Your First Year (Part One)
Aberystwyth offers you the flexibility of a first year (called Part 1) in which you may, if you wish, take modules in a range of subjects outside your main degree scheme. This means that you may delay your specialisation for Honours until you are absolutely sure about what you want to do.
English Literature Modules
Encountering Texts. Acting as a bridge between A-Level study and advanced degree work, this unique module familiarises students with the expectations and opportunities of the study of literature at University level. It introduces you to the Higher Education learning environment, and develops research, writing and presentation skills that will help you to make the most of your degree scheme. The module is taught by a combination of lectures and seminars and is a compulsory, core module in all of the department's degree schemes.
Rewritings, Re-visioning Texts. This module will focus on literature as a process of rewriting, and one its main features will be the adaptation of literary texts into films and the interesting cultural and generic issues to which these 'transformations' give rise. It provides you with the skills you need to read and analyse texts from different genres, in different contexts and across different media. The module is a compulsory, core module for Q300 Single Honours English Literature and optional in other departmental schemes.
Ancestral Voices. The module seeks to develop students' knowledge and informed enjoyment of literature from the centuries before 1800, helping you to deal with the particular challenges that such texts pose for modern readers, and increasing your confidence in handling this rewarding material, much of which will be unfamiliar. The module is a compulsory, core module for all schemes.
Contemporary Writing . This module introduces you to a lively range of current work, including short tales, postmodernist fiction, best-seller fiction, poetry, and film adaptations. The texts are chosen to represent facets of contemporary identity (including social, ethnic, class, gender, sexual, and generational aspects). These categories anticipate some of those that will become important in your study of literature on Part Two modules in your second and third years. All the texts studied on this module first appeared in the 1990s or 2000s.
Other Level One Modules
Many students studying English Literature will also take a range of some of the following modules in their first year, since these all provide further opportunities for students to concentrate their studies on literature, through additional literary analysis, studies of generic and historical contexts for English literature, and investigations into ancient literary forms that often exert great influence over post-medieval literatures.
American Literature and Culture. An introduction to the study of American literature and culture from 1800 to the present day. It focuses on the role of literature in dramatizing and debating the myths and realities of the American experience. This module is a compulsory core module for American Studies students and optional in other departmental schemes.
The following two modules have been tailored to provide students of English Literature with an introduction to the Classical forms, genres and ideas that often form a basis for works of English Literature.
Greek and Roman Epic and Drama. This module, which requires no previous knowledge of Classics, introduces students to the epics of Homer and Virgil. It also explores a range of Greek and Roman plays, focussing on issues of gender and society.
The Classical Tradition: A History of Greek and Roman Ideas . This module introduces students to Greek and Roman ideas and literary genres, paying particular attention to those aspects that became important to English Literature. It includes Attic Tragedy and Old Comedy, Senecan drama, the novel, satire, Greek and Roman poetry, and Classical mythology.