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Year Course ID Course
2026-2027 ENGL 393

Canadian Drama

A survey of Canadian plays, starting with the first official play written in North America (a 17th-century Canadian play) and progressing to 21st-century dramatists and their texts. Students will engage in detailed analyses of plays: their structures, historical/cultural contexts, and present-day relevance. The plays explore a variety of topics and themes, including but not limited to family life, social issues, class struggles, oppression, and marginalization. Students will also read plays about Indigenous culture and plays by Indigenous writers.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English and third- or fourth-year standing; or 6 sem. hrs. of English and 3 sem. hrs. of theatre and third- or fourth-year standing; or instructor's consent
NB: Attendance at theatre performances is required. Not offered every year. See department chair.
Cross-listed: THTR 343
2026-2027 ENGL 394

Modern Drama

A study of eight to ten modern plays, British, American, and Canadian, representing different forms and approaches to drama in the last one hundred years.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English and third- or fourth-year standing; or 6 sem. hrs. of English and 3 sem. hrs. of theatre and third- or fourth-year standing; or instructor's consent
Cross-listed: THTR 344
2026-2027 ENGL 396

American Drama

A survey of significant American dramatic literature. Touching on the 18th and 19th century contributions from Royall Tyler's The Contrast (1787) to George Aiken's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) and Steele MacKaye's Hazel Kirke (1880), the course moves quickly to Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon (1920), which many historians consider the first truly indigenous American drama of international import, and examines the significant work of playwrights such as Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard, and David Mamet.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English and third- or fourth-year standing; or 6 sem. hrs. of English and 3 sem. hrs. of theatre and third- or fourth-year standing; or instructor's consent
Cross-listed: THTR 346
2026-2027 ENGL 400

Special Topics in English

Independent but guided research in a specialized area of interest to the student. Directed studies are not offered concurrently for courses available in the regular academic year.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English, third- or fourth-year standing, and instructor's consent
2026-2027 ENGL 412

Twentieth-Century American Literature

A study of representative works of twentieth-century American literature and the development of its themes in various historical, political, and socio-cultural contexts.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
2026-2027 ENGL 414

Literature & Spirituality

Literature has been at the centre of the human story from its beginnings as recorded in ancient sacred texts to its current study as cultural narrative with transformative and transcendent possibilities for interpretation and creativity. This course will explore literary themes integral to the pursuit of Christian spirituality, past and present.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
2026-2027 ENGL 415

Literature & the Environment

A survey of English literary texts reflecting changing conceptions of and attitudes toward nature across time and place. Students will apply ecocritical analytical approaches to literature that explore the relationships among human and non-human beings and the environment.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
2026-2027 ENGL 416

Literature & Gender

Examines the ways in which gender is represented in all forms of literature, from poetry and fiction to drama and creative nonfiction. Students will evaluate how literary representations of gender are informed by other social variables, such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religious belief, political affiliation, and cultural background. They will appraise how time and place influence depictions of gender in literature and apply a broad array of contemporary literary theories to their analysis of diverse works of literature.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
2026-2027 ENGL 422

Chaucer

A study of The Canterbury Tales and selected minor works, which may include The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, and Troilus and Criseyde. The course involves reading Chaucer’s texts in their historical and cultural contexts. The student will also develop a good reading knowledge of Chaucerian Middle English.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
NB: No overlap with ENGL 430.
2026-2027 ENGL 430

Medieval Mystical Literature

A study of the literary writings of several medieval writers in the Christian mystical tradition, situated in their cultural and religious contexts.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
NB: No overlap with ENGL 422.
2026-2027 ENGL 450

Honours Essay

All honours students will write a research paper of 20 to 25 pages, supervised by a member of the Department of English and Creative Writing, to be completed in the fourth year of study.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Admission to honours program. See department chair.
2026-2027 ENGL 451

Drama to 1642 Excluding Shakespeare

A study of English drama from its liturgical origins to the closing of the theatres in 1642, including medieval mystery cycles and morality plays as well as works by Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline playwrights.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
Cross-listed: THTR 441
2026-2027 ENGL 453

Milton

An intensive study of selected works of poetry and prose by John Milton, situated in their cultural contexts. Particular attention is paid to Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
2026-2027 ENGL 454

Renaissance Poetry & Prose

A study of selected works of Renaissance poetry and prose (excluding those by Shakespeare and Milton), situated in their cultural contexts.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
2026-2027 ENGL 456

