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A image to illustrate MA English literature part 1 module
Our MA in English Literature introduces you to studying literature ‘in the world’ across three broad themes: ‘Literature and the Popular’, ‘Literature and Revolution’ and ‘Literature and the Global’. You’ll also have a wide choice of optional texts: from early-modern manuscripts to detective fiction; and from classical tragedy to the global short story. You’ll encounter actual archives and databases and be introduced to digitised manuscripts and other original materials as you develop skills in research and analysis. You’ll also work like a professional researcher using specific approaches, following up clues, reviewing context, and making exciting discoveries about your topic.
The module’s organising rationale encourages you to explore the relationship of literature to culture, and see literary texts as mediating and constituting ‘culture’ but also as material artefacts circulating in different fields of social and political meaning, commercial value, and global exchange.
In each block, you’ll have the choice to study material from the perspective of ‘books and readers’, ‘form and genre’ or 'history and context’. This broad conceptual structure will allow you to select and study exciting primary texts and make original comparative connections between different works without being bound by a fixed reading list. The enhanced three-part optionality of the module gives you greater choice and freedom in navigating module material and will encourage active learning through integrated independent study.
The module is divided into four blocks. Each block has a core text that you're expected to study. These works have a large amount of associated teaching material, and your tutor will refer to them in tutorials. You'll also choose from three strands of study in each block, with three texts in each strand, which means you'll study 13 texts in total.
You'll start with a Foundation Block that provides all the skills needed for research and study at postgraduate level. Designed to support students new (or returning to) English studies, as well as updating those progressing directly from an English BA qualification, this section outlines the optional structure of the MA. It introduces the three major topics covered in the numbered blocks under the broad theme of ‘Literature in the World’. The core text in this block is Joseph Conrad’s controversial (and topical) colonial novella Heart of Darkness (1899). You’ll learn about Conrad’s intercultural background and examine the debate over representation, racial difference and colonial history sparked by the depiction of African people in his work. You’ll also consider what it means to study Conrad at the present time and in the light of a renewed critical attention to Britain’s colonial past.
The Foundation Block includes specially designed skills units that relate to Heart of Darkness and will be a set of resources that you can return to throughout the MA. In the library skills unit, you’ll learn to use the OU library’s online resources to research Conrad’s fiction. In a ‘skills for scholarship’ unit, you’ll think about your own academic writing, and in a unit on working with secondary materials, you’ll learn how to evaluate and use academic publications to support your research and writing. A further three units cover research on databases, archives and manuscripts (in which you’ll encounter digitised versions of Conrad’s original manuscripts and notebooks). There is a unit on literature in translation and a final unit on adaptation.
Block 1: ‘Literature and the Popular’

You'll explore what makes literature popular, how literature interacts with popular culture, and why it matters. In the core text for this block, you'll study the classic mystery novel The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins, a writer very much aware of the increasing size, complexity and diversity of his contemporary readership.
You'll then choose your first strand of study from three options. You can further explore popular publishing in the nineteenth century from a book history perspective, focusing on Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot’s experiences with serialisation. Alternatively, you'll be able to take a tour of the tragic, tracing the origins of the genre in classical Greek theatre and philosophy, through to the early modern renaissance of tragic drama, with one of Shakespeare’s greatest contributions – King Lear – and even film noir, considered here as a modern iteration of the form. Or you can explore the origins and evolution of detective fiction in relation to various historical, social and international contexts, from the innovative short stories of Edgar Allan Poe to the Chinese tradition of detection in the form of the Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, translated by the Dutch polymath Robert van Gulik.
Block 2: ‘Literature and Revolution’

You'll be introduced to critical arguments about whether literature is a force for revolution or counter-revolution. Your core text will be one of the most remarkable literary texts ever to have emerged from the context of revolution: John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
To complete this block, you'll have the usual three study options. You can learn about successive revolutions in the experience of reading, encountering an early modern manuscript ‘commonplace book’, a best-selling eighteenth-century novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and a digital-era work by William Gibson. Or you can investigate revolutions in poetic genre: looking at how and why three poets, Edmund Spenser, Emily Dickinson and Tony Harrison reimagined and remade the genres they inherited. The final option is to explore how writers responded to the French Revolution, investigating how they read and rewrote Milton in the white heat of the political controversy of the 1790s, reading a bestselling political novel by William Godwin, dipping into an autobiographical poem by Wordsworth which casts a retrospective eye on the decade, and discovering how the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s has been represented in the twentieth century.
Block 3: ‘Literature and the Global’

