MA Medieval and Early Modern Textual Cultures 1381 - 1688

Key details

MA MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN TEXTUAL CULTURES 1381 - 1688

Start Year

2021

Attendance

Full Time

Award

Degree of Master of Arts

Duration (years)

You will read widely across the boundary between medieval and Renaissance cultures and interrogate that boundary itself to understand its historical and conceptual origins and reflect on how it continues to shape modern understandings of both periods. At the heart of the course is an emphasis on the varieties of medieval and early-modern humanism, a complex movement that enabled new understandings of the classical world, of our place within history, and of our relationship to language.

You will work closely with local material and local archival sources. East Anglia was home to an extraordinarily rich literary culture in the medieval and early-modern periods and this has left behind fabulous materials to research. Thousands of early-modern printed books and a small number of important medieval manuscripts are preserved in the Norfolk Heritage Centre. The core of that collection is the Norwich City Library – founded in 1608, it’s one of England's most important and best-preserved regional libraries. The Cathedral library is home to its own collection and the Norfolk Record Office holds extraordinary medieval and early-modern manuscripts, which include documentary records of East Anglia’s history, poetry miscellanies, letters, maps, heraldic papers, and more. Together, these archives bear witness to Norwich's role as a vibrant, cosmopolitan, and religiously diverse, international centre of North Sea trade and culture. This archival landscape is yours to explore and use to develop your own original research projects.

The MA has a strongly interdisciplinary character. You will explore the range of cutting-edge methods by which scholars are researching the cultures of these periods. You will move freely between texts, material artefacts, and visual art and consider how unpublished manuscript evidence can help us to understand the priorities of medieval and early-modern readers.

About

Immerse yourself in medieval and early-modern literature in its rich historical, intellectual, cultural, and material contexts.

Read a range of major British writers alongside the works of the important continental European authors who influenced them, including, Chaucer, Lydgate, Henryson, Douglas, Spenser, and Sidney together with Petrarch, Boccaccio, Poliziano, Erasmus, Rabelais, and Montaigne.

Explore the rise of Renaissance humanism and its medieval antecedents and work closely with local archival materials to discover the ways in which Norwich and East Anglia’s rich literary and intellectual culture participated in global narratives like the rise of humanism and the emergence of the early-modern from the medieval.

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Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the courses listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the regular review of course programmes. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes, there will normally be prior consultation of students and others. Changes may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will inform students.

Assessment for Year 1

Your four core taught modules will each be assessed by a 5,000-word independent project.

As part of your work in the Research and Methodology module, you will produce a dissertation proposal. Your dissertation will be a 15,000-word piece of original independent research – and you will have the opportunity to present your work as part of an internal symposium.

Structure

You will work through a tightly focused series of modules that will give you the understanding of literary culture, critical methods, and archival skills you will need to tackle your dissertation. In each semester, you’ll take a module that explores the development of medieval and early-modern humanism alongside one focusing on local and archival materials.

In your autumn semester, Medieval and Renaissance Humanisms: from Chaucer to Surrey will introduce you to the rich complexity of medieval humanism and to the distinctive turns that mark the beginnings of a new Renaissance humanism. You will explore a range of important vernacular English and Scottish writers alongside the classical, French and Italian models to which they responded.

Also in this semester, The Transformation of the Book: 1500-1700 will introduce you to the ways in which material texts, in both manuscript and print, were transformed during the vital era from the emergence of print at the end of the middle ages to the close of the seventeenth century. You will consider the ways in which the publication, annotation, and collection of books changed. You will learn how to read the handwriting of sixteenth - and seventeenth-century documents and work on materials in two of Norwich’s important archives.

In your spring semester, The Northern Renaissance, 1500-1620 will see you explore why and how humanism gave birth to the astonishing outpouring of literature that was the Renaissance. You will ask how the rediscovery of classical texts generated new possibilities for literary writers, how humanists understood the nature of poetic creation, how their advocacy of rhetoric created new ways for writers to engage with public life, and how humanists turned philological methods upon the most sacred text of their culture: the bible.

In this semester’s second module, East Anglian Literature, you will read the literature of medieval and early-modern East Anglia in its material contexts. You will explore East Anglia's rich dramatic traditions, its devotional literature and practices, and how its literature participates in its broader social and cultural worlds.

