BA English & Diploma in English Prospectus

University Of London

BA English and Diploma in English

The study of English
The BA degree and Diploma in English seek to develop a broad range of skills, including general communicative competence as well as more technical skills of literary–critical analysis. During your studies, you will give close attention to a range of literary and other works written in different styles and periods; and from this study you will develop an awareness of changing rhetorical techniques and effects, as well as greater knowledge of many well-known and a large number of less well-known literary works.  

English is a distinct area of study which is also at the intersection of a range of other disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Because it is concerned with questions of meaning, social behaviour and structure, as well as with problems of aesthetic and cultural value, your work directs you not only towards a wide range of examples of writing but also towards greater awareness of moral and social questions surrounding the techniques through which analysis and persuasion are achieved.  

Although most of the work in the programme is literary, rather than linguistic, practice in  interpretation coupled with the experience of planning and writing essays should develop communicative skills which are not confined to commentary on literary topics alone.   

A development in your level of skill and critical awareness should provide a sound basis for careers including the Civil Service, teaching and research, journalism, radio and television, as well as a variety of posts in business.

Note: These qualifications are specifically concerned with the study of English literature and it is assumed that prospective students will already be fluent in spoken and written English. The programme contains no element of training in language proficiency.

The Diploma in English
The Diploma in English, which was introduced in 1996, has been developed following the success of the BA English. The Diploma will appeal to two different kinds of student. Firstly, there are those who would like a University of London qualification in English, but do not feel ready to commit themselves to studying for a full degree programme. Secondly, there are students who do not satisfy the University’s entrance requirements for the degree. The Diploma gives these students the opportunity to gain access to the degree if their Diploma studies are successful.

Transfer to the BA English
A student who obtains the Diploma in  English will be invited to transfer his or her registration to the BA English and will be automatically credited with the papers passed in the Diploma. In effect, the student will go on to the advanced units of the BA English and will be able to complete the degree in a minimum of two further years. A student who transfers will not have to pay another initial registration fee and the registration period of eight years will date from the initial registration for the Diploma. You should note that a student registered for the BA English who passes the foundation units cannot be awarded the Diploma in English.

Entrance requirements for the BA English
Applicants who wish to register for the BA English must satisfy the general entrance requirements as detailed on page 46 of this prospectus. In addition students must satisfy the following course requirement:

• Applicants are required to demonstrate a competence at least equivalent to a pass in the GCE ‘A’ Level in English.
• Those students whose mother tongue is not English are also required to have passed GCSE/GCE ‘O’ Level in English Language at Grade C or above, or, within the last five years, to have passed at the required standard a test of proficiency in English that is recognised by the University of London .

Entrance requirements for the Diploma in English
• A minimum of three subjects at Grade C or above at GCSE/GCE ‘O’ Level or an equivalent qualification.
• All applicants are required to have passed GCSE/GCE ‘O’ Level English Language at Grade C or above, or, within the last five years, to have passed at the required standard a test of proficiency in English that is recognised b the University of London .
• Applicants must be aged 18 or over by 1 September in the year of registration.

Examinations
Assessment is by unseen written examination. To obtain the BA English, you must enter and pass the examination in 12 units. In any one year you can choose to enter examinations to a minimum of one unit and to a maximum of four units. The classification of your degree will be based on your marks for the eight advanced units together with a ninth mark calculated from the average of the three best marks achieved in the foundation units. To obtain the Diploma in English, examinations must be passed in all four units. The classification of your Diploma will be based on the average of all four marks achieved. The standard of the examination for the Diploma is the same as that for the foundation level of the BA English.

Diploma in English

BA English

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English syllabuses

Explorations in literature 1 and 2
These units introduce students to methodological and other problems involved in the study of literature from a wide range of periods. They aim to provide a literary context for works which will be studied in later years and to promote a sense of literary history as an active process of development and change. Students choose well-known texts to study which have appeared at any time from 2500 BC to the 20th century. The feature common to all the texts is that they have been considered important in the history of Western literature. Students will consider historical, contextual and other problems raised by the individual texts, as well as relationships between texts. This may involve looking at the direct influence of one text on another, different ways in which different texts treat the same issue, or differences in particular aspects of the texts (e.g. the way characters are represented, the construction of narratives, the use of figurative language). No specific works of criticism, or other background reading, are prescribed for either unit.  Instead, students are expected to prepare their own study programme, based on advice offered in the relevant subject guide and the Handbook.

