THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2026/2027

Draft Edition - Due to be published Thursday 9th April 2026

Timetable information in the Course Catalogue may be subject to change.
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Degree Programme Table: English and Scottish Literature (MA Hons) (UTENGSL)

Jump to: Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4

Year 1 Academic year: 2026/27, Starting in: September

Notes:
Students should aim to divide the number of credits they take in each academic year evenly between Semester 1 and Semester 2

Compulsory courses

You must take these courses
Literary Studies 1A

Must be passed

ENLI08020 20 credits
Literary Studies 1B

Must be passed

ENLI08021 20 credits

Course options

Group A

Select exactly 20 credits in this group.

Scottish Studies Year 1 courses

Select exactly 20 credits of the following courses
Selected courses must be passed
Scottish Studies 1A: Conceptualising Scotland
SCET08006 20 credits
Scottish Studies 1B: Creating Scotland
SCET08007 20 credits
AND

Group B

Select exactly 60 credits in this group.

Level 7 and 8 courses in Schedules A to T, W and Y

Select between 40 and 60 credits from Level 7 and 8 courses in Schedules A to T, W and Y
AND

Challenge Courses: Engaging with complex problems through interdisciplinary collaboration

Select between 0 and 20 credits of the following courses
Notes:
Challenge Courses are designed to bring together students from different degree programmes to explore the complex issues facing the world today through interdisciplinary collaboration and creative thinking.

Working with each other and expert academics, students will gain new perspectives and develop important life skills highly valued by employers, such as teamwork, problem-solving and adaptability.
Our Changing World
BIME08006 20 credits
Sustainability and Social Responsibility (UG)
EDUA08116 20 credits
Wicked problems: Reason and Rhetoric
EDUA08126 20 credits
Understanding decolonisation in a globalised world
EDUA08127 20 credits
Sustainable Development Goals: History, Progress and Beyond 2030
EFIE08008 20 credits
Living in the Anthropocene
GESC08004 20 credits
Understanding Gender in the Contemporary World
SSPS08012 20 credits
Healthy Eating for People and Planet
VETS08016 20 credits

Year 2 Academic year: 2026/27, Starting in: August

Compulsory courses

You must take these courses
Literary Studies 2A: English Literature in the World, 1380-1788

Must be passed

ENLI08024 20 credits
Literary Studies 2B: English Literature in the World, post-1789

Must be passed

ENLI08025 20 credits
Scottish Literature 2A

Must be passed

ENLI08022 20 credits
Scottish Literature 2B

Must be passed

ENLI08023 20 credits

Course options

Group A

Select exactly 20 credits in this group.

Level 7 and 8 courses in Schedules A to T, W and Y

Select exactly 20 credits from Level 7 and 8 courses in Schedules A to T, W and Y
OR

Themes in Scottish History since 1560

Select exactly 20 credits of the following courses
Notes:
This course is recommended but optional.
Themes in Scottish History since 1560
HIST08042 20 credits
AND

Group B

Select exactly 20 credits in this group.

Level 7 and 8 courses in Schedules A to T, W and Y

Select exactly 20 credits from Level 7 and 8 courses in Schedules A to T, W and Y
OR

Challenge Courses: Engaging with complex problems through interdisciplinary collaboration

Select exactly 20 credits of the following courses
Notes:
Challenge Courses are designed to bring together students from different degree programmes to explore the complex issues facing the world today through interdisciplinary collaboration and creative thinking.
Working with each other and expert academics, students will gain new perspectives and develop important life skills highly valued by employers, such as teamwork, problem-solving and adaptability.
Our Changing World
BIME08006 20 credits
Sustainability and Social Responsibility (UG)
EDUA08116 20 credits
Wicked problems: Reason and Rhetoric
EDUA08126 20 credits
Understanding decolonisation in a globalised world
EDUA08127 20 credits
Sustainable Development Goals: History, Progress and Beyond 2030
EFIE08008 20 credits
Living in the Anthropocene
GESC08004 20 credits
Understanding Gender in the Contemporary World
SSPS08012 20 credits
Healthy Eating for People and Planet
VETS08016 20 credits

Year 3 Academic year: 2026/27, Starting in: August

Notes:
Final Assessment Weighting: One unit of assessment is allocated to every 20 credits and constitutes one 20-credit paper. (Papers that for the purpose of degree classification acquire weighting of 40 credits are, therefore, listed twice.)

