Course summary

This course provides a number of modules on fascinating topics and periods of literary history, including Medieval Lives, Romanticism's Radical Cultures, Victorian Popular Fiction, Postmodern Genres and many more. An important part of the course is the writing of a 15,000-word Dissertation on a specialist topic chosen by you in consultation with a specialist supervisor. We will take great care in assigning you a supervisor whose interests match your own as closely as possible. A significant part of the course is devoted to research skills, including: exploiting library resources; using electronic journals and databases; building a critical bibliography; researching and writing a proposal; and honing your oral presentation skills. You will also be taught to interrogate the different kinds of 'textuality', or aspects of the literary text, which need to be taken into account in the study of literature at postgraduate level and beyond.