English Literature

Course summary

Do you love reading a wide range of texts in different forms (prose, poetry and drama)? Do you enjoy exploring your ideas about texts in discussion and writing? Do you like learning about the world both past and present through literature? Are you keen to go on theatre trips and to see writers talking about their work? If the answer to these questions is yes then English literature is for you! The focus of this course is a historicist approach studying a range of literature written at different time periods. These texts are thematically linked in the first year through the topic Love through the Ages. This involves the study of a Shakespeare play (Othello) a range of prose texts from the 19th and 20th Centuries including The Great Gatsby and a collection of poetry from different time periods. We go on to explore a variety of contextual issues in a unit entitled Modern times: Literature from 1945 to the Present Day where we explore prose, play and poetry texts discussing issues such as the impact of society on a persons identity.