You'll be introduced to some key theories and concepts relating to literature viewed from a global perspective, including world literature and comparative literature, globalisation, and postcolonialism. The core text lets you examine what is involved in approaching literature in a global context via a study of The Complete Stories of Anita Desai.
You'll then have your final three study options. You can look at translation and the globalisation of print culture through an examination of the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry collection Gitanjali, Henri Barbusse’s translated French novel of World War I, Under Fire, and the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s 1967 novel A Grain of Wheat. Or you can choose to focus on form and genre in a global context by examining the global short story. This option covers the short stories of the Russian writer Anton Chekhov, the modernist short story, and the stories of the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. You also have the option of studying ‘literary geography’— the relationship between literature, landscape, place, and migration — through an examination of the poetry of the nineteenth-century writer John Clare, William Howitt’s 1847 guidebook, The Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, and Kamila Shamsie’s 2017 novel, Home Fire.
Postgraduate-level research skills will be integrated into the module. You'll be introduced to core research skills in the Foundation block, and then each of the subsequent blocks will reinforce and elaborate on integral skills. On this module, you will develop your abilities as a researcher and critic, building towards the personal dissertation project on MA English Literature part 2 (A894).
You'll have a personal tutor who will help you with the study material, mark and comment on your written work, and provide advice and guidance. Tutors will facilitate online discussions between you and your fellow students in the dedicated module and tutor group forums. You’ll also be able to gain personal feedback in one-to-one Adobe Connect rooms and forums. There will be online tutorials that you are encouraged, but not obliged, to attend. Recordings will typically be made available.
Contact us if you want to know more about study with The Open University before you register.
Course work includes:
You'll have access to a module website, which includes:
Set books:
NOTE: Four of these set books are core texts that all students study. You'll also choose one of three strands of study in each block, with three texts in each strand, which means you'll study 13 of these set books in total.
You can study this module on its own or use the credits you gain towards an Open University qualification.
A893 is a compulsory module in our:
A893 is an option module in our:
Sometimes you cannot count a module towards a qualification if you have already counted another module with similar content. To verify any excluded combinations with this module, check with an adviser before registering.
MA English literature part 1 starts once a year – in September.
This page describes the module that will start in September 2026.
We expect it to start for the last time in September 2033.
As a student of The Open University, you should be aware of the content of the academic regulations, which are available on our Student Policies and Regulations website.
You must hold a UK honours degree (or equivalent), preferably in English or a closely related subject. Although your degree need not be in English, you must show some knowledge of the subject, together with the study skills expected of a graduate in this field. A degree of at least 2.1 or equivalent will greatly increase your chances of successfully completing the MA.
The MA in English Literature assumes that a candidate for a masters degree already has the knowledge and skills usually acquired by pursuing the subject at undergraduate level. The qualification is not intended to bridge any gaps in knowledge for those who have an unrelated undergraduate degree or inadequate experience.
It is expected that your spoken and written English will also be of an adequate standard for postgraduate study. If English is not your first language, we recommend that you will need a minimum score of 7 under the International English Language testing system (IELTS). Please see their website for details.
Alternative entry
Applications from candidates who don't have an honours degree but do have knowledge and skills relevant to studying English Literature at postgraduate level, demonstrable through a track record of prior study and/or work experience (paid or voluntary), will be considered. Applicants must include the following information when returning the requested entry check documentary evidence.
If you're in any doubt about the suitability of your qualifications or previous experience, please contact us before you enrol.
Written transcripts of any audio components and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) versions of printed material are available. Some Adobe PDF components and electronic journals may not be available or fully accessible using a screen reader; this applies in particular to historical records that may have been scanned for use online. Alternative formats of the study materials may be available in the future.
StartEndRegister byEngland fee
05 Sep 202630 Jun 202713 Aug 2026£4,200
If you study this module as part of an eligible qualification, you can apply for a postgraduate loan to support your study costs. To find out more, see Postgraduate loans in England.
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