Explorations 1
This unit deals with literature from Homer to Shakespeare. It is designed to introduce the student to a range of literature from Classical times to the Renaissance. It covers a variety of canonical figures and texts which have had a significant effect on the development of English literature, as well as introducing the student to some less well-known writing of the medieval period. Students will also be introduced to a variety of styles, genres and themes which have been historically influential in the English literary tradition. Prescribed reading will include:

Explorations 2
This unit deals with English literature since Shakespeare. It is designed to introduce students to a range of works from the early 17th century to the present day. It covers a variety of canonical figures and texts which have had a significant effect on the development of later English literature, as well as introducing the student to some less well-known writing of this period. Students will also be introduced to a variety of styles, genres and themes which have been important in the literature of this period. Prescribed reading will include:

Approaches to text
This unit considers a range of problems involved in interpreting literary and non-literary texts and introduces basic terminology and concepts involved in analysing such texts (for example metre, symbol, point of view). Interconnections between interpreting texts in different media will also be examined. More specifically, the syllabus aims to help students to understand the technical means by which texts produce meaning; to demonstrate how all acts of interpretation or commentary involve ‘theoretical’ assumptions and positions, even if such concepts are not explicitly acknowledged; to make inter-connections between interpreting texts in an academic context and in everyday life; to enhance understanding of what constitutes a ‘text’, by comparison of literature with visual images, films, drama productions, etc.  During study for this unit, students will develop a glossary of key terms and concepts used in textual description and analysis and examine why these terms and concepts matter in the practical analysis of texts in a range of media, though literature will provide the central strand of case studies.   

Candidates may draw on reading completed for Explorations 1 and 2 units in answers for Section B, but must not present substantially the same material twice, in this or any other Foundation unit examination.

Preliminary reading:

Renaissance comedy: Shakespeare and Jonson
This unit aims to provide students with an introduction to the works of Shakespeare and Jonson within the genre of  ‘comedy’, and seeks to draw attention to the principles of classification which enable these plays to be seen as forming a group. Starting with the hypothesis that the plays themselves may problematise such formulations, the syllabus will examine the cultural specificity of the term ‘comedy’, and the extent to which these plays are part of a process which redefined the role of drama in Elizabethan/Jacobean society.

The plays will be treated primarily as literary texts but students will be encouraged to  consider the possibilities for interpretation which a ‘stage-centred’ critical approach produces. The plays will be placed in the context of a new dramatic practice which arose within a London of competing commercial and political interests, and students will be required to grasp an overview of the forces shaping the creative production of Shakespeare and Jonson. The demands of the market for which the dramatists were producing, the operation of patronage, the expectations of theatre audiences and the role of censorship will be considered, and the unit will attempt to read through the plays to find the ‘marks’ of these influences.

Topics for special consideration will include:

Candidates may write on the same play/s in more than one answer provided that the arguments made are substantially different.  Prescribed reading will include:

 

Literature of the later Middle Ages
This unit offers an introduction to English literature of the later Middle Ages, placed within a broad historical and cultural context. A diversity of genres, styles, dialects and literary traditions may be explored. Among topics which students may study are: social satire; the Arthurian tradition and uses of the Arthurian myth; shifts in literary technique, genre and attitudes toward women; myths of social and literary decadence; ideas of society and the individual; high and low culture; spirituality and secularity; chivalry and the figure of the knight; literacy and education; art and architecture; magic and the supernatural; medieval Scotland and the Scottish Chaucerians.  Among texts and authors which students may choose to study are: 

Renaissance and Restoration
This unit offers an overview of English literature and literary culture in the period from the reign of Henry VIII (the lyric poets Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey) to the satirists and dramatists of the Restoration. Among topics which  students may study are: 

Restoration comedy; surveys of the period and other more specialist topics. Among texts and authors which students may choose to study are:

Wyatt, Surrey, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Sidney, Spenser, Raleigh, Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Rochester, Bunyan, Locke, Hobbes, Aphra Behn, Lady Mary Wroth, Jacobean tragedy, the Metaphysical poets, Restoration comedy.

Augustans and Romantics
This unit draws together two periods of English literary history that have traditionally been seen in strong contrast; an  antithesis which was frequently underscored by critical manifestos issued during the 18th and early 19th centuries. The unit explores what appear to be the important distinctions, but also considers continuities that may exist between the two periods. Among topics which students may study are: prose and verse satires of the early 18th century; the emergent novel; attitudes towards the language of poetry; Romantic poetry; author-based studies. Among authors whose work students may choose to study are:

Swift, Defoe, Gay, Pope, Thomson, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Gray, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Austen.

