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 1997-98: 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 1997-98: Spectacles and Spectators
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. The performance of
race and gender in popular culture and how these performances influence
cultural assumptions and expectations are considered.
English 18.504W1
Literature, Contact, and Empire in Colonial and Post-Colonial Societies
Topic for 1997-98: Explorations, Settlement, and the Cant of Conquest
An investigation of some essential 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, and others).
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 18.534F1
Renaissance Drama
Topic for 1997-98: 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 18.542W1
Eighteenth-Century Studies
Topic for 1997-98: Swift, Pope and Johnson: 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
Studies in Romanticism
Topics for 1997-98: 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 18.551W1
Nineteenth Century Studies
Topic for 1997-98: Gender and Genre in Victorian Poetry
A study of works written between 1830 and 1870 in terms of gender representation
in relation to generic modalities, exploring the thesis that poets of the
period — Tennyson, the Brownings, the Rossettis, Arnold, Clough — confronted
a crisis in gender ideology that problematized the lyric.
English 18.566W1
Twentieth-Century Literature
Topic for 1997-98: A Surly and Twisted Lot: Media in the British Novel
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 18.571F1
American Poetry
Topic for 1997-98: Modern American Poetry
A study of the formative poetry and poetics of several major modern American
writers, including: Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens,
Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Alan Ginsberg.
English 18.582F1
Ethnicity, Multiculturalism, and Canadian Literature
Topic for 1997-98: Inter-Ethnic Relations
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
Canadian Fiction
Topic for 1997-98: 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 1997: The Canadian Modernist Movement
An examination of the work and related activity of five Canadian poets
and one editor/critic whose writing and literary enterprise may be said
to be broadly representative of the Canadian Modernist Movement. Poets
studied include F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith, Dorothy Livesay, W.W.E. Ross,
John Sutherland, and Louis Dudek.
English 18.591F1
Selected Topic
Topic for 1997-98: Poetics of Expressiveness
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
18.490, for which additional credit is precluded.
English 18.593W1
English and Cultural Studies
Topic for 1997-98: 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 18.598F2, 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 University.
Courses Not Offered in 1997-98
18.500
Literary Criticism
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
18.553
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
18.573
American Fiction
18.576
American Literature
18.578
Studies in American Fiction
18.581
Canadian Poetry
18.585
Canadian English
18.589
Colonial Discourse and Native Literatures in Canada
18.590
Selected Topic
18.594
Special Studies in Dramatic Literature