Course overview

This lively, interdisciplinary degree combines literary study with the cultural and historical analysis of literature. You will be able to explore a wide range of texts from Shakespeare to Quentin Tarantino and Mary Shelley to Salman Rushdie.

Texts are examined from a variety of perspectives, including period-based study, thematic approaches to literature, the theory and history of literary study and close textual analysis.

This degree offers you the opportunity to engage with and evaluate current critical debates, while providing you with a range of teaching and learning activities, including the option of some foreign language study or electives in popular and contemporary fiction. It will facilitate the development of independent study and enable you to pursue some collaborative work. It also offers the chance to make real choices in the balance of your studies, and the design of your own programme of study, through our option programme and final-year dissertation.

In order to help you gain employment at the end of your degree, you will also have the opportunity to practise and develop various relevant skills. Coursework assessments and study skills modules encourage a positive attitude towards problem-solving and presentation skills, and our degree fosters a positive attitude to career planning in a special career and research management unit.

Placements

This course allows you to take the Learning From Experience (LiFE) option, which lets you earn credits toward your degree for work / research placements, volunteer roles or internships undertaken alongside your studies.  The option gives you the opportunity to enhance your employability skills, to reflect on the ways in which you've done so, and to learn to express this to potential employers.

Why study at Portsmouth?

English at Portsmouth offers a distinctive combination of traditional core courses, which will introduce you to the breadth and scope of English literature. You will cover major concepts, such as the author and narrative, and are able to choose innovative elective courses that range from specific critical approaches, such as psychoanalytic criticism to genre-based units on areas such as detective fiction, travelwriting and the gothic.

We offer both a friendly and supportive learning environment that promotes the potential of each and every student and are particularly proud of our well-developed research culture and a strong commitment to scholarship and publication, which informs all our teaching and provides an up-to-date education in an active learning environment.

We welcome applicants with many different sorts of qualifications who can demonstrate evidence of competence to succeed on our programmes. We particularly welcome applications from mature students over the age of 21 and/or applicants who have an Access qualification or equivalent.

Course content

Year 1

• Literary History 1
• Literary Theory
• World Literature
• Writing Now
• Introduction to Narrative
• Introduction to Poetry

Year 2

• Literary History 2
• Options including:
  • Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature
  • Early Modern Drama 
  • American Literature
  • Nation and Travel 
  • Victorian Literature and Visual Culture
  • Crime Writing
  • Literary Prizes and Public Acclaim
  • Shakespearean History
  • Language

Year 3

• Dissertation: English Literature (40)
• Options including:
  • Early Modern Literature and the Bible
  • Enlightenment: Literature, Culture and Modernity
  • Magical Realism
  • Postmodern Historical Fiction
  • War and Fascism
  • Tracing Borders: Women and Writing 1890-1940
  • Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Fiction
  • Friendship, Community and Identity in C17th Poetry
  • Charles Dickens
  • European Literary Decadence
  • Consuming Fictions: Food and Appetite in Victorian Culture
  • Holocaust Literatures
  • US Masculinities
  • (Re)writing Revenge on the Early Modern Stage

Please note that not all options or special subjects will be available at any given time.

Teaching and assessment

Our teaching approach involves lectures, seminars, tutorials and workshops. You will be expected to participate fully in group discussions and projects, as well as develop and apply word processing and presentation skills.

As making sure you have a supportive learning environment is important to us, you will have a personal tutor assigned to you as part of the study skills and careers research management programmes. All staff also have office hours and are often available at short notice. In your final year you will be assigned a personal supervisor to help plan and produce your dissertation project.

We use a range of assessment methods including coursework, essays, close textual analysis, presentations and a dissertation.

Career prospects

Studying English literature is a great preparation for a career in publishing, the media, teaching or research. Portsmouth English graduates enjoy a wide range of career pathways including television script writing, journalism, public relations, web design and postgraduate study.

While studying English literature is clearly a great foundation for a career in the arts, the sophisticated analytical and presentational skills you will gain are also highly valued by a range of non degree-specific graduate employers. Given this, our English graduates also enter a diverse range of non degree specific pathways, including human resource management and information services work.

Facilities and features

Over the last four years the University has substantially invested in our teaching facilities. We have multimedia audio-visual facilities in our lecture rooms, dedicated IT teaching facilities, quiet areas for you to work in and a café.

The School also has its own resources area with dedicated staff who can assist you with film and documentary video resources, film viewing facilities, video-editing equipment and audio equipment.

Entry requirements

View all the entry requirements for BA (Hons) English Literature for the academic year 2013/14 (opens in new window).