From Third year:
1) Reading Theory 1
2) Reading Theory 2
3) S1 Scottish Literature Core Period Course
4) S2 Scottish Literature Core Period Course
5) and 6) English Literature Option Course OR Course from LLC and Divinity Collection

From Fourth year:
7) and 8) English Literature Dissertation
9) S1 Scottish Literature Core Period Course
10) S2 Scottish Literature Core Period Course
11) and 12) English Literature Option Course OR Course from LLC and Divinity Collection

Compulsory courses

You must take these courses
Reading Theory 1

Must be passed

ENLI10423 20 credits
Reading Theory 2

Must be passed

ENLI10424 20 credits
Voices in the North: Older Scots Literature

Must be passed

ENLI10440 20 credits
Nationality and Enlightenment in Scottish Literature 1707-1832

Must be passed

ENLI10445 20 credits

Course options

Group A

Select exactly 40 credits in this group.

English Literature Year 3 Option Courses - Semester 1

Select between 0 and 20 credits of the following courses
Selected courses must be passed
Body in Literature
ENLI10110 20 credits
Novel and the Collapse of Humanism
ENLI10120 20 credits
Decolonization and the Novel
ENLI10206 20 credits
Mystery and Horror
ENLI10207 20 credits
Creative Writing Part I: Poetry
ENLI10210 20 credits
Working Class Representations
ENLI10271 20 credits
Shakespeare's Comedies: Identity and Illusion
ENLI10279 20 credits
Fiction and the Gothic, 1840-1940
ENLI10345 20 credits
Haunted Imaginations: Scotland and the Supernatural'
ENLI10349 20 credits
Digital Humanities for Literary Studies
ENLI10378 20 credits
Literature, Revolution and Rebellion in the Long Nineteenth Century
ENLI10428 20 credits
AND

English Literature Year 3 Option Courses - Semester 2

Select between 0 and 20 credits of the following courses
Selected courses must be passed
Cities of Words: 20th Century Urban America
ENLI10096 20 credits
Shakespeare: Modes and Genres
ENLI10119 20 credits
Poetry, Politics and Place
ENLI10202 20 credits
Contemporary British Drama
ENLI10223 20 credits
'We are [not] Amused': Victorian Comic Literature
ENLI10249 20 credits
American Innocence
ENLI10286 20 credits
Death and Dying in Late Medieval Literature
ENLI10387 20 credits
21st Century Black American Fiction
ENLI10414 20 credits
Representing Race on the British Stage, 1600-1850
ENLI10438 20 credits
AND

LLC Common Courses and Divinity courses for English Literature students

Select between 0 and 20 credits of the following courses
Selected courses must be passed
The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock
CLLC10007 20 credits
Boundaries of the Human: gender, madness and werewolves in medieval literature
CLLC10008 20 credits
Ethical Encounters with the 'Other' in Speculative Fiction
DIVI10124 20 credits
Scottish Religious Poetry from the Sixth Century to the Present
DIVI10132 20 credits
Listening for God: Silence in Modern and Contemporary Literature
DIVI10137 20 credits
Comparative Literature in a European and Global Perspective
ELCC10022 20 credits
Bertolt Brecht
ELCG10022 20 credits
Latin America: History and Culture Entwined
ELCH10073 20 credits
The Great Russian Novel
ELCR10002 20 credits
Culture and Power under Stalin 1924-1953
ELCR10022 20 credits
Old Norse Literature and Society
ELCS10039 20 credits

Year 4 Academic year: 2026/27, Starting in: August

Notes:
Final Assessment Weighting: One unit of assessment is allocated to every 20 credits and constitutes one 20-credit paper. (Papers that for the purpose of degree classification acquire weighting of 40 credits are, therefore, listed twice.)

