University of Aberdeen

University of Aberdeen

Master of Arts in English and Scottish Literature

The Master of Arts in English and Scottish Literature in Language and Culture Studies is offered by University of Aberdeen.

Program Length: 4 YEARS.

Master of Arts in English and Scottish Literature offered by the University of Aberdeen

If you are interested in how our language evolved and the ways in which it has created some inspirational writers like Scott, Burns, Barrie, Doyle, Stevenson, this could be the programme for you.


You will be immersed in wonderful characters, stories and literature of Scotland understanding the history, culture and arts of the time and how the language and literature fits in. You will study the classics of Shakespeare, controversial literature and Romantic, Victorian and other times.

Have you ever wondered how our language was created and why we speak like and write like we do? What inspires us to write great works and why are they great? We have a vast and interesting past of conflict, settlers from Scandinavia to Germany and Africa leading to Brythonic, Norn, Doric, and Gaelic. English itself is complicated by words similar to Viking, Italian, French, Gael, German and other more exotic influences due to our trading and travelling past.

Aberdeen offers focused, supportive teaching from internationally renowned scholars who are leaders in their field. Our flexible, modular degree programmes in English allow you to develop your own interests and enthusiasms while acquiring advanced critical and communicative skills that will prepare you for a wide range of careers. Our literature has inspired people the world over to create and understand the times we live in, documenting them forever, inspiring our imagination and creating visions from the past in our minds.

The literature of Scotland is intertwined with heritage and innovation from the early Middle Ages to the modernist period looking at the great periods such as Romanticism and writers such as Sir Walter Scott. In Aberdeen, we are not far from the birth place of J.M.Barrie of Kirriemuir who inspires children's imaginations globally and the adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson and more recently Alistair McLean to give a different dimension to our survival instinct in modern times. Throughout all of this literature we are able to build a picture of living, culture, history and thinking of each period.

With English you can also look at literature from Ireland, translated European literature and American literature looking at the approach to writing, theory and reading.

What you'll study

Year 1
Compulsory Courses

Academic Writing for Language & Literature (AW1008)
Getting Started at the University of Aberdeen (PD1002)
Acts of Reading (EL1009)
Controversial Classics (EL1513)

Optional Courses
Select a further 90 credit points from courses of choice.

Year 2
Compulsory Courses
Encounters with Shakespeare (EL2011)
The Tragedy of Knowledge (EL2512)

Optional Courses
Select a further 60 credit points from courses of choice.

Year 3
Optional Courses
Select either one or both of the following:

EL30QA: Sympathy for the Devil: Scottish Short Stories
EL35KN: Haunted Texts
Plus select a total of two courses from the following groups, each from a different group:

Medieval/Renaissance

EL30DQ: Knights, Virgins and Viragos, Chaucer and Medieval Writing
EL30CP: Page and Stage: Renaissance Writings 1500-1640
EL35EJ: Writing Revolt: Literature and Politics in the 17th Century

Romantic/Victorian

EL3009: American Innovation
EL35XR: Romanticism
EL30QA: Sympathy for the Devil: the 19th Century Scottish Short Story
EL35VB Bildungsroman to Alien Invasion
EL35SB: Britain and the 19th Century World

Contemporary/Modern

EL30FF: Modernism: Make it New
EL35KN: Haunted Texts
EL35UT: Art and Atrocity: Representations of Violence and Trauma
EL30UT: Art and Atrocity: Representations of Violence and Trauma
Plus one course from the following:

EL35YB: Creative Writing: Creativity & Craft
EL35WC: Queer Times
EL30EH: Classical Epic
CE3594: Dangerous Liaisons: Love, Sex and Romance in Celtic West and Old North
EL30VC: Fallen Women and Self-Made Men
Plus further courses of choice to make up 120 credit points.

Year 4
Compulsory Courses
Dissertation in Scottish Literature (EL4510)

Optional Courses
Select a further 90 credit points from the following courses:

NOTE: You are required to choose a minimum of 90 credit points from “Scottish” courses across levels 3 and 4.

Controversy and Drama: Marlowe to Revenge Tragedy (EL40CT)
Spenser (EL40ES)
Wandering Women: Literature, Place and Environment (EL40JA)
Literature and Culture at the Fin De Siecle (EL40LA)
Creative Writing: the Essential Skills (EL40PB)
Horrible Histories: Violence and Trauma in the Scottish Novel (EL40QV)
Amnesty, Amnesia, Archive (EL40UU)
Sex and Death: Exploring the Forbidden in Gothic Fiction (EL40VA)
All for One: the Politics of Love and Friendship in Literature (EL40WH)
Creative Writing: the Writer's Voice (EL40YL)
British Poetry of the 20th Century (EL40YN)
Staging the City: Renaissance Urban Drama (EL45AD)
The Short Story as A Literary Form (EL45DR)
Literature and Medicine (EL45HQ)
Vulnerable Bodies, Precarious Lives (EL45KF)
Fictional Futures: Apocalypse & Utopia in Modern Fiction (EL45OE)
Not the Queen's English (EL45SC)



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