All Courses

In this course, we explore several aspects of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. We begin by thinking about the play’s status as a comedy, before looking at a number of aspects of the play and its performance. In particular, we explore the...

In this course, Professor John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. In the first two modules, we provide a broad introduction to the social, historical, cultural context of the...

In this course, Dr William Blazek (Liverpool Hope University) explores F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. We being by thinking about the concept of the American Dream, focusing in particular on how some of the major characters in...

In this course, we explore the history of the Gothic novel, beginning with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, and finishing with the literature (and films) of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that have been influenced by the Gothic,...

In this course, Professor Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University) explores six aspects of the critical reception of Shakespeare's Othello. In the first module, we think about the critical reception of the handkerchief, beginning with Thomas ...

In this course, Professor Nick Groom (University of Exeter) explores Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde’. As we move through the course, we consider a number of topics including the novel’s interest in language and...

In this course, Professor Nick Groom (University of Exeter) explores William Golding’s 1954 novel, The Lord of the Flies. We begin by thinking about the historical context for the novel, focusing in particular on the state of Britain and Europe...

In this course, Professor John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. We begin with a broad introduction to the world of the novel, focusing in particular on life in America during the Great Depression ...

In this course, Professor Nick Groom (University of Exeter) explores Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We begin by thinking about the life of Mary Shelley herself, focusing in particular on her fateful trip to the Villa Diodati with Percy Shelley in...

For many, the genre of gothic horror is epitomised by the novels Frankenstein and Dracula. In this course, we explore the origins of the genre through lesser-known, but no less influential works, the Castle of Otranto (1764) and The Monk...

This course explores the theme of love from the earliest English literature to the present day – from authors that you have likely heard of, such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron and Keats, to authors that are perhaps less well-known. This...

In this course, Professor John Lennard talks through the craft of poetry in a course that draws on his international bestseller, The Poetry Handbook, which has been a favourite with both sixth-form students and undergraduates since its first...