From Third year:
1) Reading Theory 1
2) Reading Theory 2
3) S1 Scottish Literature Core Period Course
4) S2 Scottish Literature Core Period Course
5) and 6) English Literature Option Course OR Course from LLC and Divinity Collection

From Fourth year:
7) and 8) English Literature Dissertation
9) S1 Scottish Literature Core Period Course
10) S2 Scottish Literature Core Period Course
11) and 12) English Literature Option Course OR Course from LLC and Divinity Collection

Compulsory courses

You must take these courses
English Literature Dissertation
ENLI10329 40 credits
Modern and Contemporary Scottish Poetry

Must be taken during Semester 1

ENLI10088 20 credits
Contemporary Scottish Fiction

Must be taken during Semester 2

ENLI10280 20 credits

Course options

Group A

Select exactly 40 credits in this group.

English Literature Year 4 Option Courses - Semester 1

Select between 0 and 20 credits of the following courses
Shakespearean Sexualities
ENLI10133 20 credits
Creative Writing Part I: Poetry
ENLI10210 20 credits
Poet-Critics: the Style of Modern Poetry
ENLI10257 20 credits
The Long Summer: Edwardian Texts and Contexts, 1900-1910
ENLI10273 20 credits
The Reign of Terror: Fear and Loathing in Romantic Literature
ENLI10315 20 credits
Black American Fiction
ENLI10341 20 credits
Modernism: Text, Image, Object
ENLI10344 20 credits
Medicine in Literature 1: Illness Narratives through History
ENLI10355 20 credits
Digital Humanities for Literary Studies
ENLI10378 20 credits
Twenty-First Century Fiction
ENLI10379 20 credits
Fiction and Espionage
ENLI10388 20 credits
The Queer Eighteenth Century
ENLI10394 20 credits
Decadence, Dazzle, Dissent: Aestheticism and Cultural Politics in the Long Twentieth Century
ENLI10434 20 credits
Modernism's Moving Bodies: Text, Dance, Performance after 1890
ENLI10439 20 credits
Global Gothic
ENLI10443 20 credits
AND

English Literature Year 4 Option Courses - Semester 2

Select between 0 and 20 credits of the following courses
Joyce and Style
ENLI10200 20 credits
Medieval Romance
ENLI10221 20 credits
Charles Dickens
ENLI10255 20 credits
Fairy Tales
ENLI10274 20 credits
Poetry and Northern Ireland
ENLI10340 20 credits
Medicine in Literature 2: Medical Ethics in Literature
ENLI10354 20 credits
Censorship
ENLI10357 20 credits
Contemporary Postcolonial Writing
ENLI10361 20 credits
Contemporary Science Fiction
ENLI10381 20 credits
Paradise Lost
ENLI10398 20 credits
The Novel and the Modern Self, 1688--1790
ENLI10406 20 credits
Modern and Contemporary Life-Writing
ENLI10410 20 credits
The American Novel 1970-2010
ENLI10415 20 credits
Desire and Writing: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Criticism
ENLI10431 20 credits
AND

LLC Common Courses and Divinity courses for English Literature students

Select between 0 and 20 credits of the following courses
The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock
CLLC10007 20 credits
Boundaries of the Human: gender, madness and werewolves in medieval literature
CLLC10008 20 credits
Ethical Encounters with the 'Other' in Speculative Fiction
DIVI10124 20 credits
Scottish Religious Poetry from the Sixth Century to the Present
DIVI10132 20 credits
Listening for God: Silence in Modern and Contemporary Literature
DIVI10137 20 credits
Comparative Literature in a European and Global Perspective
ELCC10022 20 credits
Bertolt Brecht
ELCG10022 20 credits
Latin America: History and Culture Entwined
ELCH10073 20 credits
The Great Russian Novel
ELCR10002 20 credits
Culture and Power under Stalin 1924-1953
ELCR10022 20 credits
Old Norse Literature and Society
ELCS10039 20 credits
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