About English Literature
We are bombarded with words and surrounded by stories – stories
told to inform us, to entertain us, to unnerve us, to make us cry,
to make us laugh, to make us buy things. Understanding how stories
work – and how they appeal to us, persuade us and affect us – is
part of understanding the world we live in.
“Here students are known by
name – not by numbers”
Studying English Literature at York St John University is about
more than the study of great books. You will study great books, but
you can also take modules in exciting areas such as children’s
literature, creative writing, or horror fiction. You will find
Shakespeare here as well as the Romantic poets, and classic
nineteenth-century writing. But you will also find contemporary
writing, including Caribbean texts, Australian writing and books by
black British writers as well as Gothic science fiction, comedy and
film as narrative.
At York St John you will be taught by enthusiastic and
experienced staff who are active as scholars and researchers in
their specialist areas. We have published work on topics ranging
from renaissance women dramatists, the English novel, Irish
literature, to women’s writing and history and contemporary British
and American fiction.
You will encounter practicing writers on our campus, like
Jackie Kay and Joe Dunthorne (writer of the recent hit film
Submarine) talking about their approach to writing and giving
students an opportunity to ask them questions about their
work. Your fellow students will come from many parts of the
world, and will be of all ages. But one thing they will have in
common is a passion for books.
“One of the things we try and
encourage is the pleasure of reading and how to form critical
responses to that pleasure.”
We want students to be informed, engaged and arguments to be
substantiated.
We are looking for a creative response to the texts – which
doesn’t have to be an essay. It can be a painting of a piece of
creative writing. At YSJ we recognise that reading is itself a
creative process.
We also believe in taking the course out of the classroom. Thus
if you are interested in the world of the 18th century
we encourage students to organise an 18th century ball
or immerse themselves in the life of the 16th
century.
We help students with placements - giving them the opportunity
to “work with words”. Many of our students subsequently go into
careers involving communication skills, including sales and
marketing, research and in newspapers and
magazines.