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Revolutions in English Literature

When you'll study it
Semester 1
CATS points
15
ECTS points
7.5
Level
Level 5
Module lead
Stephen Bygrave
Academic year
2025-26
Module overview Aims and Objectives Syllabus Learning and Teaching Assessment
Module overview Aims and Objectives Syllabus Learning and Teaching Assessment

Module overview

Revolutions would break, remake, and reform societies on both sides of the Atlantic from the disruptions of the English Civil War to the global conflicts of the Napoleonic Empire. Revolutions may be those sudden changes in political life that men have traditionally claimed for themselves—the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution—but they may also be those sustained acts of resistance, those apparently small-scale innovations, that lead to a gradual reimagining of both nature and of the natural order. In the works on this module we will explore:

  • the rise of female education, and the rise of the novel;
  • the proliferation of print and the professionalisation of literature;
  • the establishment of literary canons, and new interest in the non-canonical;
  • the challenge of Romanticism.

In all of these concerns we will find ourselves returning to that most powerful, and yet elusive, of forms, the romance.