English Literature

The University of Buckingham is:

• Home of the two-year degree, the University of Buckingham, based in the South East of England, is ranked 6th for Student Satisfaction in the UK (National Student Survey, 2020).

• We are proudly independent and not-for-profit, and offer courses in Allied Health, Business, Computing, Education, Humanities, Law, Medicine, Psychology and Security and Intelligence. We are one of the few universities in the UK that offer September and January start dates for almost all of our courses.

• Based in Buckingham on a riverside campus, we are only 20 minutes’ from Milton Keynes central station and a short drive from Bicester, Aylesbury, Banbury and Northampton. There is free parking on-site and we are within easy reach of London and Oxford.

• Our award-winning small class tutorials ensure every student is known by name and supported throughout their studies, including by dedicated personal tutors.

• As pioneers of the two-year degree, we offer a condensed version of the traditional three-year degree, meaning you can gain a full honours degree and complete your studies a whole year earlier. Alternatively, you can complete both your undergraduate and master’s degree with us in just three years: saving you time and money.

Our BA English Literature Programmes are ranked 12th in the Guardian University Guide 2020 and are taught to small groups by energetic and enthusiastic academics with international research profiles in 19th- and 20th-century studies.

Ideas developed in core seminars are taken forward in weekly small-group tutorials, where a maximum of eight students discuss and interpret specific passages of writing, under the watchful guidance of their tutor.

Students will read widely and develop strong lines of argument and personal responses to what they find, anchored in an informed understanding of the discipline and with reference to the critical debates that animate it. We believe, as Jeanette Winterson says, that “learning how to read deeply” – and that means diverse and sometimes difficult texts – “trains the brain and improves your sense of self. Learning how to write, even reasonably well, gives fluency to the rest of life”.

Course Modules

Contemporary Writing,
Creative Writing 1,
Creative Writing 2,
Dissertation,
Eras of English,
Fiction and Theory,
Film Studies,
Gothic, Sensation and Science Fiction,
Literary Journalism (1642-present),
Modern American Literature,
Modernist Writing,
Plays in Performance,
Poetry and Poetics,
Renaissance Literature,
Restoration and Augustan Literature,
Rewriting Empire,
Romantic Literature,
Shakespearean Drama,
Synoptic Study Unit,
20th Century Theatre,
Victorian Fiction,
Victorian Poetry,
Women’s Writing.