Literature

You're curious. Well read. An analyst.

You’ve read the classics, but you want a fresh take on literature. You want to discover that your new favourite author is someone you’ve never heard of before. You want to study literature that allows you to explore the world and other cultures. You want to travel through time, imagine ahead to the future, but also see the present in a whole new light.

Learn about our teaching and assessment plans, in light of the pandemic, for the 2020/21 academic year on the department pages.

Our courses

We offer BA English Literature as a single honours.

If joint honours are more your thing check out:

BA English and Comparative Literature 

BA English and United States Literature

BA English Language and Literature

BA Literature and Art History

BA Literature and Creative Writing

BA Literature and Sociology

BA Drama and Literature 

BA Film Studies and Literature

BA History and Literature

BA Journalism and Literature

BA Philosophy and Literature

Hear from our students and graduates

Read more from our graduates and find out about career prospects and opportunities while you study. 

Be inspired by a literary legacy

As a well-established home to practising poets, novelists and critics, we have a reputation for nurturing the most radical writers and thinkers. Our concerns are local and global: as readers and writers, we adopt a comparative method as we traverse near and faraway places, discovering new modes of writing and reconsidering classics. You'll be part of an interdisciplinary department specialising in literature, creative writing, theatre, film and journalism. 

We offer MA Literature and MA American Literatures, but if you would rather a joint honours we also offer MA Film and Literature and MA Translation and Literature.

Learn about our teaching and assessment plans, in light of the pandemic, for the 2020/21 academic year on the department pages.

Dynamic. Innovative. Experimental.

We have a fresh take on literature. We're specialists in world literature – including American, Caribbean, and European literature – Early Modern and Renaissance literature, Romanticism, translation studies and adaptation, as well as colonial and postcolonial literatures. We're proud of the talent we nurture. Our history of staff and students have been Nobel Prize winners, Booker Prize winners and Pulitzer Prize winners.

Based in our Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies we like to utilise our interdisciplinary nature to push the boundaries. Our research projects are topical, with a strong focus on ecocriticism, green writing and literary geographies.

Read our academic biographies to find out more about us and use our research finder to find a topic and a supervisor to suit you.