heritage of their area, and other distinctive cultural elements such as dialect.
The module will allow you to reflect on recent theoretical developments in the field of literary geography, while also equipping you to read and appreciate literary works through a focus on their tangible social and historical contexts.
Learning objectives:
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- To provide you with knowledge of a range of literary works by notable regional writers.
- To provide an introduction to the study of literary geography, place and space in literary works.
Shakespeare's Histories: Critical Approach
Shakespeare is a cultural and literary icon. This module seeks to explore some of the many reasons behind that fact by focussing on one particular genre of drama: the history plays, which was hugely popular in England’s commercial playhouses in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Looking in detail at a sequence of four plays – Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and Henry V – the module will consider key themes, including kingship, power and authority, national and regional identities, sexual politics, war, and ideas of community. In addition, we will use these plays as a lens through which to examine Shakespeare’s engagement with the linguistic, performative, and socio-political contexts of his time.
Bringing matters up to the present day, the module will deploy a range of media resources, including film and performance archives, to consider the ways in which these plays continue to resonate and reverberate in the modern era. The relevance of the history plays within new social and political contexts and in new eras of war and conflict will be the focus of analysis, allowing us to think about Shakespeare in performance, on the screen, and in various forms of adaptation.
Learning objectives:
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- To provide you with an understanding of key issues related to the production and reception of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets.
- To consider Shakespeare’s position as a cultural and literary icon.
- To provide you with knowledge and understanding of the genre of early modern history plays with specific reference to Shakespeare.
The Viking World
More than any other group, the Vikings shaped the history of Europe. Their stories and myths are still the subject of fiction, poetry, film and art. This interdisciplinary module introduces you to the impact of the Viking Age and of the Viking Expansion.
You will become familiar with concepts such as diasporic settlements and identity, as well as being introduced to the various ways of evaluating sources from the Viking Age and beyond (such as historical sources, material culture etc.). You will also learn about the myths and the language, as well as the culture of the Viking Age and beyond. This module is specifically designed as an introduction to Viking Studies. No previous knowledge of history, language or literature or archaeology is necessary.
Learning objectives:
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- To introduce you to the culture of medieval Scandinavia and the Viking-settled areas.
- To introduce you to the study of different source types (text, language and material culture) and to interdisciplinary research, including an awareness of the sources of medieval literature.
- To provide you with knowledge and understanding of the history and culture of Northern Europe and the North Atlantic around the first millennium.
- To explore concepts of migration and identity in the early Middle Ages.
- To provide you with understanding of the relationships between texts and historical contexts.
Alternatively, you may prefer to start or continue learning a language, or choose other modules from across the Arts faculty and the University, such as in American studies, philosophy, history, art history or classics.
You will take a total of six modules during your second year. You will begin to specialise in language and literature through two core modules and by taking a further three modules from both Literary and Language Studies, and one module from any area of study in the School of English.
Core
Literary Linguistics
Bridging the study of literature and language, this module offers training in the discipline of literary linguistics, also known as ‘stylistics’. There is a focus on the analysis of linguistic and narratological aspects of literary texts in order to show their linguistic patterns. You’ll also consider the effects of texts on the reader, including their significance, meaning and value. The module offers an opportunity for specialisation in preparation for Year three modules in modern English language, particularly in the areas of stylistics, cognitive poetics and narratology.
Texts Across Time
This module will consider key issues in the study of English language and world literature, locate language and literature in time and place, and extend your knowledge of the intellectual, political, historical, and cultural developments in language and literature.
Optional
You will choose three options from Literary Studies and Language Studies and then one further optional English module.
Literary Studies
Each of these modules will offer a comprehensive introduction to the changes in the genres of prose, poetry and drama across the period studied, placing the works encountered in the context of key aesthetic, social and political/historical contexts.
Chaucer and his Contemporaries, c.1380-c.1420
In this module you’ll be introduced to the exceptionally rich period of writing in English at the end of the 14th and turn of the 15th century. It will focus on the so-called ‘Ricardian’ poets, Chaucer (selected Canterbury Tales, Parliament of Fowls, Legend of Good Women), Langland (excerpts from Piers Plowman), Gower (excerpts from Confessio Amantis) and the Gawain-poet (Patience). You’ll also discuss Thomas Hoccleve’s early poems, and the prose works of the female mystics Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe.
