English Literature (Placement Year)

Literary study at Lancaster offers a rich engagement with the very best of literature, from the medieval period to the present day. You’ll have the chance to study all the great names, as well as voices that have been forgotten or overlooked. And, along the way, you can explore a host of different literary forms - such as, for example, ancient myth, Puritan sermon, nineteenth-century slave narrative, modernist epigram, and the contemporary graphic novel.

Acts of reading The study of literature here is founded on the conviction that reading is not passive but active; it is something that acts upon both the texts that we read and the world in which we live. Neither those texts nor the world are left the same as they were before. This means that as well as encouraging and nurturing all kinds of established forms of literary scholarship, such as archival work, historicism, close reading, and literary theory, we are pioneers in experimental or creative forms of literary criticism.

Studying with us means not only a deep and close engagement with literature itself but an appreciation of how literature explores many other worlds – politics, ecology, philosophy, psychology, theology, film, and fashion, etc. To support this, in your first year, if you wish, you can study one or two subjects outside of English Literature, choosing from a vast range of modules. And you can, if you wish, continue to take modules from other subject areas in your second and final years.

Support, events, and study trips Your lectures will be supplemented by small-group seminars, and the invitation to meet one-to-one with your tutor to discuss your work. You will be able to select from a host of modules and, in your final Dissertation, free to explore, with regular one-to-one tutorial support, a literary topic or theme of your own choosing.

Many of our special literary events, such as talks from visiting scholars and authors, take place in the University Suite at Lancaster’s spectacular medieval Castle. The Castle is also usually the setting for our student-led summer Shakespeare production, whilst the archive-rich Wordsworth Museum at Grasmere is usually the venue for our study retreat day. The Department’s May Gathering, a social event, is usually held at Lancaster’s ancient Priory.

The University also offers short, overseas study trips outside of term time – a visit to New York has been particularly popular in previous years.