English Language and Literature

Chair of the Department: L.T.R. McDonald
Departmental Supervisor of Graduate Studies, R.L. Hogg

The Department of English Language and Literature offers programs of study leading to the M.A. degree in English language and literature. Additional information may be obtained by consulting the departmental supervisor of graduate studies.

NOTE: See Cultural Mediations for our new doctoral program.

Qualifying-Year Program

Master of Arts

Admission Requirements

* history of the English language or general English linguistics
* Old English or Middle English
* Renaissance literature
* drama (including Shakespeare)
* Restoration and eighteenth-century literature
* Romantic and nineteenth-century literature
* twentieth-century literature
* Canadian literature

Possession of the minimum entrance standing is not in itself, however, an assurance of admission into the program.

Program Requirements

* 2.0 credits in English, selected from those at the 500-level (excluding English 18.598), plus English 18.505, and a master's thesis; an oral examination on the thesis will be required. A prospectus for the thesis must be submitted to the graduate committee by December 1 after registration in September, or at the end of three months for any other registration
* 3.0 credits in English selected from those at the 500-level (excluding English 18.599), plus English 18.505, and a research essay; an oral examination on the research essay will be required
Each program is designed to be completed within the three-term academic year. Each program is of equal status.

Guidelines for Completion of Master's Degree

Academic Standing

Graduate Courses

F,W,S indicates term of offering. Courses offered in the fall and winter are followed by T. The number following the letter indicates the credit weight of the course: 1 denotes 0.5 credit, 2 denotes 1.0 credit, etc.
 

English 18.500F1 or W1

Literary Criticism

A study of specific topics or particular areas of literary criticism.

English 18.502F1

Contemporary Literary Theory

This course examines contemporary approaches to theory and literary studies. The first half of the semester is devoted to an overview of current theoretical approaches to literature, and the second half focuses on the work of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault.

English 18.503W1

Feminism/s: The Literary Dimension

An examination of the configurations and discursive constructions of various cultural "spectacles," such as certain murder trials, disease outbreaks, sexual scandals, and violence in (and out of) sport; performance of race and gender in popular culture and how these performances influence cultural assumptions and expectations..

English 18.504F1 or W1

Literature, Contact, and Empire in Colonial and Post-Colonial Societies

An investigation of specific European and North American documents relating to the dispossession of Native peoples from the Caribbean to the Arctic, together with the emergence of a radical critique by various Native and non-Native thinkers (Colombus, Montaigne, Cartier, Defoe, Hearne, Cooper, Jameson, Thompson, etc.)

English 18.505F1

Bibliography and Scholarly Methods

An introduction to analytical and descriptive bibliography, editing, research methodology, and professional concerns. The course is graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory.

English 18.518F1 or W1

Old Norse

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.528F1 or W1

Middle-English Studies

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.531F1 or W1

Renaissance Poetry

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.532F1 or W1

Seventeenth-Century Poetry

A study of selected seventeenth-century poets.

English 18.534F1 or W1

Renaissance Drama

Politics and the English Renaissance Stage. A study of the popular drama of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Marston, Webster, and Tourneur, and the court drama of Peele, Jonson, Shirley, and Carew.

English 18.537F1 or W1

Renaissance Authors

A study of selected Renaissance authors.

English 18.538F1 or W1

Renaissance Studies

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.542F1 or W1

Eighteenth-Century Studies

Depictions of Friendship and Gender. An examination of the writings of Swift, Pope, and Johnson with respect to the concept of friendship and the depiction of gender. Works are examined from historical, biographical, and psychological points of view.

English 18.548F1 or W1

Studies in Romanticism

An examination of the fantastic element in some key texts of Romantic literature. The emphasis is on imaginative structures and on the romantic exploration of the mysterious, the exotic, and the forbidden.

English 18.551F1 or W1

Nineteenth Century Studies

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.553 W1

Nineteenth-Century Fiction

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.558F1 or W1

Nineteenth-Century Literature

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.561F1 or W1

Twentieth-Century Poetry

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.563F1 or W1

Twentieth-Century Fiction

A study of selected twentieth-century writers.

English 18.564F1 or W1

Twentieth-Century Drama

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.566F1 or W1

Twentieth-Century Literature

A study of the portrayal of the media as a reflection of society and its values in the twentieth century British novel, starting with Evelyn Waugh's Scoop and completing the survey with Fay Weldon's Darcy's Utopia and Martin Amis's The Information.

English 18.567F1 or W1

Twentieth-Century Authors

A study of twentieth-century authors of fiction.

English 18.568F1 or W1

Twentieth-Century Studies

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.571F1

American Poetry

A study of the formative poetry and poetics of several major modern American writers, including: Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D., George Oppen, Charles Olson, and Robert Creeley.

English 18.573F1 or W1

American Fiction

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.576F1 or W1

American Literature

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.578F1 or W1

Studies in American Fiction

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.581F1 or W1

Canadian Poetry

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.582F1 or W1

Ethnicity, Multiculturalism, and Canadian Literature

A study of Canadian literature in relation to theoretical and critical issues posed by ethnicity and other aspects of Canadian cultural diversity.

English 18.583F1 or W1

Canadian Fiction

The course concentrates on Canadian writing of the last twenty to thirty years, exploring it with reference to the concept of ideology, within the contexts of Marxist, feminist, and postmodernist literary theories.

English 18.585F1 or W1

Canadian English

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.587F1 or W1 or S1

Selected Topics in Canadian Literature

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.589F1 or W1

Colonial Discourse and Native Literatures in Canada

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.590 W1

Selected Topic

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.591F1 or W1

Selected Topic

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.593W1

English and Cultural Studies

Performing Bodies and Voices: A consideration of the juncture of literature and popular culture in the twentieth-century American and Canadian contexts. An examination of fusional blues lyric, Beat poetry, folk lyrics, performance art, comic book testimony, rap, Native and gay theatre, spoken word poetry, and dub poetry.

English 18.594F1 or W1

Special Studies in Dramatic Literature

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.598F2, W2, S2

Research Essay

English 18.599F4, W4, S4

M.A. Thesis

Undergraduate Courses

Other Disciplines

Other Universities