MA English Studies (C815C)

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The Department of English at the University of Exeter's Cornwall Campus has developed a distinctive and respected profile in the field of Literature and Place. We offer an exciting programme of taught postgraduate studies in this field, with an MA in English Studies.

This programme deals with the relationship between literary texts and the concepts of place and identity, considering research questions across historical periods, genres, and theoretical perspectives. How do writers respond to place, whether the immediate environment or the wider nation? How do their texts construct a sense of place? How does identity emerge from such constructions, and how does this feed back into the textual process? We recommend this degree programme to anyone with an academic interest in the reciprocal relationship between literary texts, and place, landscape, the environment, space, nationhood, the city/country dichotomy, identity, or subjectivity. The programme takes advantage of distinctly interdisciplinary research developments into these areas at the Cornwall Campus.

Programme structure

This programme deals with the concepts of literature, place and identity in a range of historical periods—the Renaissance, the nineteenth century and the twentieth century—as well as developing your research skills through a Postgraduate Research module and a Dissertation.

The programme consists of four 30-credit taught modules and one 60-credit dissertation, typically studied full-time over one year (for part-time option see below). Two taught modules run in each semester, with the dissertation running over the summer and due in mid-September.

If you wish you may choose to study a taught module outside your pathway, for example, a module from another pathway offered at the Streatham Campus in Exeter, or a Masters module from another discipline such as Cornish Studies or Geography taught at the Cornwall Campus (provided this consists of 30 credits).

The programme is made up of the following modules:

From Fairyland to Philippi: Identity and Country in Early Modern England (30 credits)

This module introduces students to the debates about ‘English’ and ‘British’ national identity that underlie, and are represented overtly in, many literary texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It allows them to explore those debates in prose, poetry and drama. The module is divided into themed sections. The first section in weeks 1 and 2, ‘Introduction to Country and Identity’, is concerned with attempts to define England and map it as part of the rise of Protestant English nationalism. Cornwall is a particular focus, and its ‘British’, ‘English’, ‘Celtic’ and other identities are examined. In section 2 (weeks 3 and 4), ‘Genre and Politics’, students will examine early modern utopian and fantasy writing and its relationships with English identity politics. In section 3 (weeks 5-7), ‘England, Britain, Rome, Egypt’, the transition from Englishness to Britishness is addressed, with reference to more exotic rhetorical parallels. The conception of England as ‘Israel’, a Protestant Holy Land, is examined in section 4 (weeks 9 and 10), ‘Puritan Paradises, Holy Lands’ and in section 5 (week 11), ‘Restoration and the New Rome’, the module explores what happened to this vision after the Restoration, when some Protestants no longer felt at home in their own country and Britons began to identify once again with Rome and her empire. The module explores questions such as: who was identifying themselves as what, and what implications did and do these choices have? The module’s texts explore the question of identity through imagined and actual journeys, the creation of utopian and dream worlds and through the use of analogies and contrasts with other places and nations.

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Nineteenth-Century Literature and Landscape (30 credits)

The aim of this module is to examine the interrelation of aesthetic and cultural theories, social contexts and literary representations of landscape in the long nineteenth century. As well as providing a foundation for engaging with representations of landscape in the Romantic and Victorian periods, the module will provide students with an in depth knowledge and understanding of the intellectual, cultural, historical and sociological pressures underlying the various responses to experiences of space and place during the period. The first part of the module will explore Romantic representations of place in the first half of the century, primarily those connected to aesthetic theories about nature, landscape and the Orient, and to political revolution and reform. The second part of the module will focus on Victorian constructions of landscape in a period of rapid urbanisation, through a critical examination of representations of travel, the countryside, the flâneur, the prostitute, the London poor, the supernatural and the empire.

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Modernity and Urbanity (30 credits)

This module is neither a survey of urban development nor a chronology of cultural expression; rather, it is an examination of two interrelated topics: (1) the significance of space – particularly urban space – in the nineteenth and twentieth-century imaginations and (2) the constitutive role that the material environments of the city and the country have played in our understanding and representation of ourselves in the modern and postmodern world. The module will consider not only how the these imaginative spaces affect modes of representation but also how representations have changed and challenged our understanding of spaces and how we occupy and negotiate with them. Seminars are designed to interrogate the changing attitudes towards built and “natural” environments and the variety of cultural, historical and ideological consequences of increasing urbanization. The module examines the city and the country at a variety of historical periods and through a variety of cultural and theoretical lenses, incorporating poetry, fiction, art and architectural theory, and film.

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Postgraduate Research (30 credits)

This module consists of alternating tutorials, seminars, classes, workshops, and a visit to library archives in preparation for advanced research projects such as the MA dissertation. Teaching engages the entire department as well as library staff on both campuses, as well as the active involvement of PhD students, and the course includes one-to-one tutorials with full-time members of staff. Work focuses on the relationships between literature, place, and identity, characteristic of the research identity at Tremough. Students will gain both a general theoretical and practical understanding of research methods in English literary studies, as well as the specific scholarly and critical framework in which to analyze the relationship between literature, place and identity. MA students are recognized as valuable members of the Tremough research community, and consequently the Departmental Visiting Speaker Programme and Staff/Postgraduate Research Seminar Series are both integrated with this course and other MA modules

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Dissertation (60 credits)

The dissertation will be 20,000 words in length, written under the supervision of a member of academic staff on a topic of your choice, which you will identify and propose while taking the Postgraduate Research module. The dissertation must deal in some way with the relationship between literature, place and identity.

Teaching and assessment

Each module will be taught in weekly two-hour seminars, for which you will be required to prepare by reading primary literary texts and secondary texts that provide contextual information on the concepts of place and/or identity. The Postgraduate Research module will require you to submit a detailed dissertation proposal of up to 5,000 words, alongside a draft chapter of up to 2,500 words. The other three taught modules will require you to write a 2500-word research report and a 5000-word essay, as well as make an oral presentation in class. In addition you will carry out a 20,000 word assessed dissertation as detailed above.

Part-time study

If you prefer, you can study this programme over two years. You will take one taught module per semester (the Postgraduate Research module must be taken in the second year). You will also carry out the dissertation at the end of the second year.

Entry Requirements

Normally a 2:1 degree, preferably in English, although other subjects are also considered.

Fees

UK/EU £4,500 (full time)
International £11,100 (full time)
Pro-rata credit-based for part time

Applications and further information

To apply online or to download application forms, please visit our postgraduate admissions site.

For further information about the programme, contact Dr Adeline Johns-Putra

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