English Literature  

Postgraduate students work closely with academic staff in a research community that encourages interdisciplinary exchange and activity. At Bangor you will be joining a vibrant close-knit research community.

Research may be carried out in the main fields of English literature post-1300; Arthurian literature. Areas of staff research expertise include: Arthurian literature; Chaucer and his contemporaries; medieval and early modern women’s writing; medieval and early modern drama; early modern autobiography; Shakespeare; George Herbert; Restoration drama; Milton; the literature of the English Civil Wars; Romanticism (especially Hazlitt and his contemporaries); Victorian literature (especially Dickens and Oscar Wilde); Welsh writing in English (especially R.S. Thomas); London-Welsh writing at the turn of the twentieth century; Modernism; Edward Thomas; the poetry of the First World War; Modern English and American Drama; David Mamet; film history and the screenplay; the history of reading; experimental writing; contemporary poetry; global literatures; comparative literature and postcolonialism.

Arts and Culture: Our close links with local theatres, poetry groups and vibrant student societies will give you plenty of opportunities to get involved.

Visiting academics feature regularly in our research seminars. We organise a number of readings by writers each year.

Studying literature opens up a world of inspiration, builds knowledge and also helps develops skills that are essential for today's global environment. The PhD/MPhil in English Literature prepares you for a career in higher education, as well as in publishing, arts administration, media research, and a range of related careers.

The world-class quality of our research is well-recognised, ranking us in the Top 10 universities for English literature in the country for research intensity, with two-thirds of our research in the ‘world leading’ and ‘internationally excellent’ categories. 

In the last REF2014 we were ranked in the top ten universities for English Literature in the UK for research intensity. Our school’s research strengths clustered around a range of specific periods and areas of study: medieval and early modern literature, including editing texts; the history of the book and publishing; Welsh Writing in English; Romantic and modern literature; and creative writing, with specific approaches informed by gender, social class, ideology, as well as the relationships between literature and art, and literature and religion.  We had an overall ranking for our publications which placed us in the top twenty English Literature departments in the UK.

Research centres and Institutes at, or partnered with, Bangor University include: The Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), a collaborative research institute between Bangor University and Aberystwyth University; The R. S. Thomas Centre; The Centre for Arthurian Studies, a hub for international research and exchange in Arthurian Studies which draws on the University’s historic strengths in the field; The Stephen Colclough Centre for the History and Culture of the Book,  housed in the University Library and Special Collections and a focal point the study of the book as a material object.