From Talking Horses to Romantic Revolutionaries: Literature 1700-1830
This module introduces you to a range of literature written between 1700-1830. This was a dramatic and turbulent period in literary history where anything was possible and many roles were reversed. Writers produced texts about contemporary issues such as class, poverty, sexuality, slavery, and the city, but also had their eyes firmly on the past. They took every available opportunity to promote their own agendas and to savage and ridicule those of their political and literary opponents. You’ll examine a wide-range of literature considering the political, social and cultural contexts of the period.
Ice and Fire: Myths and Heroes of the North
In this module you will study and analyse the key texts of old Norse myth and legend from which popular stories come, along with pictorial versions in wood and stone from throughout the Viking world. You’ll explore the development of Norse myth and legend from the Viking Age, through medieval Christian Iceland, and into more recent times.
Literature and Popular Culture
This module will give you an understanding of the relationship between literature and popular culture, as you explore works from across a range of genres and mediums such as prose fiction, poetry, comics, graphic novels, music, television and film. In addition to exploring topics such as aesthetics and adaptation, material will be situated within cultural, political and historical contexts allowing for the distinction between the literary and the popular.
Modern and Contemporary Literature
This module will familiarise you with relevant aesthetic, generic, and literary-historical strategies for tracing formal and thematic transformations in 20th and 21st century literature. Moving between genres, the module will unfold chronologically from modernism, through the inter-war years, and into the ‘contemporary scene’ up to the present day.
Old English: Reflection and Lament
This module explores the tradition that the poetry and prose of Old English often focuses on warfare and heroic action. You will study and analyse poems from the Exeter Book 'elegies' and also passages from Beowulf to explore this rich and rewarding genre.
Shakespeare and Contemporaries on the Page
This module focuses on material written between 1580 and 1630 to provide you with an introduction to methods of reading early modern texts. Shakespeare’s poetry will be among the core texts; other canonical writers will include Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney and John Donne. You’ll explore the practice of historicised readings of early modern texts and you’ll consider the related challenges and limitations.
Victorian and Fin de Siècle Literature: 1830-1910
You will explore a wide variety of Victorian and fin-de-siècle literature, with examples from fiction, critical writing, poetry and drama. It will examine changes in literary forms and genres over this period, as well as looking at the contested transition between Victorianism and Modernism. The module is organised around a number of interrelated themes, to include empire and race, class and crime, identity and social mobility, gender and sexuality, and literature and consumerism.
Language Studies
Building on the study of language undertaken in year one, these modules provide the exciting opportunity for you to explore aspects of language use in the mind, in society and in literature.
Language in Society
This module provides a broad introduction to sociolinguistic theory. You will investigate:
- the role that language has to play in constructing and reflecting cultural identities
- theories of language variation across and within communities
- the role of the English language in the world
- the specific role of Standard English within British contexts
You will be introduced to both qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study of sociolinguistics, combining theoretical linguistics and practical methodological investigation.
Language Development
You’ll explore how English is learnt from making sounds as an infant through to adulthood. Topics relating to early speech development include: the biological foundations of language development, the stages of language acquisition and the influence of environment on development. Further topics which take into account later stages of development include humour and joke telling abilities, story-telling and conversational skills and bilingualism.
Names and Identities
What can given names, surnames and nicknames tell us about people in the past? What determines the choice of a name for a child? Where does our hereditary surname system come from? How have place, class and gender impacted upon naming through time? This module will help you answer all these questions and more. Interactive lectures and seminars, and a project based on primary material tailored to each participant, will introduce you to the many and varied, fascinating and extraordinary types of personal name and their origins.
Old English: Reflection and Lament
This module explores the tradition that the poetry and prose of Old English often focuses on warfare and heroic action. You will study and analyse poems from the Exeter Book 'elegies' and also passages from Beowulf to explore this rich and rewarding genre. You'll have a two-hour lecture and one-hour seminar each week for this module.
English Through Time
This module focuses on the development of the English language from before the arrival of Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century to the present day. It offers students a thorough grounding in the changes that the language has undergone over this time. We will look at topics such as the development of writing, language contact and standardisation. An important theme running through the module is the relationship between the historical record and the political power of those who produced and preserved that record.
The Psychology of Bilingualism and Language Learning
This module will introduce you to theories and practice of second language learning, enabling you to develop an in-depth understanding of the process in various settings. Topics that are covered include: zone of proximal development, classroom interaction, collaborative learning, learning styles, and classroom methodology.
