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English Literature and Language

BA Single and Joint Honours Degrees

English at Queen’s brings together a variety of specialist approaches under a single subject heading.

Course Content

Stage 1

There are six English modules in Stage 1, including one devoted to English language and another dedicated to enhancing students' employability and career development profile. 

Stage 2

In the second year, students choose from modules in:

  • Introduction to American Writing
  • Introduction to Creative Writing
  • Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature
  • The English Language: Language and Power
  • The English Language: Patterns of Spoken English
  • History of English: Studying Language Change
  • Irish Literature
  • Late Medieval Literature
  • Literature and Society 1850–1930
  • Introduction to Renaissance Literature

Stage 3

In the third year, students have a choice from a range of specialist modules (availability varies):

  • American Fiction 1945–60
  • Chaucer’s London Poetics
  • Comic Fiction: Fielding to Austen, 1740–1820
  • Contemporary US Crime Fiction
  • Corpus Linguistics
  • Critical Fictions
  • Critical History: Reading the Classics of Literary Criticism
  • English Syntax
  • Interacting with the Late Medieval
  • Irish Fiction in the Twentieth Century
  • Language and Narrative Style
  • Language in the Media
  • Literature and Science in the C19th
  • Milton and the Classical Tradition
  • Nineteenth-Century Irish Writing
  • Poet, Philosopher and Anti-Christ: Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Premodern Cultures of Performance
  • Reading Contemporary Irish and British Poetry
  • Reading Shakespeare Historically
  • Shakespeare on Screen
  • Televising the Victorians
  • The Irish Literary Revival 1880–1930
  • The Mock Epic in the Long Eighteenth Century
  • The Phonetics of English
  • Women’s Writing 1660–1820
  • Dissertation on an English Language topic (double module)
  • Dissertation on an English Literature topic (double module)

Special Features

The School has close links with practising writers. There is a vibrant creative writing environment and creative writing modules are offered as part of the degree. For the language component of the degree, we provide a range of facilities for analysing speech and language variation.

The English Society, run by staff and students together, organises readings, talks and discussions with practising writers.