This MA is intended as an intensive course-based programme of study, focusing on English literature in the period from 1880 to 1920, and its relationship to key intellectual, cultural and social trends within this period. Students would take 4 modules in total, one each semester, for four semesters, plus they will be required to produce a 20,000 word Dissertation by the end of the course. There would also the "safety net" option of a Postgraduate Certificate and Diploma, for students who do not wish to pursue the MA qualification.
The course would be taught at NEWI, principally using 2-hour evening
sessions, but also including tutorial provision and the use of
occasional outside speakers. Because of the intensive reading
demands for the course, it is envisaged that each module will
carry a credit weighting of 30 points, with a total credit weighting
of 180 for the MA.
Academic Content and Rationale.
Politically, intellectually and artistically the period is an extremely interesting and fertile area for study. In terms of politics it is possible to chart the emergence of the Fabian and Socialist traditions, and their impact on writers such as G.B. Shaw and H.G. Wells, together with the consolidation of post-Gladstonian Liberalism (John Galsworthy, E.M. Forster and their relationship to the "strange death of Liberal England", through to the works of Conservative right-wing writers and intellectuals (Kipling, Conrad, Wyndham Lewis). Intellectually the period witnessed a range of new thinking in areas of psychology (Bergson, Freud and Jung), in philosophy (the impact of thinkers such as Nietzsche, G.E. Moore and philosophical idealism), in sociology (most notably in new forms of social Darwinism and social organicist thought), in discourses of sexuality (Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis), and in arguments about women. The period witnessed the impact of Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, Futurism, the emergence of stream of consciousness techniques, and the impact of foreign writers such as Zola and Ibsen. Throughout the period, and underlying all of the above trends, we can see the attempts to come to terms with new questions of Englishness and English national character, whether in terms of reassessments of Britains's international status as Imperial power (Kipling), in rediscovery of rural England (Richard Jeffries, Hardy, Forster and D.H. Lawrence), or more general assessments of the "Condition of England" (Forster, Ford, Masterman). The aim of the course is that, through the detailed exploration of a wide range of primary texts, students will have the opportunity to intensively study these areas, and to gain an understanding of the richness of the period as a whole.
The approach to the study of these themes will be through four discrete but interlinked modules, which will allow students to explore the period chronologically. The course will be primarily text-focused, but will enable wider issues and trends to be explored: tutor lectures at various points in each module will encourage students to explore these wider tendencies and to introduce material on relevant social, cultural and intellectual contexts. Details of modules can be found in the following course diagram
Further details regarding this programme can be found by contacting
Dr Richard Dover, Humanities,
pp35, NEWI, Plas Coch, Mold Road, Wrexham, LL11 2AW, tel: 01978-293272