English Literature Study Guide 2025/26
What you can study
Bristol is a truly literary city, home to the Bristol Festival of Literature, Bristol Women's Literature Festival, Bristol Poetry Festival, and a host of theatres, cafés, and independent bookshops. It has inspired writers throughout its history, from William Wordsworth and Jane Austen to Helen Dunmore, as well as Bristol alumni Angela Carter, David Nicholls and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. At Bristol, you'll study texts written from medieval times to now, as you explore literary traditions ranging from the local to the global.
You will find units on:
- poetry, fiction, children's literature, media, and visual culture
- postcolonial theory and Black studies
- gender studies
- environmental studies and medical humanities
Pre-requisites
At UK universities, students specialise from their first year and rarely take units outside their degree subject. This means that:
- Year 1 units are suitable for all students.
- Year 2 units require some university study in the discipline.
- Year 3 units require a strong background in the discipline.
Subject pathway students
If you have been nominated to Bristol on the Study Abroad (English pathway), you must take the majority of your credits from this guide (sections Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3).
Feature Unit
-
Reading Identities (TB2) - ENGL10062
Explore how writers and critics represent, re-imagine and challenge the topic of identity across gender, sexuality, and race.
-
Representations: This is (not) my America (TB2) - HUMS10014
This interdisciplinary unit explores the question of nationhood and belonging, especially in context to present day US.
Year 1
Pre-requisites: suitable for all students
Teaching Block 1
Teaching Block 2
- Literature 1550-1740 - ENGL10043
- Reading Identities - ENGL10062
- Representations: This is not my America - HUMS10014. Please note this unit is graded as pass/fail and involves no numerical mark.
- Texts in a Global Context - ENGL10052
- Transformations - ENGL10046
Year 2
Pre-requisites: some university study in the discipline.
Students may take only ONE Seminar unit per Teaching Block due to the heavy workload involved with these units.
Teaching Block 1
Seminar units – choose a maximum of ONE:
- African American Literature - ENGL20111
- American Literature 1945-present - ENGL29007
- Revenge Tragedy - ENGL29008
Teaching Block 2
- Arthurian Literature - ENGL20060
- Chaucer and Chaucerians - ENGL20061
- Literature 1900-present - ENGL20064
- The Age of Beowulf - ENGL20144
Seminar unit:
Year 3
Pre-requisites: strong background of study in the discipline.
Students may take only ONE Seminar unit per Teaching Block due to the heavy workload involved with these units.
Teaching Block 1
Seminar units - choose a maximum of ONE:
- Shakespearean Tragedy: Textual and Literary Criticism - ENGL39027
- Women on the Verge: Gender and Experimentation in the 20th/21st Century - ENGL30149
Teaching Block 2
Seminar units - choose a maximum of ONE:
Literature units outside the Department
The following units are delivered and taught entirely in English and are suitable for students majoring in Arts and Humanities subjects:
Teaching Block 1
- Comparative Literature: What is it and how can we practise it? - MODL10016
- Dante’s Inferno - ITAL20047
- Exiles and Migrants in German Literature - GERM30058
- German Literature and Film: Genres, Texts, Contexts - GERM10035
- Les Miserables: Readings and Receptions - FREN30030
- Literature - CLAS10038
- Me, Myself, and I: The Essais of Michel de Montaigne - FREN30114
- Medieval and Renaissance Italy - ITAL10034
- Myth - CLAS20065
- The Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel - RUSS20069
- Understanding Russia: Literature & Visual Culture – RUSS10042
- War and Peace: Tolstoy’s Ethics in a European Context - MODL30042
Teaching Block 2
- Ancient Historical Writers - CLAS10039
- Contemporary Latin(x) American Poetry - HISP20115
- Dante: Purgatorio and Paradiso - ITAL30059
- Dostoevsky - RUSS30073
- Epic - CLAS12361
- Fairy Tales Across Borders - MODL20029. Interested in Creative Writing? In this unit, you will collaborate with other students on a group-authorised fairy tale.
- From Judgement to Trial: Selected Works by Franz Kafka - GERM20049
- Legacy - CLAS20067
- Representations of Francophone Cultures - FREN10013
Familiar with French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish and would like a literature-based unit that uses your language skills? Please see the Modern Languages guide for further information on those units.
Application queries
Contact the Centre for Study Abroad inbound team if you have any queries about the application process for the study abroad programmes:
Phone: +44 117 39 40207
Email: cfsa-inbound@bristol.ac.uk
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Study Guides
Study Guides are updated every April for the following academic year.