Seventeenth-Century Women's Writing

A study of selected works written by women in seventeenth-century Britain and America, situated in their cultural contexts.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
2026-2027 ENGL 465

Eighteenth-Century Literature

A study of the literary works of the major writers of the eighteenth century.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English and third- or fourth-year standing, or instructor's consent.
2026-2027 ENGL 471

Victorian Poetry & Prose

A study of the poetry and nonfiction prose of British writers during the Victorian era, situating these works in their historical and social contexts.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
2026-2027 ENGL 482

World Literature in English

A study of works written in English by writers from postcolonial nations, focussing on issues related to postcolonialism and literature.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English or third-year standing
2026-2027 ENGL 495

Critical Approaches to Literature

A survey of the major interpretive approaches to literature in contemporary theory and practice, considering the social and intellectual context out of which each approach arises.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): 9 sem. hrs. of English and third- or fourth-year standing, or instructor's consent
NB: This course is required of all honours English students.
2026-2027 ENGL 510

The Writing of Creative Nonfiction

A seminar in the reading and writing of literary nonfiction and in the development of a critical appreciation of its various forms. The course focuses on life writing in terms of its literary forms, as the authors’ responses to their culture, and as texts within which identity is shaped and altered by the intentional acts of their writers. Chosen texts demonstrate the art of life writing, as well as other paradigms for its interpretation and its literary and cultural influence. Such forms as (auto)biography, memoir, letters, diaries, travel and nature writing, and personal essays will provide the models for students’ exploration of this genre. Examples are drawn from writers such as C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, E.M. Forster, George Orwell, Michael Ondaatje, Annie Dillard, Kathleen Norris, Flannery O’Connor, John Bunyan, Virginia Woolf, and others who form part of the literary canon of such writing.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 512

Studies in Twentieth-Century American Literature

Examines representative works of twentieth century American literary prose and the development of its themes in various historical, political, and socio-cultural contexts, including the major wars and social upheavals in which American society has been involved in the last one hundred years. Students examine the major themes and values that comprise a canon of literature which addresses the literary movements characterized by realism and naturalism and the contexts of modernism and postmodernism to which literature has responded in the American tradition. American literature and its contributions to the discussions on religion, morality and Christianity, and the relationship between the three, are engaged.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 514

Literature & Spirituality

Literature has been at the centre of the human story from its beginnings as recorded in ancient sacred texts to its current study as cultural narrative with transformative and transcendent possibilities for interpretation and creativity. This course will explore literary themes integral to the pursuit of Christian spirituality, past and present. The movement to interdisciplinary interpretation and literary hermeneutics demands that students, as readers of text, understand the role that Christian thought and aesthetics have played in their influencing of contemporary literature. In understanding that role, human spirituality is being considered as one of the integral aspects of this enterprise; Christian spirituality offers foundational vantage points from which to participate in this ongoing task of creativity and engagement in the human condition.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 515

Literature & the Environment

A survey of English literary texts reflecting changing conceptions of and attitudes toward nature across time and place. Using an ecocritical framework, students will integrate and apply a variety of literary theories to diverse texts that explore relationships among human and non-human beings and the environment, with attention given to issues of creation theology, rural and urban landscape, conservation, sustainability, and environmental justice.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 516

Poetry in the Twentieth Century

A study of poetry, its forms, conventions, and innovations in its development during the twentieth century, with particular representation from the American tradition.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 522

Chaucer

This course takes up the study of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Parliament of Fowls, and Legend of Good Women. Care is taken to develop a good reading knowledge of Chaucerian Middle English. The literary, social, economic, political, and spiritual principles in Chaucer’s texts, and the aesthetic techniques employed to shape them, will be situated within the historical and cultural contexts of Ricardian, or late fourteenth-century, England. Chaucer wrote for a populace that had confronted decimating plagues as well as social, economic, and religious upheaval. The course draws out the competing medieval voices that emerge in the works composed in this context, which often articulate searing critiques of a complex, disorderly, patriarchal, violent, and humorous medieval world.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 526

Literature &C47 Gender

A study of the diverse and complex ways that gender is represented and gendered identities are expressed in poetry, drama, fiction, and/or creative nonfiction. Literature studied will come from a range of historical periods and cultural contexts, and from a range of communities, including racialized and queer communities. The representation and expression of gender in literature will be considered in relation to other overlapping social variables, such as class, religion, race, age, sexual orientation, and dis/ability.

