Modules

PG Cert, PG Dip & MA Conceptualizing the Celts (30 credits; compulsory) This module provides students with a critical understanding of the wider context and background of Celtic identity, language and history and enables students to critically assess and evaluate differing interpretations of the cultural identity of the Celts. Celtic Arthur and the Mabinogion Tales (30 credits; compulsory) This module provides students with a systematic understanding of the content, context, cultural and historical importance of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi and examines a range of medieval Celtic Arthurian sources. PG Dip & MA Women in the Middle Ages: Sources from the Celtic Regions (30 credits; optional) This module provides students with an advanced knowledge of the complex range of extant sources relating to medieval women’s lives in the Celtic regions. Celtic Sanctity, Spirituality and Hagiography (30 credits; optional) In this module, students will briefly consider the pre-Christian background to Celtic spirituality and the concept of the ‘druid’; consider the coming of Christianity to Wales and Ireland and be encouraged to critically evaluate the notion of ‘Celtic Christianity’; trace the development of hagiography as a genre and consider the evidence for a number of saints’ cults in the Celtic regions examining sources such as saints’ Lives, medieval poetry, holy wells and church dedications, folklore and oral traditions. Welsh for Beginners (30 credits; optional) This module allows students to develop an understanding and appreciation of Welsh grammar, syntax and lexis and acquire general communicative skills in the Welsh language. Celtic Revivals: 1700 to the Present (30 credits; optional) This module will give students a broad and detailed knowledge of the ways in which texts and ideas drawn from Celtic literature, history, and scholarship have been received in modern culture. The module will provide students with a detailed overview of well-known 'Celtic Revival' movements, concentrating in particular on the eighteenth-century 'Bardic revival' in Wales and Scotland, and the Irish Revival at the turn of the twentieth century. The module will end by reflecting on the reception and revival of the Celts in twentieth and twenty-first century culture, including the significance of revived Celtic themes in contemporary fantasy literature, neo-pagan religion, and national thought. MA Dissertation (60 credits; compulsory) Students are given the opportunity to research in detail a topic which has particularly appealed to them and write an extended 15,000 word dissertation.