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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DRPS : DPTs : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures DPTs

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

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

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

It is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that students choose outside courses in first year that follow on into second year, so that there is the possibility of an alternative degree programme at the end of second year.

Compulsory courses

Literary Studies 1A

Must be passed

Literary Studies 1B

Must be passed

Course options

AND

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

Sustainability and Social Responsibility (UG)

Wicked problems: Reason and Rhetoric

Understanding decolonisation in a globalised world

Sustainable Development Goals: History, Progress and Beyond 2030

Living in the Anthropocene

Understanding Gender in the Contemporary World

Healthy Eating for People and Planet

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

It is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that students choose outside courses in second year that follow on from first year, so that there is the possibility of an alternative degree programme at the end of second year.

Compulsory courses

Literary Studies 2A: English Literature in the World, 1380-1788

Must be passed

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

Must be passed

Course options

AND

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

Sustainability and Social Responsibility (UG)

Wicked problems: Reason and Rhetoric

Understanding decolonisation in a globalised world

Sustainable Development Goals: History, Progress and Beyond 2030

Living in the Anthropocene

Understanding Gender in the Contemporary World

Healthy Eating for People and Planet

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

Final Assessment Weighting: One unit of assessment is allocated to every 20 credits and constitutes one 20-credit paper. The following are the twelve 20-credit papers on which the classification of the degree is based. (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 English Literature Core Period Course
4) S2 English Literature Core Period Course
5) English Literature Option Course
6) English Literature Option Course OR Course from LLC and Divinity Collection

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

Compulsory courses

Reading Theory 1

Must be passed

Reading Theory 2

Must be passed

Course options

Selected courses must be passed

The Canterbury Tales

Saints and Sinners: Voicing Belief, Doubt, and Dissent in Medieval English Literature

The Play's the Thing: Drama in Early Modern England

Echoing Song: Early Modern Poetry in Context

AND

Selected courses must be passed

The Novel in the Romantic Period: Gender, Gothic, and the Nation

Romantic Poetry and its Contexts

Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama

AND

Selected courses must be passed

Body in Literature

Novel and the Collapse of Humanism

Decolonization and the Novel

Mystery and Horror

Creative Writing Part I: Poetry

Working Class Representations

Shakespeare's Comedies: Identity and Illusion

Fiction and the Gothic, 1840-1940

Haunted Imaginations: Scotland and the Supernatural'

Digital Humanities for Literary Studies

Literature, Revolution and Rebellion in the Long Nineteenth Century

AND

Selected courses must be passed

Cities of Words: 20th Century Urban America

Shakespeare: Modes and Genres

Poetry, Politics and Place

Contemporary British Drama

'We are [not] Amused': Victorian Comic Literature

American Innocence

Death and Dying in Late Medieval Literature

21st Century Black American Fiction

Representing Race on the British Stage, 1600-1850

AND

Selected courses must be passed

The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock

Boundaries of the Human: gender, madness and werewolves in medieval literature

Ethical Encounters with the 'Other' in Speculative Fiction

Scottish Religious Poetry from the Sixth Century to the Present

Listening for God: Silence in Modern and Contemporary Literature

Comparative Literature in a European and Global Perspective

Bertolt Brecht

Latin America: History and Culture Entwined

The Great Russian Novel

Culture and Power under Stalin 1924-1953

Old Norse Literature and Society

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

Final Assessment Weighting: One unit of assessment is allocated to every 20 credits and constitutes one 20-credit paper. The following are the twelve 20-credit papers on which the classification of the degree is based. (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 English Literature Core Period Course
4) S2 English Literature Core Period Course
5) English Literature Option Course
6) English Literature Option Course OR Course from LLC and Divinity Collection

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

Compulsory courses

English Literature Dissertation

Course options

Global Modernisms: Inter/National Responses to Modernity

Modern Love: Victorian Poetry and Prose.

Modernism, Myth, and Romance 1880-1940

Great Victorian Novel

AND

The American Novel, 1920-1960

Contemporary Scottish Fiction

Strangers to Ourselves: Post-war & Contemporary Writing

AND

Please note that not all courses are available every year

Shakespearean Sexualities

Creative Writing Part I: Poetry

Poet-Critics: the Style of Modern Poetry

The Long Summer: Edwardian Texts and Contexts, 1900-1910

The Reign of Terror: Fear and Loathing in Romantic Literature

Black American Fiction

Modernism: Text, Image, Object

Medicine in Literature 1: Illness Narratives through History

Digital Humanities for Literary Studies

Twenty-First Century Fiction

Fiction and Espionage

The Queer Eighteenth Century

Decadence, Dazzle, Dissent: Aestheticism and Cultural Politics in the Long Twentieth Century

Modernism's Moving Bodies: Text, Dance, Performance after 1890

Global Gothic

AND

Please note that not all courses are available every year

Joyce and Style

Medieval Romance

Charles Dickens

Fairy Tales

Poetry and Northern Ireland

Medicine in Literature 2: Medical Ethics in Literature

Censorship

Contemporary Postcolonial Writing

Contemporary Science Fiction

Paradise Lost

The Novel and the Modern Self, 1688--1790

Modern and Contemporary Life-Writing

The American Novel 1970-2010

Desire and Writing: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Criticism

AND

The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock

Boundaries of the Human: gender, madness and werewolves in medieval literature

Ethical Encounters with the 'Other' in Speculative Fiction

Scottish Religious Poetry from the Sixth Century to the Present

Listening for God: Silence in Modern and Contemporary Literature

Comparative Literature in a European and Global Perspective

Bertolt Brecht

Latin America: History and Culture Entwined

The Great Russian Novel

Culture and Power under Stalin 1924-1953

Old Norse Literature and Society

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