English Literature

English literature is one of the foundational humanities disciplines, concerned with how writers in the English language have used narrative, poetry, drama, and essay to explore the full range of human experience across centuries and cultures. It is a discipline that develops close reading skills of the highest order, the ability to attend carefully to language, to trace how form and content interact, and to situate texts within the social, historical, and cultural contexts that shaped them and that they in turn shaped.

At Cardiff University, this three-year full-time English Literature degree draws on a department with an international reputation for teaching and research, offering a dynamic and flexible programme that allows you to study literature from different periods and cultures across the principal literary genres. The curriculum is deliberately broad, encompassing the connections between literature and film, art, history, technology, language, and everyday life, and engaging seriously with questions of social justice, environmental concern, and the role of the imagination in addressing the challenges of the contemporary world. You will develop your analytical capacity and become a skilled reader, writer, and communicator through sustained engagement with a wide range of texts.

English literature graduates from Cardiff are well placed across many professional fields. Journalism, publishing, broadcasting, education, the civil service, law, marketing and communications, the heritage sector, and academic research are all common destinations. The close reading, persuasive writing, and critical thinking skills developed through an English degree are among the most transferable in higher education.

Postgraduate study in English literature, creative writing, journalism, publishing, or a professional qualification in teaching or law is a natural next step for those who wish to develop specialist expertise.