Department of English Language and Literature

Dunton Tower 1812
Telephone: 520-2310
Fax: 520-3544

The Department

Chair of the Department: R.B. Lovejoy

Departmental Supervisor of Graduate Studies: L.T.R. McDonald

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.

Qualifying-Year Program

Applicants who hold a general (pass) B.A. degree with at least a high honours standing (normally B+), with a major in English language and literature, may be admitted to the qualifying-year program. Normally, these students will be required to complete 4.0 or 5.0 credits (or the equivalent) in English, as determined by the department, and to maintain a high honours standing (normally B+) before being considered for admission into the master's program.

Master of Arts

Admission Requirements

The minimum admission requirement for the master's program is an honours B.A. (or the equivalent) in English language and literature, with at least a high honours standing (normally B+), and including credits in at least five of the following:

• 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

Each candidate will select one of the following program patterns:

• The equivalent of 2.0 credits in English, selected from those at the 500 level (excluding English 18.598), plus English 18.505, Bibliography and Scholarly Methods, 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
• The equivalent of 3.0 credits in English selected from those at the 500 level (excluding English 18.599), plus English 18.505, Bibliography and Scholarly Methods, 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

Full-time master's candidates are expected to complete all requirements in twelve months or three terms of registered full-time study. Part-time master's candidates are expected to complete their degree requirements within an elapsed period of six calendar years after the date of initial registration.

All candidates are required to demonstrate a reading knowledge of one language other than English, approved by the Department.

Academic Standing

A standing of B- or better must be obtained in each credit counted towards the master's degree.

Graduate Courses*

• English 18.502F1
  Contemporary Literary Theory
  Topic for 1996-97: Approaches to Theory and Literary Studies
  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 18.503F1
  Feminism/s: The Literary Dimension
  Topic for 1996-97: Oscar Wilde as Salome
  This course will do some cultural detective work to examine a range of gender issues. The representational and discursive conditions of possibility for the recent mis-identification of a photograph of Oscar Wilde in drag as Salome are explored. How did such a false authentification by Wilde's own biographer and leading gender theorists come about? Topics include: woman in the Symbolist and Decadent imagination, the Orientalizing ideal of la belle juive, the homosexual as essentially "feminine", the rhetoric of "posing", transvestism as "category crisis", and emerging gender paradigms that foreground performativity.
• 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 18.534W1
  Renaissance Drama
  Topic for 1996-97: 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.
  Also offered at the undergraduate level, with different requirements, as 18.434, for which additional credit is precluded.
• English 18.542W1
  Eighteenth-Century Studies
  Topic for 1996-97: Eighteenth-Century Novels
  A formal consideration of Fielding's Tom Jones, Richardson's Clarissa, and Sterne's Sentimental Journey with particular attention to issues of gender and class.
• English 18.548F1
  Studies in Romanticism
  Topics for 1996-97: The "Fantastic" in Romantic Literature
  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 18.566F1
  Twentieth-Century Literature
  Topic for 1996-97: Studies in Post-World War II British Fiction
  This course considers selected novels within the contexts of postmodernism as delineated in Brian McHale's Postmodern Fiction and Linda Hutcheon's A Poetics of Postmodernism. Novelists studied include B.S. Johnson, Lawrence Durrell, Iris Murdoch, John Fowles, Christine Brooke Rose, Peter Ackroyd, Doris Lessing, and Julian Barnes.
• English 18.571W1
  American Poetry
  Topic for 1996-97: Dead Gods, Empty Heavens and New Affirmation
  The topic of this course is selected major figures who have shaped American poetry in this century. Within the context of modernism, poems are considered in the light of literary movements and the theory found in the critical writings of these poets.
  Also offered at the undergraduate level, with different requirements, as 18.478, for which additional credit is precluded.
• English 18.573W1
  American Fiction
  Topic for 1996-97: Ambiguities of Recognition
  This seminar explores the work of Hawthorne and Melville in the context of their recognition of each other's ideological and artistic positions, but it also considers significant differences that developed in their relationship. These differences mark out ambiguities in their work and in American culture. Texts: The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, and selected short stories.
• English 18.581W1
  Canadian Poetry
  Topic for 1996-97: The Contemporary Canadian Long Poem: Nation, History, and Social Identity
  This seminar focuses on long poems of the last two decades by Canadian writers from diverse backgrounds. From the documentary poem to the prose poem, the lyric sequence, the African-originated praise song, and First Nations orature, the inquiry focuses not only on the obvious postmodern implications of this border-crossing genre, but also on the social implications. Of particular interest are intersecting literary constructions of national, gender, sexual, racial, and ethnic identities. Also examined is the poetry's articulation of national, regional, and family histories. Poets studied include Margaret Atwood, Jeannette Armstrong, John Barton, George Elliott Clarke, Joan Crate, M. Nourbese Philip, Dionne Brand, Roy Kiyooka, Fred Wah, bpNichol, Phyllis Webb, and Bronwen Wallace.
• English 18.582W1
  Ethnicity, Multiculturalism, and Canadian Literature
  Topic for 1996-97: Inter-Ethnic Relations
  A study of Canadian Literature in relation to theoretical and critical issues posed by ethnicity and other aspects of Canadian culture diversity.
• English 18.583F1
  Canadian Fiction
  Topic for 1996-97: Contemporary Canadian Novels
  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 18.587S1
  Selected Topics in Canadian Literature
  Topic for Summer 1996: Alienation, Displacement, and Exile
  This seminar focuses on elements of alienation, exile, and displacement in a group of selected works by six Canadian writers drawn from a period extending from the 1920s to the 1970s. Works chosen for this course are: Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle, Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers, Marian Engel's Bear, John Glassco's Memoirs of Montparnasse, Frederick Philip Grove's A Search for America, and Brian Moore's The Luck of Ginger Coffey.
  Also offered at the undergraduate level, with different requirements, as 18.487, for which additional credit is precluded.
• English 18.589F1
  Colonial Discourse and Native Literatures in Canada
  Topic for 1996-97: Explorers, Settlers, Poets, and Other Invaders: the Representation of Native Peoples in the Early Literature of English Canada
  This course focuses primarily on the formation of the dominant discourse which emerged in Canada, through an examination of texts and images produced by assorted early visitors, missionaries, settlers, colonists, and "literary" writers. This is not a course about the real First Nations (or their literatures) except as they are the objects of this discourse; it is concerned, rather, with imaginary "Indians" and the construction of various eurocentric myths and stereotypes which have prevailed in Canada and other settler societies. Visual images as well as written texts are part of the interdisciplinary field of representation which is considered in this course.
• English 18.591F1
  Selected Topic
  Topic for 1996-97: Poetics of Expressiveness
  This course involves a study of the origins of theme-text poetics, an explication of the major components of the theory, and a practical application of the poetics to a selected work of literature. The main texts are: A.K. Zholkovsky Themes and Texts: Toward a Poetics of Expressiveness and Yury Shcheglove and A.K. Zholkovsky, Poetics of Expressiveness: A Theory and Applications. Additional readings may include works by Saussure, Eisenstein, and certain Russian formalists.
  Also offered at the undergraduate level, with different requirements, as 18.400, for which additional credit is precluded.
• English 18.593W1
  English and Cultural Studies
  Topic for 1996-97: "The Possibility of Adventure": Stories of Cookery, War, Travel and Romance
  The theoretical approach focuses on the encoding of narrative, discourse, and sign in the text.
  Also offered at the undergraduate level, with different requirements, as 18.490, for which additional credit is precluded.
• English 18.598F2, W2, S2
  Research Essay
• English 18.599F4, W4, S4
  M.A. Thesis