Alongside these, you’ll take a module in Research and Methodology designed to equip you with the skills you need to carry out your own research on original medieval and early-modern documents.

At the end of the spring semester, you will work full-time on your dissertation, giving you the chance to bring your skills and critical understanding to bear on a research project of your own choice.

Teaching and Learning

Teaching

Our teaching is founded upon the close reading of primary texts. Large historical and intellectual issues are allowed to grow out of specific passages, without losing sight of the texts’ formal and aesthetic qualities. We’ll generally co-teach modules – allowing you to encounter different ways of approaching and interpreting your material.

You will be immersed in a field-leading medieval and early-modern research community, which will encourage you to develop your own innovative research questions, approaches and projects. Our areas of faculty research include the history of medieval and early-modern reading practices, the study and practice of literary imitation and translation, the history and development of historiography, early-modern drama and Shakespeare, literary and intellectual biography, the development of distinct East Anglian identities, conceptions of the landscape, and the cultural importance of medieval saints' lives.

We hold research seminars throughout the term, which showcase the work of our own scholars and of visiting speakers. UEA is also at the forefront of adapting medieval and early-modern texts for the stage and the remarkable Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts will illuminate the visual art of the medieval and early-modern periods for you.

Independent study

Independent study will be a key part of this degree. You will read widely in medieval and early-modern literature and develop your own innovative critical thinking to help you explore the modern interdisciplinary study of these periods.

You will rethink the conceptual issues at stake in the division between the medieval and early-modern periods. And you’ll acquire a thorough understanding of the crucial cultural and literary phenomenon of 'humanism', including the classical sources that lie behind the literary texts.

With the vibrancy of Norwich's medieval and early-modern literary culture on your doorstep, you’ll develop skills in archival research, bibliography and palaeography to help you approach the rich array of material that survives from that period.

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Assessment for Year 1

Your four core taught modules will each be assessed by a 5,000-word independent project.

Compulsory Modules

EAST ANGLIAN LITERATURE

Code LDCE7002B

Credits 20

Throughout the medieval and Early-Modern periods Norwich was one of England’s most important cities – probably second only to London – and East Anglia one of the country’s culturally liveliest and richest areas. In this module you will explore the literature of these periods in its material contexts (the region’s prosperity and power may still be seen in its architecture and in the rich holdings of its libraries and museums) and ask whether there was a specifically East Anglian cultural tradition. You will explore East Anglia’s rich dramatic traditions, its devotional literature and practices (in orthodox forms and in those that brush against the heterodox), and, insistently, the manner in which its literature participates in its broader social and cultural worlds. This module may particularly appeal to you if you have an interest in the cultural traditions of Norwich and East Anglia or, more generally, in the literature of place.

RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY TRAINING SEMINAR

Code LDCE7009B

Credits 10

This module introduces you to some of the challenges, possibilities, and productive practices of independent graduate research in preparation for your work on the dissertation. It is tailored to the distinctive approaches and emphases of your particular MA programme.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BOOK: 1500-1700

Code LDCE7019A

Credits 20

This module introduces you to the ways in which material texts (both in manuscript and print) were transformed during the vital era from the emergence of print at the end of the middle ages to the close of the 17th century. How did the ways in which books were published change? How can we use the evidence of annotated books to reconstruct readers' habits and interests? How far did print transform the nature of the book? What happened to books as they started to become absorbed and classified within modern libraries? And how did manuscript documents -- especially letters -- enable the enormous boom in communication characteristic of the seventeenth century? How did the transformation of material texts create new possibilities for writing and thinking? The module equips you with the skills in early-modern archival studies that are necessary to tackle these questions. In particular, we spend a portion of each seminar learning how to read the handwriting of sixteenth and seventeenth century documents. The module culminates in visits to two archives in Norwich -- the Norfolk Record Office and the Norfolk Heritage Centre -- and your summative assessed work will take the form of a study of document(s) from these archives. The module will be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the most vitally important era of the transformation of the book.

THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE, 1500-1620

Code LDCE7011B

Credits 20

This module sets out to understand why and how humanism -- the advocacy of the study of the humanities, the Greek and Roman classics -- gave birth to the astonishing outpouring of literature that we call the Renaissance. We will situate English Renaissance literature within the wider context of the humanist literature of France, the Netherlands, and Italy. Questions we consider include: how did the rediscovery of classical texts generate new possibilities for literary writers? How did humanists understand the nature of poetic creation? How did their advocacy of rhetoric create new ways for writers to engage with public life? And what happened when humanists turned philological methods upon the most sacred text of their culture: the bible? Our work will focus on the writings of Thomas More, Desiderius Erasmus, and Michel de Montaigne, but there will be opportunities to read far more widely in the Renaissance literature of the period. Foreign language texts are all read in translation. The might be of interest to anyone who wishes to gain an in-depth understanding of one of the most dazzling periods of European literary history.

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE HUMANISMS: FROM CHAUCER TO SURREY

Code LDCE7013A

Credits 20

This module aims to introduce you to the rich and important complexity of medieval humanism and to the distinctive turns that mark the beginnings of a new Renaissance humanism. Such an aim, of course, at once implies a series of attendant questions: what is humanism (and what was medieval humanism)? In what ways was Renaissance humanism different from medieval humanism and what is the relationship between the continuities and the new departures? And why orient an approach to medieval and Renaissance culture about ‘humanism’ at all? These questions, then, also lie at the heart of the module. We start from the central proposition that new approaches to the 'studia humanitatis' (the study of the humanities – art, literature, history, philosophy) pioneered by the self-styled humanists ('umanisti') between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries constitute one of the most important achievements of the Renaissance. They defined the terms by which Renaissance humanists themselves most often distinguished their own work from the intellectual traditions of the medieval past and from the work of their (allegedly) more old-fashioned contemporaries. What, though, did medieval humanism really look like and what precisely did Renaissance humanism bring that was new? Our focus will be on five vernacular English and Scottish writers: Chaucer, Lydgate, Henryson, Douglas, and Bellenden (Surrey’s translation of Books 2 and 4 of the 'Aeneid' offers a neat terminus and foil to Chaucer’s earlier Virgilian versions, but we shall find that the translations of Douglas and Bellenden more richly reward our attention). From the freer reworkings of Chaucer and Henryson to the translations and scholarly excavations of Douglas and Bellenden, perhaps. Or from the classical past as an emblem of tragic self-destructiveness in Chaucer’s Troy and Thebes to new and revitalising political possibilities found within Livy’s Republican Rome by Bellenden? We focus on the period from the 1380sto the 1530s, but it will take us often to France and, more often still, to Italy. It will require us to open windows onto the medieval reception of the classical legacy from the 5th century to the 16th (as well as onto the classical works themselves), we bring together disparate materials, placing poems and plays alongside university syllabi and the book-lists of late-medieval libraries.

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN TEXTUAL CULTURES 1381 - 1688

Code LDCE7502X

Credits 90

Dissertation module for Early Modern and Medieval Writing MA.

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Important Information

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. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes and their constituent modules, the University will endeavour to consult with 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. In some cases optional modules can have limited places available and so you may be asked to make additional module choices in the event you do not gain a place on your first choice. Where this is the case, the University will inform students.

Entry Requirements

Degree classification

Bachelors (Hons) degree - 2.1 or equivalent

Degree subject

Any subject

Additional entry requirements

A sample of your academic writing (for example an essay from your undergraduate degree) of up to 3000 words, to be submitted with your application.

Students for whom english is a foreign language

We welcome applications from students whose first language is not English. To ensure such students benefit from postgraduate study, we require evidence of proficiency in English. Our usual entry requirements are as follows:

IELTS: 7.0 (minimum 6.0 in each section and 7.0 in writing)
PTE (Pearson): 65 (minimum 50 in each section and 65 in writing)

Test dates should be within two years of the course start date.

Other tests, including Cambridge English exams and the Trinity Integrated Skills in English are also accepted by the university. The full list of accepted tests can be found here: Accepted English Language Tests

INTO UEA also run pre-sessional courses which can be taken prior to the start of your course. For further information and to see if you qualify please contact intopre-sessional@uea.ac.uk

Intakes

This course is open to UK, EU and International applicants. The annual intake for this course is in September each year.

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Course Reference Number: 1544281

MA MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN TEXTUAL CULTURES 1381 - 1688