Degree in English Literature?

[Shakey1500]

Hello, I'm 42 and thinking of doing a degree. I'm not aspiring to attain one for career advancement. More a whimsical longing for one to prove I can do it. Ideally I would like to do a degree in Performing Arts but am unable to travel anywhere which I believe that particular degree would require.

So I was thinking English Literature. Has anyone done this degree? What should I expect? I will, of course, be researching online also, just wanted any first hand experiences etc.

Thanks

Honestly, unless money isn't an issue I would save your money. I have a good degree in English Lit from a top university and it's pretty much proved useless. I enjoyed it yes, but actual contact time in a degree like this is just a few hours a week, with lots of personal study. I didn't come away feeling I'd done the best degree for me tbh, I could have spent those 3 years and wads of cash on something much more useful that would have actually taught me something.

My experience is very different. I really enjoyed my English lit degree (studied at York) and found it gave me a huge range of skills in addition to the immediately obvious familiarity with literature - critical thinking, textual analysis, research and writing skills, and the ability to work independently. It stands to reason that contact hours are limited and that you will have to study independently. How else would you find time to read those huge Victorian novels or read complex poetry? Do people really expect science-like contact hours and for the lectures to give you a synopsis of the texts so you don't have to read them yourself?

If you enjoy reading and are willing to expand your literary horizons, you will probably enjoy this degree. There were topics which I wasn't that keen to study initially, but found them fascinating once I started to engage with them. The workload is quite heavy if you do things properly. A text that you would spend six months on for A-level is covered in one or two seminars. We generally had to read at least a novel and a play or selection of poetry each week. You'll also probably study literary theory (eg. postcolonialism, psychoanalysis), and consider literary texts in light of their social or political contexts, as well as analysing character, form, etc.

I agree with crazyspaniel and I think, as an older student, you'll get a lot out of it . I did an English degree at the 'normal' age and then a masters degree as a mature student. I made better decisions about topics to study when I was older, worked more effectively and had a much greater sense of satisfaction.
It's a wide field with plenty of scope for exploration and very absorbing.

I did English Lit and have just started teaching it. I loved it and think it is a great degree!

Courses do vary, so you probably want to find one that will allow you to do plenty of work on theatre and plays?

Have you downloaded/ordered some prospectuses or had a look online to see what modules are involved in the courses you're looking at? Eg., some places will require you to study older texts in the original, others will expect you to do some literature in translation from other languages, some will contain more literary theory than others, etc. etc. It's also worth seeing what the balance between exams and coursework is.

When I did my degree I loved it for the amount of time I got on my own, reading and thinking. Contact time is pretty low in most English degrees - you might expect three or four hours a week, maybe less, maybe more. Again, IMO it's worth checking to see what the universities near you offer and which kinds of contact time. I enjoyed lectures but lots of people prefer classes where you get to discuss things more.

I think you do have to be quite organized and good at arguing for your own point of view - everyone will read a text differently, so if you are happy to jump into a discussion you'll love it, and if you're a bit more shy you may have to push yourself a bit more!

I don't know if that helps ... if you want to know more about anything I've said please just say and I will be back. I know some of it was very obvious so sorry about that ... just thought I'd say it in case!

Thank you very much for all of your replies.

LRDtheFeministDragon That's the kind of angle I would go for I think. Also, I'm told I hold a good argument

Thanks again.

Sounds good!

Best of luck with it all.

Im currently half way through my degree, part of which is English Literature and I am really enjoying it. Doing it for similar reasons as yourself. I am doing mines part time so I can continue working. As I am in Scotland and dont earn over £16000 a year I get £500 a year towards my fees, which covers the two modules a year.

i honestly think that unless you can afford it without loans then degrees are not worth it. I have a 1st class biology degree and there are no jobs and 40k is a lot of debt for 'enjoyment' purposes - unless you have lots of spare cash! It took me 3 years to find a decent job and even now earn little more than my mates who didnt get one

But then if you get a student loan you don't have to pay it off unless you earn over a certain amount, and then it's only a small amount per month. It's not like normal debt.

Just been having a conversation about this. If you're prepared to show up and listen and you care, is my opinion, you cannot miss with eng lit!
Crazyspaniel, I wonder whether I taught you!

I wonder whether you teach me!

Did you know University of London (Goldsmiths) do an online English Lit degree? Its a fraction of the price. Designed for overseas students they say they have many UK based students. See here

Thanks for that information eatyourveg, very reasonable.

Are there any particular aspects of Eng Lit you're interested in, e.g. transnational literature, Romantic literature, etc?

i loved mine. went as a mature student ft after i had been working in a completely different area for a while. came out with a first, but i have to say, it's been feck all use in real terms since...

do it for yourself, and you will love it.