Undergraduate Courses

Graduate students may take the equivalent of 1.0 credit at the senior undergraduate level.

Other Disciplines

Graduate students may take the equivalent of 1.0 credit in a related discipline. The following courses may be among those of special interest:**

Comparative Literary Studies

• 17.401 Foundations of Comparative Literary Studies
• 17.402 Theories of Literature
• 17.501 Problems in the Theory of Literature I
• 17.502 Problems in the Theory of Literature II

Other Universities

Graduate students may take the equivalent of 2.0 credits at another university or other universities. Students are especially reminded that the University of Ottawa offers a wide range of graduate courses which may be completed (under the general 2.0 credit ruling) for credit at Carleton.

Courses Not Offered in 1996-97

• 18.500 Literary Criticism
• 18.504 Literature, Contact, and Empire in Colonial and Post-Colonial Societies
• 18.518 Old Norse
• 18.528 Middle-English Studies
• 18.531 Renaissance Poetry
• 18.532 Seventeenth-Century Poetry
• 18.537 Renaissance Authors
• 18.538 Renaissance Studies
• 18.551 Nineteenth-Century Poetry
• 18.553 Nineteenth-Century Fiction
• 18.558 Nineteenth-Century Literature
• 18.561 Twentieth-Century Poetry
• 18.563 Twentieth-Century Fiction
• 18.564 Twentieth-Century Drama
• 18.567 Twentieth-Century Authors
• 18.568 Twentieth-Century Studies
• 18.576 American Literature
• 18.578 Studies in American Fiction
• 18.585 Canadian English
• 18.590 Selected Topic
• 18.594 Special Studies in Dramatic Literature