Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - English Literature

Students who study English Literature at Hertfordshire will grow from passionate reader into critical thinker and literary scholar.

Students will be taught by research-active academics who bring fresh thinking to our accessible, engaging courses. This means they’ll study literature written in English by writers from all parts of the globe, whose voices are relevant and important in our modern world.

Students will be introduced to writers who will open doors to contemporary worlds and cultures remote from their own, and also help them explore more familiar literature in ways that challenge their preconceptions.

This course will interest and provoke students. From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Jane Eyre, from Paradise Lost to Zadie Smith’s Swing Time, they'll broaden their literary horizons and hone their critical thinking.

A core module in their first year will equip students to read and interpret both traditional and contemporary literary texts critically as a scholar of English literature. Alongside this students can choose to study international and American literature or revisit Shakespeare and consider his cultural relevance today through fictional, cinematic and TV adaptations.

In their second year students will focus on period-based literature from the Renaissance onwards and gain an understanding of literary history, from Elizabethan verse and drama, via Augustan poetry and the emergence of the novel in the 18th century, to the radical transformations of the Victorian age, and the emergence of modernity in the 20th century. Students will also have the opportunity to consider ways of reading that go beyond textual analysis or historical context, such as understanding literature through the political or ideological lens of Marxism, feminism and post-colonial theory.

Students will have the chance to specialise in their final year, tailoring their degree to reflect their own interests. Themed options include children’s literature, young adult fiction, Renaissance tragedy, 21st century American literature, European crime fiction, literary adaptations and the culture of print in the 18th century.

If students have a particular interest or independent research idea they can choose to work with a supervisor to write an extended dissertation. Previous dissertations have focused on subjects as diverse as anthropomorphism in Beatrix Potter’s animal tales; Black British identity in young adult fiction and grime music; women in Shakespearean tragedy; and slavery and the frontier in early American gothic short stories.