Course Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Admission to the MAIH program.
2026-2027 ENGL 530

Medieval English Literature

Focuses on the rich and varied visionary and mystical literature of the early, high and late Middle Ages, including the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, Richard of St. Victor, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Richard Rolle, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, and Meister Eckhart. The influence of early theologians and philosophers (such as Origen, Plotinus, and Augustine) on these mystics is considered in detail, as is the influence of the medieval mystics on mystical thinkers of Renaissance Europe (including Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross). This course also seeks to read the ontological and epistemological elements of medieval mysticism through the filter of modern philosophical paradigms.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 534

European Literature in Translation

A survey of European drama and prose classics from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, this course explores and critically evaluates the shift in worldviews from Dante's Christian humanism to Kafka's and Camus' modern existentialist view of human existence. In order to provide depth to our analysis of the works and to highlight the significance of the shift in worldview, the works will be discussed in their historical, philosophical, and cultural contexts, in combination with close reading and various theoretical interpretative approaches.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 551

Shakespeare I

Students study seven plays by William Shakespeare (representative histories, tragedies, comedies, and romances) in addition to his narrative poem Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare's plays are considered as both established literary works and as scripts written for performance, and students apply different critical approaches to his works in an attempt to discover the source and nature of the play's aesthetic power and dramatic force. The course attempts to determine whether William Shakespeare is, as some have claimed, the greatest and most influential writer of all time.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 552

Shakespeare II

Students study of seven representative plays (not covered in ENGL 551) of William Shakespeare and a selection of his sonnets. The Shakespearean works are read within the historically specific cultural context in which they were produced. The course pays particular attention to the way in which Shakespeare blurs generic, thematic, and ideological boundaries in his poetic and dramatic works — exploring his fusion of the tragic and the comic, the sacred and the profane, the noble and the plebeian, the fantastic and the historic, and the orthodox and the transgressive. Students also explore the ways in which these richly layered texts affirm or interrogate the dominant cultural values in Elizabethan and Jacobean Britain.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 553

Milton

The major poetic works and selected prose of Milton are read in light of his claim to be the delegated spokesperson for God and Parliament in early-modern England. Milton's works are seen both to reflect the tension and trauma of the Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration, and to participate in shaping a new state and new modes of existence.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 554

Renaissance Poetry & Prose

The course examines representative selections of the poetry and prose of the high and late Renaissance period in England, covering a century from about 1580-1680, an era characterized by an impressive range of literary output that has never been rivaled in the western world. Even apart from the work of the most eminent figures— Shakespeare and Milton—this period offers a rich and varied legacy of poetry and impressive essays, treatises, and allegories, by such great literary figures as Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Wroth, Jonson, Bacon, Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Browne, Pepys, and Bunyan who, along with other selected authors, are represented in this course. The course also addresses the political, religious, and theological controversies that energized so much of the writing of this dynamic century.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 556

Seventeenth-Century Women's Writing

A survey of women's writing in the seventeenth century which examines the poetry, prose, and dramatic works of literary figures such as Lady Mary Wroth, Aemilia Lanyer, Anne Bradstreet, Katherine Philips, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn. The writings of these early-modern women are examined in order to understand how they address not only what it is to be a woman in early- modern times, but what it is to be human, an activity which involves the exploration of historical practices, philosophical concepts, political theories, and theological tenets.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 565

Eighteenth-Century Literature

A study of the poetry, non-fiction prose, and novels of the major writers of the neoclassical period, including such authors as John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and Samuel Richardson.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 567

Drama to 1642 Excluding Shakespeare

The study of selected dramatic works written in English prior to the closing of the theatres in 1642, including medieval mystery and morality plays and works by Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline playwrights, excluding Shakespeare.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 571

The Nineteenth-Century Novel

This course offers a study of representative novels and novelists from nineteenth-century Britain. The novel as a genre flourished during this time, as the novel's form was shaped by writers such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontà«, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 572

Romantic Poetry & Poetics

A study of the poetry created by the six major poets grouped under the term romantic: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron (George Gordon), Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. The course considers both the poetry and critical theories of these influential authors. Graduate students concentrate on the poetry and criticism of one particular poet.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 573

Victorian Poetry & Prose

The study of the poetry and nonfiction prose of British writers during the Victorian era (1837- 1901), including prose authors such as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and John Ruskin, and poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The course considers these works in the context of Victorian Britain's preoccupation with questions about politics, education, art, science, religion, and the role of women.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 582

