English Literature BA (Hons)

In your second year, you will start to to broaden and deepen your study of the English Literature. Modules explore a range of the specialist concerns of the course while looking more deeply at the traditional period divisions of the subject.

Modules

• Shakespeare’s Renaissance (20 credits)

  This module introduces you to a broad range of authors, texts, periods and genres from Medieval mystery plays, to later poems and plays that were influenced by William Shakespeare.

  Compulsory

  Assessment: Coursework

• Cin-aesthetics (10 credits)

  This module is designed to introduce you to moving image aesthetics. Focusing on those stylistic areas of cinema that make up its unique mode of artistic communication, Cin-aesthetics aims to familiarise students with the language of film.

  Compulsory

  Assessment: Presentation

• The Age of Revolutions - Enlightenments and Romanticisms (20 credits)

  The module should equip you with a broad understanding of how literature intersected with the changing cultural landscape over the long eighteenth century. You will consider the relationship between the rise of capitalism, the fraught dynamics between women writers and an increasingly commercialised literary marketplace, and literary responses to turbulent historical events.

  Compulsory

  Assessment: Coursework

• Modernism (20 credits)

  On completion of this module, you will have acquired an understanding of the significance of literary modernism for twentieth-century literature. You can gain knowledge of both traditional critical conceptions of a modernist period and modernist aesthetic, and alternative modernisms.

  Compulsory

  Assessment: Coursework

• The Victorians and Empire (20 credits)

  This module introduces you to literature in the period 1830-1900. Roughly half of the module will be devoted to poetry, and half to prose. By situating the Victorian era in a global context, this module aims to better understand the effects of empire upon British, anglophone and indigenous literature.

  Compulsory

  Assessment: Coursework

• Add+vantage (20 credits)

  You will also be able to take an Add+vantage module which can allow you to develop your CV by taking credits in an area of study that doesn’t have to be related to your degree. The assessment type will depend on the type of Add+vantage module you wish to take.

  Compulsory

  Assessment: Coursework, exam

• Optional modules

  (pick 1 from 3)

  • The American West: Real and Imagined (20 credits)
    This module introduces you to a range of literary and non-literary narratives from and about the American West. You will draw upon a variety of theoretical perspectives to support your readings and will gain an understanding of how history, culture, race, gender and the land have influenced these different Western narrative voices.
    Assessment - Coursework
  • English Literature International Study Trip (20 credits)
    This module aims to enable students to conduct primary field research into some of the major thematic and conceptual considerations of English Literature. The heart of this module is an international residential trip/simulated online experience. For example, a study trip to Valencia or similar simulated/online environment could entail the analysis of local authors, their environment, influences and legacies. On completion of the experience, you will submit an online portfolio of tasks which illustrate learning, critical thinking and intercultural awareness.

  Assessment - Coursework

  • Stylistics (15 credits)

  Stylistics is a field of study in which linguistic theories are used to identify and describe the distinguishing features (or style) of a text. The aim of this module is to equip you with an understanding of the linguistic models and analytic techniques that can be used to describe, analyse and interpret a range of literary, as well as non-literary, texts.

  Optional

After the end of the second year, you have the option to take either a work placement year* (in the UK, or abroad) or a study-abroad year*, and if you do so will take a non-credit bearing module which will help to ensure that you learn from and reflect upon their experiences.

N.B. You will be given advice but may be responsible for finding your own placements (with guidance). Similarly, study-abroad years with your first choice of international institution cannot be guaranteed. You will pay no fees to Coventry University for your placement or study-abroad year though you are responsible for covering your own costs.

Modules

• Study Abroad

  Optional

• Professional Placement

  Optional

In the final year you study a range of research-led modules at the cutting edge of the subject, taught by current research-active academics who are advancing the frontiers of knowledge in the discipline (staff may be subject to change).

Modules

• Post-War Literature (20 credits)

  This module will consider the literature that emerges in the final years after and during WWII, up to the end of the twentieth century. Students will study 'late' modernists such as Anthony Burgess and Vladimir Nabokov as well as the writers of the British 'New Wave' of science fiction, while also evaluating the movement from Neo Modernism to Postmodernism.

  Compulsory

  Assessment: Coursework

• Fiction of the 21st Century (30 credits)

  This module introduces you to a selection of 21st century fiction from different national cultures and traditions. The module explores the ways in which fiction of the 21st century engages with and addresses issues of the new century like ecocriticism and spatial theory, to postcolonialism and poststructuralism.

  Compulsory

  Assessment: Coursework

• Add+vantage (20 credits)

  You will also be able to take an Add+vantage module which can allow you to develop your CV by taking credits in an area of study that doesn’t have to be related to your degree. The assessment type will depend on the type of Add+vantage module you wish to take.

  Compulsory

  Assessment: Coursework, exam

• Optional Modules (Choose 60 credits)
  • English Dissertation (40 credits)
    The optional module aims to provide an opportunity for you to exercise greater autonomy over your learning and study in the final semester of your degree. You may write about any area of English Studies that staff in the School can supervise, in an area that interests you.
    Assessment: 100% coursework
  • Style and Experimental Fictions (20 credits)
    This module explores the relationship between style and cognition, and explores how readers experience experimental texts. We will draw on a range of literary, linguistic and cognitive stylistic theories, with an emphasis on reader response research, in order to introduce and define experimental fiction.
    Assessment: Coursework and presentation
  • Speculative Fiction (20 credits)
    This module will focus around the reading and analysis of 'Speculative Fiction'. It embraces the great diversity of fantasy, gothic and science fiction texts and will explore their relationship to each other. It will investigate the rise and development of modern speculative fiction focussing on the social, cultural, and historical forces which influence its conventions, subjects, themes and which make it such a valuable genre for the study of Self and the Other.
    Assessment- Coursework
  • Utopias and Dystopias (20 credits)
    This module is for those with an interest in speculative fiction, utopian thinking, political science and / or philosophy. You will be introduced to the key theoretical concepts and texts relating to literary utopia and dystopia.
    You can examine how utopian and dystopian ideas intersect with concepts such as gender, violence, or technophobia and technophilia.
    Assessment: Coursework
  • Literary Festivals (10 credits)
    This module requires students to attend a UK literary festival with a view to making links between what they can learn from the experience about the cultural industries and a wider set of concepts and ideas connected to employability.
    Assessment:  Presentation
  • Romantic Revolt (20 credits)
    This module aims to give you the opportunity to explore issues, themes, debates, key figures and behaviours in the Romantic movement and develop creative and critical responses to these outside of their normal place of study in a Romantic-related residential environment. You will plan a group project and produce a creative or documentary video of your project along with a written or video journal reflecting on your learning experience.
    Assessment:  Coursework
  • African American Writing: Place, Race and Identity (20 credits)
    This module introduces you to a diverse range of literary texts produced by African Americans post-World War Two up to the present day. The focus of the module will be upon the ways in which the narratives construct black identities that are informed by place, history, culture and gender.
    Assessment: Coursework and presentation
  • Writing for the Theatre and Radio (20 credits)
    This module aims to equip you with essential tools for writing theatre and radio scripts. You will gain an understanding of writing realistic dialogue for newly-conceived characters and imaginative situations, while exploring dramatic devices and their effects. You will also analyse the differences of theatre plays and radio dramas.
    Assessment: Coursework 

  Optional