Literature and History - BA (Hons)

University of East Anglia UEA

Historians and literary critics often read the same documents, but they bring to them different approaches and employ different methods of analysis. This history and English literature degree gives you the opportunity to learn and experiment with both ways of reading. You will become a historian with a marked sensitivity to sources and a lively and engaging writing style through learning the skills of close textual analysis and engaging with narrative form. As you encounter arguments about historical causality and assess conflicting accounts of historical events, you’ll become a literary critic with a complex grasp of the social, political and cultural contexts in which literature is produced. The two disciplines enrich each other, and the diverse range of experts at UEA combine to deliver you a course that is both flexible and distinctive. It’s up to you to set the precise balance between literature and history as your degree progresses – you might take an equal number of modules in both, or gradually specialise in one or the other discipline.

School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing