Postgraduate Taught Degrees

MA Medieval and Early Modern Textual Cultures 1381 - 1688

Duration:: 1 years
Attendance:: Full Time
Award:: Degree of Master of Arts
School of Study:: Literature, Drama and Creative Writing

Overview
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Course Profile
Requirements
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This MA offers students the opportunity to acquire knowledge of Medieval and Early Modern literature in its wider critical and cultural contexts and to develop training in the discipline and methodologies within which scholars explore this material.

Issues of liminality and transition are central concerns within this programme, with particular interest paid to how the terms ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern’ (or ‘Renaissance’) are regarded within studies of Humanities today as unstable, which require explanation, qualification and justification when used to designate a specific historical period for academic study. Perceptions of when each period begins and ends differ according to discipline and geography and there is much distrust of traditional ideas about historical periodisation. The distinctive date range that marks the commencement and conclusion of the period covered by the MA – 1381 (the year of the Peasants’ Revolt) and 1688 (the year of the Glorious Revolution) – sharpens focus on this topical debate about demarcating the medieval and early modern, with the connotations that each carries of rebellion, upheaval and re-negotiation, reflecting the momentous political, religious, social and intellectual changes and developments witnessed throughout this period as a whole.

The programme combines the transdisciplinary critical and theoretical approaches from literature with the treatment by literary scholars of a wide variety of sources and artefacts as ‘texts’. The integrated picture of medieval and early modern culture that this approach enables is complemented by the additional option of elective modules in history and art history, which ensure a rich and subtly nuanced picture. The focus of the course is predominantly on textual sources of the British Isles, while also enabling extensive attention to be paid to Britain’s relations with the cultural traditions and politics of Continental Europe.

Shape of the Course

All students take the core module ‘Textual Culture: Issues and Methodologies’ which encourages self-critical reflection on interpretation of medieval and early modern texts, use of sources, and critical paradigms used to study and interpret the period. Students then choose from a range of options that allow them to study various aspects of medieval and early modern literature and drama. They will also write a dissertation on a topic of their choice, utilising the knowledge, research and writing skills they have acquired during the taught modules.

The course takes one year of full-time or two years of part-time study.

Examples of Modules

Medieval and Early Modern: Continuity, Change and Periodisation
The Actor in Space
Reusing the Past: Classical Texts in Medieval and Early Modern Contexts
Reading Women
John Milton

Students may also elect to study relevant postgraduate modules from the Schools of History and World Art Studies and Museology.

East Anglia was crucially important as a centre of Medieval and Early Modern textual activity, and today the city of Norwich provides a magnificent resource for studying the material culture and political, religious and social history of the period together with the extensive archival resources of the Cathedral Library and Norfolk Record

The MA in Medieval and Early Modern Textual Cultures, 1381-1688 also has its own website. Please click here to find out more information.

Course Organiser:Dr. Matthew Woodcock

The School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing brings together writers, scholars, teachers and students in an exploration of the powers and possibilities of literature. Our aim is to make creative writing and critical reading confront one another in ways that sharpen and enliven both.

Literature

We teach and research across the range of English Literature from the fourteenth century to the twenty-first. This coverage is supplemented by our interests in European Literature, in postcolonial writing in English across the world, and in literary and cultural theory.

Translation

UEA is home to the British Centre for Literary Translation, which is both a forum for professional translators and a focus for translation work with undergraduate and postgraduate students of literature. The School of Literature & Creative Writing runs the MA in Literary Translation course.

Creative Writing

For over thirty years UEA has been an important centre for established and upcoming writers, whether they come here as teachers, as students, as writers in residence, or to take part in the long-running literary festival organised by the Arthur Miller Centre and the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts. For more information on our Creative Writing MA courses, please click here

Drama

Our drama programmes combine critical study with creative practice. The theoretical aspect draws on the expertise of LIT as a whole; the practical work is based in the purpose-built Drama Studio. For further information on the Drama sector, please click here.

