What is English?
A degree in English revolves around reading – reading the oldest and the newest, the most passionate and the most profound pieces of work that have ever been produced in the language. But the ways of reading that an English degree encourages you to engage in differ from how you’ve read before. Studying English at university is about becoming a thoughtful, thorough, and active reader who thinks intelligently both about what people have written (and are still writing), and about what it means for us to read and interpret their work.
As an English student you will put all your analytical, critical, and creative skills to use in order to think about questions such as:
- How have people sought to imagine and explain their worlds through writing?
- What is literature, and how does it relate to other strands of our history and culture?
- How can literature offer us a sense of identity – and how might this be good or bad?
English is not just about your favourite novels, plays, and poems (although you will get to think about these). It involves tackling a wide range of literatures in English – from the time-honoured works of Shakespeare and Austen, to the writings of obscure medieval mystics, and of contemporary poets from Brixton to Bangladesh. Whatever route you choose for your degree, you will be enriched and challenged by the ways in which writers have repeatedly questioned and represented their experiences of life, imagination, and society.