Studies in Modern British Literature

This course studies representative works in British prose, fiction and poetry that both shape and reflect contemporary British literary sensibilities. It includes a selection of poetry from writers such as W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, D.H. Lawrence, Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney; prose from George Orwell and Virginia Woolf; and novels from A.S. Byatt, Joseph Conrad, John Fowles, David Mitchell and Graham Swift.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 583

World Literature in English

This course focuses on issues related to post- colonialism and literature through the study of literature written in English by writers from post- colonial nations.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 584

Contemporary Canadian Fiction

A study of representative works of contemporary Canadian fiction and the development of the post-modern, post-colonial, post-national novel. Authors (a minimum of six) may include a selection of Margaret Atwood, Dionne Brand, Timothy Findley, Jack Hodgins, Hugh Hood, Thomas King, Yann Martel, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Sky Lee, Jane Urquhart, Guy Vanderhaeghe, and Rudy Wiebe.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 590

Studies in Individual Authors

This course is designed to give students the opportunity of studying for an entire semester the works of up to two significant authors.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 591

Children's Literature

The course examines children's literature from the seventeenth century to the present, analyzing representative texts and changing attitudes toward children and their books. Beginning with early didactic stories and traditional folk and fairy tales, and then moving on to British, American, and Canadian novels, the course focuses on questions of history, philosophy, authorship, readership, and genre. The emphasis is on close critical readings of the texts.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 593

Fantasy Literature

Examines the long history of fantasy texts by first locating works of George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L'Engle within the Anglo-Saxon epic and the Medieval romance literary traditions in English literature, including Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The course also considers how these works have shaped the imagination of creators of modern fantasy as well as the argument that modern fantasy is a response to post-Enlightenment rationalism.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 595

The Inklings & Friends

An intensive study of representative works by the famous Inklings-associated authors—the five twentieth-century British writers C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Dorothy L. Sayers, and their two earlier mentors George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton. Students will evaluate and articulate the legacy of their diverse literary art and its contribution to Christianity and culture.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 600

Core Seminar: Reading the Signs of the Times: Text & Interpretation

Designed to orient students to the crucial transition from modernist to postmodernist and post-postmodernist models of texts and interpretation, models that depend on changing philosophical views of truth and reality. It examines the main interpretive paradigms in literary studies in order to show how views of reason, language, and textuality continue to shape one's life horizons.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 607

Special Topics in English Literature

Topics may vary. Courses to date include: - Foundations of Ethical Being - James Baldwin: The Dialectic of Race and Religion - Kierkegaard's Postscript - Life Writing as a Literary Genre: Biography as Identification of Self and Subjectivity - The Poetics of Resistance, Affirmation and Immigrant Voices and the Poetry of Trauma - Studies in George MacDonald - German Romanticism - Gothic Fiction - Poetics of American Literature - Merton and the Solitary Tradition - The Eighteenth-Century Novel - Jane Austen - Identity and Ethics in Communication - Milton and the Romantics - Shakespearean Trauma and the Early- Modern Suffering Self - Studies in the Late-Victorian Fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 610

Bibliography

Under the direction of the student's approved thesis or major research paper advisor, a course of reading and study which leads to the development of both a significant bibliographical essay (or annotated bibliography) and a thesis proposal. The latter includes at least the following: major question(s) to be addressed; significance of the issue(s); methodologies to be used; theories to be addressed and primary sources to be examined.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 613

Major Essay

Under the direction of a supervisor, students not writing a thesis will research and write a major paper of approximately 10,000-15,000 words in length.

Course Credits: 3
2026-2027 ENGL 615

Of Paradise & Light: Early Modern Devotional Writing

The study of the literary expression of religious desire, doubt, and despair in early-modern British literature. The aesthetic shaping of spiritual belief and sentiment within specific historical and cultural contexts is investigated in a selection of early-modern works, including those by Anne Vaughan Lock, Robert Southwell, George Herbert, John Donne, Elizabeth Melville, Henry Vaughan, Richard Crashaw, An Collins, Thomas Traherne, John Bunyan, George Fox, and Margaret Fell Fox. Their works are read alongside religious texts central to the Catholic and Protestant traditions, including the Geneva Bible, the Douay-Rheims Bible, the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and Joseph Hall's The Art of Divine Meditation.

Course Credits: 3