English Literature
Classics
Seneca and Early Modern Drama
Shakespeare’s most famous – and infamous – tragedies draw on the Roman playwright Seneca for their dramatic form and theatrical style - including ‘Hamlet’, ‘King Lear’, and ‘Titus Andronicus’. Seneca also had a huge influence on Shakespeare’s contemporaries: Thomas Kyd’s...
Dr Helen Slaney
Oxford University
English Literature
The Poetry and Prose of Seamus Heaney
The American poet Robert Lowell described Seamus Heaney as the greatest Irish poet since W. B. Yeats, and many noted the coincidence that Heaney was born in the year that Yeats died. A Nobel prize winner and Ireland's unofficial national...
Dr Rosie Lavan
Trinity College, Dublin
Classics
Greek Tragedy and Comedy: The Chorus
For modern readers, the chorus is one of the most challenging aspects of Greek drama. Yet the chorus is an integral feature of both tragedy and comedy, and to engage fully with the plays, it’s essential to understand the role...
Dr Laura Swift
Open University
English Literature
Gothic Literature
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...
Ms Elly McCausland
York University
Classics
Cicero: Six Key Speeches
The historian Michael Grant said "the influence of Cicero upon the history of European literature and ideas greatly exceeds that of any other prose writer in any language". This course provides an introduction to Cicero's life and times through six...
Dr Andrew Sillett
Oxford University
Classics
Greek Tragedy and Comedy: An Introduction
In this course, we explore fifth-century Greek theatre, focusing in particular on the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. In this course, we look at key dramatic conventions of fifth-century theatre, the relationship between the tragedy/comedy and contemporary politics...
Dr Rosie Wyles
Kent University