4-Term Pathway - International Foundation Year in Social Sciences and Humanities - Continue to Bachelor of Arts - English Literature

This program will prepare students for entry to Year 1 of an undergraduate degree in a wide range of subjects, including many based at the £10m LICA building. Popular subjects include law, film studies, sociology, linguistics and politics.

Literary study at Lancaster offers a rich engagement with the very best of literature, from the medieval period to the present day. Students will have the chance to study all the great names, as well as voices that have been forgotten or overlooked. And, along the way, they 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 one reads and the world in which they 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, Lancaster are pioneers in experimental or creative forms of literary criticism.

Studying with Lancaster 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 their first year, if they wish, students can study one or two subjects outside of English Literature, choosing from a vast range of modules. And they can, if they wish, continue to take modules from other subject areas in their second and final years.

Support, Events, and Study Trips

Lectures will be supplemented by small-group seminars, and the invitation to meet one-to-one with students' tutor to discuss their work. Students will be able to select from a host of modules and, in their final Dissertation, free to explore, with regular one-to-one tutorial support, a literary topic or theme of their own choosing.

Many of the 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 the student-led summer Shakespeare production, whilst the archive-rich Wordsworth Museum at Grasmere is usually the venue for the study retreat day. The Department’s May Gathering, a social event, is usually held at Lancaster’s ancient Priory.