Victorians
This unit considers a range of textual forms typical of the Victorian period. Among topics which students may choose to study are: the narrative poem; the social problem novel; the literary avocation of the woman’s role; Darwinism; faith and doubt; social unease; Decadence; author-based studies. Among authors whose work students may choose to study are:

Thackeray, Hopkins, Mrs Gaskell, Tennyson, Dickens, Christina Rossetti, Hardy, George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Moderns
This unit is concerned with poetry, fiction and drama in the 20th century. Among topics which students may study are: the definition and function of terms such as ‘modern’, ‘modernism’, ‘post-modernism’; the effects of war and technological change on literary production; the link between art and politics; the proletarian novel; feminist drama; regional literatures (such as Scottish poetry or Caribbean novels); the fiction of empire; poetry of the First World War; post-modern fiction; author-based studies. Some authors whose works students may choose to study are:

Woolf, Conrad, Joyce, Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, Lovelace, George Barker, Larkin,  Plath, Orwell, Lewis Jones, Somerfield, Osborne, Sillitoe, Braine, Spark, Pinter, Vonnegut, Nabokov, J.G. Farrell, Rhys,   Beckett, Lessing, Fowles, Tutuola, Angela Carter.

Literary theory: Plato to Pater
In this unit, students are encouraged to follow a  largely chronological sequence and to consider some of the recurrent debates that have occupied literary theorists from Classical times to the 19th century. Among topics which students may study are: the nature of tragedy; literary ‘decorum’; the sublime; the ideal and the real; tradition and originality; ‘poetic’ diction; theories of the imagination; literature as a ‘criticism of life’. Students will choose texts for more detailed study from the following list:

Varieties of language in conversation and literature 
 This unit aims to analyse varieties of language in conversation and literature. It explores how varying aspects of language use convey information about the speaker/writer over and above its factual content, and how such varieties function in literature. Variation in terms of gender, race and class, and differing conceptions of ‘bad language’, will be considered.  Questions which students may consider include:

General

Gender

The syllabus will use texts written both by and about women.

Class and dialect

Race and ethnicity

The unit concludes with an overview. Are these varieties a sociolinguistic reality or are they an artefact of literary/linguistic reality, or are they an artefact of literary/linguistic theorising? The paper will cover the full scope of the syllabus. Students will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of concepts covered, and problems with those concepts, illustrating from literary and non-literary texts where appropriate.

Preliminary reading:

Reading women ’s writing
This unit will examine a selection of women’s writing from the 1790s to the 1990s, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Alice Walker. It will look at the ways in which particular themes (e.g. sexuality, identity, marriage) are presented in poetry, fiction and other kinds of writing and ask how these relate to the historical position of women at the time.  As well as looking at the qualities of individual texts, students will consider their chosen examples in relation to questions about genre and gender, authority and authorship, voice and language. Do women write about different things from men? Or is it a question of style? Do women have a literature of their own and what, if anything, is distinctive about women’s writing? How does women’s writing relate to the changing history of women in the last two centuries? Particular attention may be given to the following topics: the rise of the woman novelist (Behn, Wollstonecraft, Austen) and the nature of women’s conduct books in the early 19th century; the struggle to find a poetic voice in the mid-19th century (Barrett Browning, Rossetti and Brontë); women’s contribution to modernism in the early 20th century (Woolf, Richardson, Mansfield); and contemporary women’s writing which related gender to race and class (Morrison, Walker, Barker).

Students will also be encouraged to consider the different theoretical and historical explanations of women’s writing in feminist criticism by Woolf, Showalter, Cixous, Kristeva and others.  

Preliminary reading:

Shakespeare
This unit has the dual aim of acquainting students  with Shakespeare’s work and of developing their abilities to analyse portions of specific texts closely. In both cases the syllabus has a textual focus. The first aim would be served by reading closely at least the list of primary reading to be provided, comprising around 20 plays. These plays will be listed in a preferred order for reading, and most will be accompanied with a set of plays and/or poems suggested as parallel secondary reading. The second aim of the syllabus is pursued by practising very close analysis of sections (from approximately 10–50 lines) drawn from each of three set texts which will be specified on a  changing basis for each year’s examinations. The student should study these texts very closely, preferably using a good, annotated edition.

