Course summary

Storytelling is part of every culture and reveals much about a person’s lived experience, values and aspirations within a given time. Studying English Literature MA at Brunel gives you the opportunity to uncover the richness of English Literature history – its periods, genres and diverse storytellers – through a set of underlying themes that act as windows into deeper understanding. Whether your purpose is to explore a long held interest, build on previous studies or to benefit your career, studying a literature degree at Brunel will keep you close the one of the key literary capitals of the world. Your journey will commence with an introductory module on ‘Reading, Writing and Research’ to help equip you with the required skills and competencies relevant to literary studies, so you will have the confidence to pursue self-directed study on any given topic. You will then study four additional modules including ‘Authors’, where you will study one author or a well-recognised group of authors from a list that includes: the Romanic poets: John Keats and P.B. Shelley; the Brontes; Charles Dickens, or selected modernist authors such as Virginia Woolf or J.G. Ballard. ‘A British Literary Decade’ will immerse you in the literary and cultural aspects of one nominated decade from a range including the 1590s, 1850s, 1890s, 1920s, 1930s, 1960s, 1970s or 1980s, crossing into neighbouring disciplines like history and politics along the way. You will also have the opportunity to cover more contemporary works in ‘Postmillennial Literature’ including texts from Anglophile writing; science fiction and fantasy; LGBT writing, and experimental poetry. Finally, under the guidance of a nominated supervisor, you will undertake critical reading towards a 15,000 word dissertation on agreed English literature topic. Outside of your classroom, you can look forward to a calendar of events and activities organised by the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing, including the annual Hillingdon Literary Festival: a free weekend of literary performances from internationally renowned authors, writing workshops and lively debates right here on the Brunel campus.