English Literature MA
1 Year Full-Time | Distance Learning

You will learn about how male protagonists have been represented in a range of American fiction from the twentieth century to the present, for example how they have come to symbolise the ‘idea’ of America. You will learn about concepts such as the construction of masculinity, feminist critiques of the masculine as universal symbol of humanity and how these intertwine with the idea of America as a nation in the novels and short stories studied. You will study theoretical and critical articles alongside the texts to inform your critiques of the fiction.

On this module you will learn key approaches to English literary research – how to plan and carry out rigorous research using a variety of traditional and more modern tools and approaches. The module’s content will help prepare you for the challenge of completing a successful dissertation by empowering your knowledge of and proficiency with literary research tools.

In this module you will learn about some of the key ideas and theories that can help us understand theoretical and conceptual approaches to literary texts. From week to week, readings of primary texts past and present will be informed by selected critical and theoretical work focussed on specific aspects of the material, such as ideological and discursive constructions of gender, race, class, and national identity. This theoretical material will be provided in a Reading Pack of excerpted material, offering a representative sample of a range of thinkers’ work, and motivating further exploration of their ideas. Seminars will allow in-depth discussion of the texts and concepts appropriate to Masters level study.

The module aims to problematise our assumptions about how literary texts are constructed in relation to ideological and discursive practices, and about the relationships between texts, theory and contexts. It enables you to acquire skills necessary to analyse literature at the Masters level, using sophisticated, appropriate, and up-to-date critical and theoretical approaches

This module consists of a 15,000 word dissertation leading to the award of MA in English Literature
The dissertation provides the students with the opportunity to produce an extended piece of research on a topic of their own choosing related to English literature. Students will operate at a higher level of independent learning and research than in the taught modules, albeit with the support of a supervisor who has specialist knowledge in the student’s chosen area of interest. The Dissertation is the final part of the MA, and is the culmination of the programme in terms of length, the degree of specialization in subject, complexity of argument and depth of research.
Work on the dissertation is supported and enhanced by assessments on the other MA modules, particularly the Research Methods module.

During the supervisory sessions students will be encouraged to:

• Tackle problems
• Outline plans
• Submit timely drafts
• Balance research and writing
• Think critically about the specific problems raised by research
• Apply appropriate methodological and theoretical approaches to underpin students’ their research
• Demonstrate acuity in selecting approaches, methods, concepts and theories.

This module looks in depth at the ways in which literary authors contributed to the transformation in understanding of the place of humanity in the world. Technological, legal and commercial developments meant that print was more prolific in the eighteenth century than ever before. This gave authors new opportunities to explore, construct and query Empire, class, gender, and the natural world. Composed of two interconnected themes, each of which is key to the eighteenth-century world in print, and which represent the research strengths of the department, this module offers an advanced insight into the ways in which the world was mediated by print in the eighteenth century. Through analysing and juxtaposing important representative texts and associated recent critical and theoretical literature, you will consolidate and expand your knowledge of the period’s literature and develop a sophisticated understanding of the current state of the field.

The module will be comprised of two of the following four themes, depending upon staff availability. The indicative reading list for each unit is as follows, and each text has been (or if replaced, will be) carefully chosen to cover more than one theme:

1. New Worlds
Mary Wortley Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters (written 1716-18, published 1763)
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Charlotte Lennox, The Life of Harriot Stuart, Written by Herself (1750)
Phillis Wheatley and Hannah More, selected poems

2. The Natural World
Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770)
Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne (1789)
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1816)
John Clare, Selected Poems (1820–41)

3. The Beau Monde
Eliza Haywood, The City Jilt; or, The Alderman Turn'd Beau (1726)
Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35)
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals (1775)
Frances Burney, Evelina (1778)

4. Women in the World
Laetitia Pilkington, extracts from Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington (1748)
Sarah Scott, Millennium Hall (1762)
Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798)
Anon., The Woman of Colour, A Tale (1808)

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that you are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk.

Indicative list of print history works for assignment one:
Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979)
Margaret J.M. Ezell, Social Authorship and the Advent of Print (2003)
Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (1998)
David McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830 (2003)
The Multigraph Collective, Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Era of Print Saturation (2017)