Literature at UEA is not a complete, finished object of study, but a living practice. Because we also do creative writing, translation and drama, we are aware that imaginative writing is not fixed; it is constantly being transformed, adapted, rewritten and reread. Students are invited to study these processes, and also to be part of them. Click here to see what our students say about studying in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing.

Among a diverse group of about twenty literature lecturers, there are experts on the various roles that the practice of literature can play, and has played, in society — how it can be something like praying, or like journalism, or like conversation, how it can be a form of political action, or a vehicle for ideas, or a working out of unmanageable experience, or a way of negotiating (or inflaming) differences of class and race and gender. We teach literature not in isolation, but in relation to this untidy bundle of social and psychological purposes.

It follows that we have no great respect for the boundaries that divide one academic discipline from another. We take a lively interest in the work of our colleagues in history, philosophy, film, the visual arts and music, and we encourage our students to do the same. That is why we offer a range of degree programmes which combine literature with other, related subjects.

We run internationally recognised programmes of teaching and research in literature, translation, creative writing, and drama: the important thing about all of these is that they interact with each other.

Year 1

Compulsory Study (180 credits)

Students must study the following modules for 180 credits:

Name	Code	Credits
EAST ANGLIAN LITERATURE	LDCEM006	20
CORE MODULE FOR STUDENTS ON THE MA MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN TEXTUAL CULTURES. This module has as its focus ideas of place and regional cultures. It introduces key subjects relating to regional literature, religious geographies, visual and verbal relationships, attitudes to gender and family, landscape and alternative cultures. Approaches will involve genre study, interdisciplinary enquiry, and theoretical study. We are spoilt for choice in relation to texts and authors to select from the region, including: John Bale, Osbern Bokenham, Thomas Browne, Meir ben Eiljah, John Capgrave, Robert Greene, Gabriel Harvey, Margery Kempe, John Lydgate, John Metham, Julian of Norwich, the N-Town plays, the Pastons and John Skelton. There will be the opportunity to visit a number of archives, specialist libraries and material culture from the period, including a visit to Norwich Cathedral, which has an extensive 17th-century library with material from the 15th century onwards, Norfolk's heritage collection housed in The Forum's Millennium Library which holds documents from the 13th century onwards, and the Julian of Norwich Centre and Shrine.
ENGLISH LITERATURE DISSERTATION	LDCEM03X	90
Students are required to write a dissertation of a length as specified in their MA Course Guide on a topic approved by the Course Director or other authorised person.
POLITICS AND PUBLIC CULTURE	LDCEM069	20
CORE MODULE FOR STUDENTS ON THE MA MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN TEXTUAL CULTURES. The aim of this module will be to look at ways of reading literary works in their social, political and intellectual contexts, and to explore the role of the writer in early-modern culture. To do this we will focus on the works of John Milton �� the full range of his works, including poetry, prose and (in translation) Latin polemic. The contexts we will consider might include: aesthetics; the history and theory of republicanism; religious radicalism; the problem of ��Britain��; news; the development of the printing trade and its relation to writing poetry and propaganda; Britain��s place in Europe; the history of reading; the social spaces where literature operated; the rise of the ��public sphere��. In addition to Milton��s writings, we will look at the print and news culture of early-modern Britain, with some attention to the materiality of printed texts. We may also look at other writings and other modes of writing by Milton��s contemporaries, including pamphleteering and journalism and works by Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham, Lucy Hutchinson and John Dryden.
RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY TRAINING SEMINAR	LDCEM020	10