Other optional areas of study in English during the second year:
Drama and performance
These modules gives you the opportunity to develop approaches from year one by studying twentieth and twenty-first century theatre: by exploring key critical approaches to drama in theory and practice, and by focusing on a key period in the development of our nation's theatre. Modules in this area of study include:
Shakespeare and Contemporaries on the Stage
This module offers an in-depth exploration of the historical and theatrical contexts of early modern drama. This module invites students to explore the stagecraft of innovative and provocative works by Shakespeare and key contemporaries, such as Middleton, Johnson, and Ford (amongst others). You will explore how practical performance elements such as staging, props, costume and music shape meaning.
Stanislavski to Stelarc: Performance Practice and Theory
This module helps you develop your understanding of the theory and practice of theatre and performance from the beginnings of the twentieth century through to the present day. Building on the work encountered in Introduction to Drama, you will move forward from naturalism to consider the work of influential theorists and practitioners such as Stanislavski, Brecht, Meyerhold, Barba, Schechner, Boal, Artaud, Berkoff, Grotowski, Jarry and the futurists, whose work has had a major impact on theatre and performance in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Twentieth Century Plays
This module aims to provide you with an overview of key plays and performances from the 1890s to the present, placing those texts in their original political, social, and cultural contexts and considering their subsequent reception and afterlife. You’ll focus on the textual and performance effects created in those key texts, by writers such as Samuel Beckett and Edward Albee, and will be encouraged to situate those texts alongside the work of relevant theorists and practitioners.
Creative writing
Students who choose Creative Writing Practice in year one as an option may take one creative writing module. Modules in this area of study include:
Fiction: Forms and Conventions
This module expands on the work done in the first year by undertaking a sustained analysis of technique and craft related to fiction writing, including narrative voice, point of view, character development, dialogue, plot, and setting. You will be introduced to a wide and diverse range of writers and techniques as well as exploring the publishing industry as it relates to fiction. You will develop your own creative work as well as your critical and reflective skills.
Poetry: Forms and Conventions
This module expands on the work done in the first year by undertaking a sustained analysis of technique and craft related to writing poetry, including poetic line, stanza, rhyme and related techniques, and imagery, along with a number of traditional forms such as the sonnet or haiku. You will be introduced to a wide and diverse range of writers and techniques as well as exploring the publishing industry as it relates to poetry. You will develop your own creative work as well as your critical and reflective skills.
You will take a total of six modules during your final year
You will choose two modules in Literary studies and two modules in Language studies. Two further modules are chosen from any area of study in the school. Students also have the opportunity to develop an individual research project of their own choice with the one-to-one support of an expert member of staff.
Literary studies
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- The Literature of the Anglo-Saxons
- Dreaming the Middle Ages: Visionary Poetry in Scotland and England
- The Self and the World: Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century
- Contemporary Fiction
- Making Something Happen: Twentieth Century Poetry and Politics
- Single Author Study
- Dark Futures, Tainted Pasts: Dystopian and Gothic Fictions
- The Viking Mind
- Reformation and Revolution: Early Modern literature and drama 1588-1688
- Island and Empire
- Henry James and Oscar Wilde
Language studies
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- Teaching English as a Foreign Language
- English Place-Names
- The Literature of the Anglo-Saxons
- Language and the Mind
- Advanced Stylistics
- The Viking Mind
- Discourses of Health and Work
- Language and Feminism
Drama and performance
You may choose up to two options from the following modules:
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- Performing the Nation: British Theatre since 1980
- Changing Stages: Theatre Industry and Theatre Art
- Modern Irish Literature and Drama
- Reformation and Revolution: Early Modern Literature and drama 1588-1688
- Writing for Performance
- Theatre Making
Creative writing
Or if you chose Creative Writing Practice in year one, you may choose up to two of the following modules:
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- Advanced Writing Practice: Fiction
- Writing for Performance
- Advanced Writing Practice: Poetry
Individual research project
You will have the opportunity to undertake an individual research project. This will give you the chance to work on a project of your choice with the one-to-one support of an expert member of staff.
The modules we offer are inspired by the research interests of our staff and as a result may change for reasons of, for example, research developments or legislation changes. The above list is a sample of typical modules we offer, not a definitive list.
English Dissertation: Full year
English Dissertation: Spring Semester only
Project-Based Dissertation