English Language and Literature

Dunton Tower 1812

Telephone: 520-2310

Fax: 520-3544

The Department

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.

Qualifying-Year Program

Master of Arts

Admission Requirements

The minimum admission requirement for the master's program is a B.A. (Honours) (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:

* 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

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

Not all of the following courses are offered in a given year. For an up-to-date statement of course offerings for 1999-2000, please consult the Registration Instructions and Class Schedule booklet, published in the summer.

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 18.503F1

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. 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

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 18.518F1 or W1

Old Norse

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.528F1 or W1

Middle-English Studies

A study of selected portions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales from the perspective of Bakhtinian literary theory. The Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner and the Host will be among those elements of the work examined in the light of the ludic and carnivalesque and on grotesque realism. Familiarity with Rabelais and His World and The Dialogic Imagination will be involved in the course. Also offered at the undergraduate level, with different requirements, as English 18.428«, for which additional credit is precluded.

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

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 18.542W1

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

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 18.551W1

Nineteenth Century Studies

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 18.553F1 or 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 18.566W1

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

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

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 18.587S1

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 18.590F1 or W1

Selected Topic

Topic may vary from year to year.

English 18.591F1

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

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

17.501, 17.502 This is not a complete list of all acceptable options. Students should contact the supervisor of graduate studies or the chair of the Department for approval if there are other courses they wish to take which are not on the list.

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.