REUSING THE PAST: THE CLASSICAL IN THE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN	LDCEM018	20
CORE MODULE FOR STUDENTS ON THE MA MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN TEXTUAL CULTURES. The complex and unstable movement from medieval to Early Modern culture is reflected in and effected through a fundamental revaluation of the classical legacy: in the development of new approaches to classical texts and of new uses to which their cultural authority might be put. This module explores this movement through the works of three late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century writers, Robert Henryson, Gavin Douglas, and John Bellenden, and their responses to the texts of Aesop, Virgil, Ovid and Livy. It tracks a movement from medieval adaptation to Early Modern translation, from moralising allegory to politically inflected intertextuality, exploring the rich variety of ways in which classical texts were made newly available and newly culturally meaningful.
THE ACTOR IN SPACE	LDCEM047	20
The extremely various theatres of late medieval and early modern England situate the figure of the actor in a great many different settings and configurations. The place of performance may be public, or owned by a patron or by the actors themselves; it may be candle-lit or open to the sky; it may be a communal space for action or the illusionistic location of the fiction; and that fictional world, in turn, may be unitary or else divisively assigned to angels and devils, kings and clowns, speakers and singers. It is possible to grasp this diversity as an historical narrative (from the medieval pageant to the professional stage, from the Elizabethan amphitheatre to the Restoration playhouse with movable scenery), but it was also, often, a synchronic range of possible spaces, each with its distinctive cultural affiliation, each corresponding to, and making visible, its distinctive conceptions of the human, the social and the sacred. The course will explore these spaces by looking not only or even mainly at the theatre history, but at the scripts that record and suggest their meanings.

Disclaimer

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the modules listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the annual monitoring, review and update of modules and regular (five-yearly) review of course programmes. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes and their constituent modules, there will normally be prior consultation of students and others. It is also possible that the University may not be able to offer a module for reasons outside of its control, such as the illness of a member of staff or sabbatical leave. Where this is the case, the University will endeavour to inform students.

Entry Requirements

Degree Subject:: UK BA (Hons) 2.1 or equivalent
Special Entry Requirements:: Sample of work

Students for whom English is a Foreign language

If English is not your first language you must have a recognised English Language qualification:

Minimum IELTS 7.0 with a minimum 6 in each section and 7 in writing.

Other qualifications such as TOEFL and CAE are also recognised by the University. Please contact the Admissions Team for further information.

Special Entry Requirements

A sample of your academic writing (for example an essay from your undergraduate degree).

Intakes

The School's annual intake is in September of each year.

Alternative Qualifications

If you have alternative qualifications that have not been mentioned above then please contact the Admissions Office directly for further information.

Assessment

All applications for postgraduate study are processed through the Admissions Office and then forwarded to the relevant School of Study for consideration. If you are currently completing your first degree or have not yet taken a required English language test, any offer of a place is likely to be conditional upon you achieving this before you arrive.

Fees and Funding

Tuition fees

Tuition fees for Postgraduate students for the academic year 2013/4 are £5,000 for Home/EU students and £12,500 for International Students.

If you choose to study part-time, the fee per annum will be half the annual fee for that year, or a pro-rata fee for the module credit you are taking (only available for Home/EU students).

Please note that all the above fees are expected to rise for the year 2014/15. We estimate living expenses at £600/650 per month.

Scholarships and Awards:

International scholarships

All international students (outside the European Union) are considered for a scholarship of between £1000 and £2000 towards tuition fees. In order to be considered for an International Scholarship you do not need to make a separate application. Please indicate on your application for admission that you wish to be considered for a scholarship. It is important to make the application as early as possible because they are considered as they are received. So apply early to make sure of the best chance of success.

Scholarships are awarded to students on the basis of academic merit and are for the duration of the period of study (which will be one year). Students of outstanding academic ability will also be considered for Faculty Scholarship Awards, usually in March and May each year, which can be worth up to 100% of the tuition fee. These are highly competitive and prestigious awards. Those students being offered a scholarship will be notified directly by the School of Study.

Home / EU Scholarships, Bursaries and Awards

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities has a number of Scholarships and Awards on offer for 2013 entry. For further information relevant to the School of Literature and Creative Writing, please click here.

Applications for Postgraduate Taught programmes at the University of East Anglia should be made directly to the University.

You can apply online, or by downloading the application form.

Further Information

To request further information & to be kept up to date with news & events please use our online enquiry form.

If you would like to discuss your individual circumstances prior to applying please do contact us:

Postgraduate Admissions Office
Tel: +44 (0)1603 591515
Email: admissions@uea.ac.uk

International candidates are also encouraged to access the International Students section of our website.