LHK The aspect that would appeal to me most of all would be plays/playwrights. Anything from Shakespeare to modern writers. I'm not averse to any aspect per se but that would be my first choice, if it was an option.

My degree is in English Literature and TBH it ruined the pleasure of reading for me for 5-10 years afterwards. Having 4-6 books per week to read, not all of which I found enjoyable, thought-provoking or anything other than desperately dull, made the whole reading process little more than rapid information-sucking. I went to a very good red-brick university in the early 90s and was taught by some of the UK's top academics, yet I felt that there was no room for original thought or individual insight: every point I made had to be backed up and referenced by an existing critic.

After I graduated I didn't read ANYTHING, not even a newspaper, for 6 months, then I slowly started to pick up again by reading Terry Pratchett. The Discworld novels helped me to eventually discover my love of reading, language and the beauty of well-chosen words.

Having said all that, two novels that I studied have stayed with me always. Willa Cather's My Antonia and Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker are my favourite books of all time, and without having gone through three years of academic tedium I would never have found them.

ah harriet, you see, what you could have done was to reference the existing critics and then rubbish their opinion with your original thought. or partially agree with them and then extend their limited offering with new insights of your own.

that's what i like, anyway. and it didn't seem to do me any lasting harm.

i do agree that a certain amount of reading of the existing criticism is necessary though (regurgitiation of the same just displays familiarity) - agreement with it is entirely optional. ime the more interesting writers/ students had lots of original thought to compare and contrast with their understanding of who was supposedly 'the' critic to churn out for whatever particular genre.

i made the 'all about me' mistaske v early on though. the droll tones of my tutor made it perfectly clear that whilst i was very interesting, it might be nice on a lit course to include some actual references to, um, lit and crit.

she forgave me. and ended up as my dissertation supervisor. which was all primary texts and my own opinion lol, with a good handful of popular culture thrown in. (i managed to include a quote from gi jane - a feat of which i am immensely proud to this day. ) not a critic to be found.

I loved arguing with critics! Says something about me I suspect.

I do think it's sad when the nice, exploratory, appreciative bit gets stifled, though. IMO it's really worth trying to find someone else who's done the same course at the same university (with facebook it's relatively easy, you can often post on a university course facebook page without being a member of teh university). Of course it's biased but you can get some idea. I couldn't do this when I started my undergrad (pre facebook, obviously), but it was amazing for my cousin this year - she got literally dozens of replies about what the teaching was like!

But if you just want to be appreciative/evaluative about a text, eng lit is perhaps not the thing to study... Do something else, and read in your free time! Original thought is great, but when students write as if in a critical vacuum, that does need to be addressed!

I am not disagreeing with ER in the slightest, but it occurs to me as a tangential point that if you don't enjoy theories about literature as much as close reading, there are some courses that are much more focussed on the one than the other. Where I did my undergraduate degree, a huge proportion of the assessed work (one fifth, IIRC) was close reading, which suited me down to the ground. It's not working in a critical vacuum, but IMO people who really love reading and appreciating text, as opposed to applying theories to texts, really enjoyed doing close reading.

(If that doesn't make sense, ER, please do correct me, I am not trying to detract from your point.)

An Eng Lit degree isn't a walk in the park and university places are highly competitive.

No, I see what you mean: I guess what I often see is that not 'doing theory', for ost students, doesn't necessarily (or indeed often) equate to doing lots of close reading - rather, to vague statements about literature being for all time and good literature teaching 'the reader' to think more about 'themself' and so on. . And so I tend to think of critical/analytical as opposed to appreciative/evaluative, if that makes sense

That is certainly true (I think we may discussed 'the reader' before, IIRC!).

I felt for me the opposition wasn't binary; there were lots of other ways to approach it all. Some people are suited to thinking about ideology and want to be (eg) Marxist critics, or Feminist critics, and that's their standpoint. I know my brain doesn't work like that, and I will always end up reading outwards from the words on the page, to see what theories help me understand it better.

IMO a lot of the 'my English degree ruined the pleasure of reading' people that I knew did very theory-heavy courses of the first kind, and envied me being able to range a bit more freely in terms of what and how much theory I found useful.

Yes, I think we have!
I do see what you mean, and my approach has always been to pretend my work is 'cultural materialist' to allow me to say what I like I without being especially ideological except for a tacit leftist approach to everything.. . I think though that eng lit at degree level suffers from a preconception with which students arrive that 'if it is my opinion it must be valid' and everything is subjective, therefore everything is up for grabs . . .