The novel
This unit aims to provide students with some historical and critical perspectives on an evolving aesthetic form central to English studies. Focusing on both works originally written in English and ones in translation, the unit surveys selected novels in three broad chronological groupings: 18th- and 19th-century realist novels; early 20th-century modernist novels; and finally a wide-ranging exploration of the major themes and characteristic narrative strategies associated with ‘anti-realist’ or ‘post-modern’ works of fiction. The syllabus encourages students to consider some relevant theoretical questions on the nature of narrative and the role of the reader, together with critical writing on a variety of topics, ranging from mimesis to genre. Attention will also be given to narrative techniques, including characterisation, use of imagery, narrative voice, scene-making – the strategies of fiction whereby novelists develop individual structures that enable them to say something new in fictional terms.

Among texts which may be studied for this unit are:

Modern American literature
This unit examines a broad range of American literature, examining genres, schools, cultural trends, and literary and critical developments throughout the 20th century. There is ample opportunity to investigate the cultural and ethnic diversity of American society, as well as to read one’s way around the country, from the Harlem Renaissance in New York to Southern Gothic in New Orleans, and on the road to the gathering of the Beat Generation in San Francisco. The syllabus comprises novels, short stories, poetry and drama, allowing students to develop an understanding of the change and continuity in the literary culture of the period, whilst providing a context for the application of a wide range of critical approaches. Students will be expected to combine a close analysis of the chosen texts with supplementary reading of critical material to illustrate aspects of American literature, including modernism, imagism, post-modernism,  developments within and across genre, feminism, and the text as both cultural artefact and political response.  Among authors whose works students may choose to study are:

Ellison, Faulkner, Neale Hurston, McCullers, Morrison, Walker, Lowell, Moore, Pound, Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Plath, Fierstein, Hellman, Mamet, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, August Wilson.

Nineteenth-century American literature
This unit offers the opportunity to explore the evolving literature of the United States in the century in which the nation itself was formed geographically, politically and culturally. Students are encouraged to develop a reading syllabus of authors and topics which affords insights into the vast social and political changes of this era, as well as investigating literary forms, critical issues and emerging American voices. The range of topics which can be covered in this unit includes: Realist, Naturalist and Romantic Writing; Fiction and Social Change; the Transcendentalists; the New England Tradition; the Evolution of new Regionalisms; Literature of Slavery; the Civil War; Abolition and Suffrage; the Melting Pot of Languages; the Connecticut Wits. In addition the unit will examine the exchange of influences between American and European writing.  The scope of reading will encompass novels, short stories, poetry, satire and drama. The examination for this unit includes questions on both authors and topics, and is designed to be sufficiently flexible to address the varied range of reading suggested. Among the authors whose works students may choose to study are:

Alcott, Fenimore Cooper, Emily Dickinson, Waldo Emerson, Hawthorne, Ward Howe, Irving, James, Orne Jewett, Melville, Poe, Beecher Stowe, Thoreau, Twain, Wheatley, Whitman.

Drama since 1860
This unit aims to provide students with historical and critical perspectives on the major thematic and stylistic developments in a selection of British, American and European drama between 1860 and the present day. The unit encourages students to trace the relationship between the theory and practice of the dramatists listed and seeks to examine the way in which the choice of style or presentation, be it realism, expressionism or the avant-garde, might be seen to reflect the thematic concerns of their plays. The unit will also encourage students to consider the relationship between the dramatic text on the page and play in performance, where appropriate. Amongst playwrights whose work students may study are:

Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Yeats, Eliot, Synge, Wilde, O’Casey, Lorca, Brecht, Beckett, O’Neill, Williams, Miller, Pinter, Osborne, Delaney, Hellman, Wandor, Gems, Orton, Churchill, Friel, Roche.

Irish literature in English from 1800 to the present day
This unit examines a wide range of Irish literary culture from the 19th and 20th centuries. In the first part of the syllabus, students will be contextualising Irish literary forms and their development in terms of colonial and post-colonial history. Students will be encouraged to develop a working knowledge of Irish history in the 19th and 20th centuries, and to apply this knowledge in their critical strategies for reading literary texts. Among topics which students may choose to study are:

Anglo–Irish culture; political oratory and pamphleteering; traditions of Irish comedic; Catholicism and cultural decolonisation; and modern literary responses to political and cultural conflict from 1960 onwards. In addition students will also be required to undertake a special author study.

The critical approaches adopted here may derive from historical contextualisation, but students will be encouraged to develop a range of critical approaches for this part of the degree. Amongst the writers whose works students may choose to study are:

Ferguson, O’Grady, J.C. Mangan, D.P. Moran, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, George Russell, James Joyce, Padriac Pearse, Sean O’Casey, J.G. Farrell, Brendan Behan, Seamus Heaney, Padriac Fiacc, Edna O’Brien, Roddy Doyle.

Empire and literature
The aim of this unit is to introduce the student to the corpus of texts which deal with Britain ’s history as a colonial, imperial and neo-colonial power. While focusing principally on the period 1880–1960, and on British writing, students will also have an opportunity to consider texts which address questions of overseas domination in earlier periods and to consider more recent writing which reflects on the legacy of Britain ’s imperial past. Amongst topics which students may wish to study are: representations of the effects of political and economic exploitation of empire; the role of questions of gender, class and sexuality in imperial discourse; the representation of subject peoples; the anxieties of empire; the uses of landscape in imperial fiction; the relationship between colonial and postcolonial writing.

Amongst authors whom students may study are:

Kipling, Conrad, Rushdie, Forster, V.S. Naipaul, Behn, Defoe, Lessing, Cary, Waugh, Burgess, Boyd, Grassic Gibbon, Greene, Schreiner, Scott, Shakespeare, F.A. Steel, Yeats, Joyce.

Postcolonial literatures in English
This unit will examine the range of literature produced since 1947 in the regions of the world formerly under British rule. Students may study literature from the former ‘white Dominions’ such as Australia and Canada , as well as literature from Asia , Africa and the Caribbean and work produced by the various diasporas of Commonwealth origin within contemporary Western societies such as Britain . Among themes which may be studied are: representations of ‘the metropolitan centre’ and ‘the periphery’; disillusion with independence; problems of identity and cultural identification; exile and diaspora; neo-colonialism; the role of the intellectual and the artist; the subversion of Western literary form; the usages of the English language; problems and opportunities of the postcolonial woman. Among authors whose work may be studied are:

Achebe, Ngugi, Soyinka, Narayan, Desai, Aidoo, Harris, Brathwaite, Collins, Phillips, Atwood, Hulme, Head, Naipaul , Mo , Rushdie, Lovelace, Emecheta.

Modern literary theory
This unit aims to acquaint students with a wide variety of theoretical approaches to literary texts which have been adopted in literary studies over the past 30 years: marxist, feminist, structuralist, post-structuralist, new-historicist and  psychoanalytic approaches are included, along with the discussion of the reader’s role in literary meaning and the elements of ‘narratology’ – the study of the principles of narrative. Its focus is on the possibilities for practical applications of reading strategies in the student’s own encounters with literary works, rather than on the study of major theorists and their writings. Students taking this unit should find that their studies on other units will benefit from acquaintance with a broader repertoire of interpretative strategies and with arguments that are fundamental to literary understanding. The unit’s focus on the multiple possibilities of reading and interpretation is consolidated in the special study of a single work and of the critical approaches appropriate to it: Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is adopted as the ‘set’ text for this purpose.

Students will study Frankenstein in Johanna M. Smith’s critical edition (1992), and will choose to follow introductory guides to modern theory including the following:

Romanticism
This unit looks at writing from the period known as Romantic, which for the purposes of the syllabus is considered as spanning approximately 40 years, from 1789 to 1830. It is the poetry of the Romantic period which tends to be better known, but much interesting and characteristic prose writing – fiction and non-fiction – was also produced at this time, from gothic novels to critical writing. This unit will consider both poetry and prose of the period. The topics which may be studied include the Romantics and revolution, concepts of the Imagination, the Sublime, Nature, Romantic subjectivities, Romantic orientalism and Romantic theories of language. There will be an emphasis on the political and social context and the unit will include some Romantic political writing. The following authors are amongst those you may choose to study:

Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, Blake, Clare, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, James Hogg, Thomas de Quincey.

Advanced personal study
This unit encourages students to formulate and complete a personal programme of study. Students will develop a series of projects, using skills and concepts which they have encountered in units which have been studied previously. Some  projects may be similar to work done in other units and some may focus on establishing links between such units. Other work may address issues and themes not considered elsewhere on the BA programme. Individual advanced personal study programmes may include: a detailed examination of one or more authors; comparison of works by different authors in relation to particular issues and themes, or critical problems; more advanced study of theoretical approaches to literary and cultural studies; studies of particular genres; an examination of writing techniques; study of some literature not originally written in English. Attention will be given to all phases of the programme, from deciding on a suitable range of projects to prepare, to preparing for the examination. No specific reading is required for this unit, since students will be constructing their own courses of study, in conjunction with the advice given in the subject guide and in the Handbook. In the examination, students will be expected to demonstrate that they have undertaken some original work, which is not entirely derived from work in other units of the degree. The range of topics to be examined will include literary, theoretical, generic and conceptual areas of study.

This information has been taken from the External Programme Prospectus printed by the University of London © 2003.