The English Language and Literature course at Oxford is one of the broadest in the country, giving you the chance to study writing in English from its origins in Anglo-Saxon England to the present.
The College has an excellent record of academic achievement in English and the Joint Schools with a tradition of fostering a love of literature and independent thought. Theatre trips, poetry readings, and English society events (detailed below) all contribute to a densely textured intellectual life at Jesus. Jesus College is located a two-minute walk from the Bodleian Library, an eight-minute walk from the English Faculty Library and itself offers excellent library and computer facilities.
All degree courses should help students to learn how to think, and the English course at Oxford is particularly well equipped to do so. Each student will study different texts, pursue personal interests, and shape his or her degree in exciting and challenging ways. The study of English starts from a love of literature and language, and branches out to encounter or encompass other subjects and fields of enquiry. English is a subject which lends itself to diverse approaches and theories of interpretation, from Aristotle’s Poetics to Derridean deconstruction.
Here at Jesus we encourage students to work in interdisciplinary ways, and to explore a range of approaches to literature, while never forgetting the centrality of the text. Studying English involves the development of analytical skills and the accumulation of a great deal of knowledge: you need to be able to read widely but also in close detail; to understand the sweep of historical change while also being able to meditate on the nuances of a single word.
The English course is extremely demanding, and you must be ready to work hard. Our students think in original and imaginative ways, and are willing to pursue ideas, themes, and approaches to texts independently. Much of our teaching is conducted in tutorials (one or two students with the Tutor) and small groups, and you must be prepared to discuss your ideas and reading with tutors and other students, and to respond spontaneously to criticism or new ideas introduced by them. You must be excited by the challenges of literary study, and dedicated to developing the skills of reading, writing, interpretation, and research.
In your first year you will be introduced to the conceptual and technical tools used in the study of language and literature, and to a wide range of different critical approaches. At the same time, you will be doing tutorial work on early medieval literature, Victorian literature and literature from 1910 to the present.
In your second and third years you will extend your study of English literary history in four more period papers ranging from late medieval literature to Romanticism. These papers are assessed by three-hour written examinations at the end of your third year. You will also produce a portfolio of three essays on Shakespeare, on topics of your choice; an extended essay (or occasionally an examination) relating to a special options paper, chosen from a list of around 25 courses; and an 8,000-word dissertation on a subject of your choice. Submitted work will constitute almost half of the final assessment for most students.
Alternatively, in the second and third years, you can choose to follow our specialist course in Medieval Literature and Language, with papers covering literature in English from 650-1550 along with the history of the English language up to 1800, with a further paper either on Shakespeare or on manuscript and print culture. Students on this course also take a special options paper and submit a dissertation on a topic of their choice.
Further information on the course structure and current options for papers can be viewed here.
Fellows
Professor Paulina Kewes
Paulina Kewes is Professor of English Literature and Tutorial Fellow of Jesus College. Her research interests are in early modern literature, history, and politics, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Among her recent publications are edited volumes on Stuart Succession Literature: Moments and Transformations (2019) and Ancient Rome and Political Culture in Early Modern England (2020), and articles on the iconography of Mary Queen of Scots and her son James, and representative assemblies in the political thought of Jean Bodin. Paulina leads an international project on parliamentary culture in the early modern world, and is completing a monograph Contesting the Royal in Reformation England, funded by a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust (2021-24). Paulina teaches English literature from the Renaissance to the Romantics, including Shakespeare.
Professor Dirk Van Hulle
Dirk Van Hulle is Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History at the University of Oxford, director of the Oxford Centre for Textual Editing and Theory (OCTET) and of the Centre for Manuscript Genetics at the University of Antwerp. With Mark Nixon, he is director of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (www.beckettarchive.org), series editor of the Cambridge UP series ‘Elements in Beckett Studies’, editor of the Journal of Beckett Studies, and curator of the Bodleian exhibition Write Cut Rewrite (Oxford, Feb 2024–Jan 2025). His publications include Textual Awareness (2004), Modern Manuscripts (2014), Samuel Beckett’s Library (2013, with Mark Nixon), The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett (2015), James Joyce’s Work in Progress (2016), the Beckett Digital Library, Genetic Criticism: Tracing Creativity in Literature (OUP, 2022), and Write Cut Rewrite (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2024, with Mark Nixon).
Lecturers
Professor Rachel Burns
Rachel Burns is Associate Professor of Old English in the Faculty of English, and Tutorial Fellow at Jesus College. Her research centres on Old English verse and manuscript culture, with interests in materialism/the material and Christian theology. She has published on a range of texts in Old English, and her two monographs (A History of Old English Verse Layout and A Theology of Things) will be published in 2024 and 2025 respectively. Rachel will teach you on the medieval paper (Old and Early Middle English) across Michaelmas and Hilary Terms. When she began her own undergraduate degree, Rachel had never studied literature from such an early period of history, and developed a love for it. She hopes to share some of that enjoyment with you!
Dr Harry George Daniels
Dr Harry George Daniels is a Stipendiary Lecturer in English Literature, who teaches the Romantic, Victorian, modern, and theory papers across Oxford. At Jesus, he will introduce you to the history of aesthetics and critical theory in Paper 1b. He is currently revising his monograph on conceptions of the therapeutic and ethical value of art in the late nineteenth century, and his work further studies the history of psychoanalysis in Britain.
Professor Peter Davidson
Professor Peter Davidson, is Senior Research Fellow in Renaissance and Baroque Studies at Campion Hall and Curator of the Collection of Old Master paintings there. He teaches and researches literature in Latin and European languages as well as English, and writes extensively on art history. Much of his work has concerned the cultural life of the Recusant Catholic Community and the achievements of the Society of Jesus, especially the monograph The Universal Baroque, and the edition of the complete verse of St Robert Southwell in both English and Latin for OUP. His collected essays on baroque, Relics dreams voyages, is out in 2024. He also has an identity as an original writer about landscape and the art: The Idea of North (2005), Distance and Memory (2013), cultural history of twilight The Last of the Light (2015), and a meditation on places seen on evening walks, The Lighted Window (2021). He’ll be teaching FHS Paper 5: Literature in English, 1740-1830.
Dr Amanda Holton
Dr Amanda Holton is a lecturer at several of the Oxford colleges. She teaches Old and Middle English and the English language. Her research interests are in Chaucer, the medieval and sixteenth-century love lyric, and poetics. Her publications include The Sources of Chaucer’s Poetics (2008) and the Penguin Classics edition of Tottel’s Miscellany (2011). Her new book Rhyme and the Construction of Love in English Lyric 1300-1579 will be published by Oxford University Press early in 2025. Amanda will be teaching you the English language section of Prelims 1 in Hilary and Trinity Terms.
Kate McLoughlin
Kate McLoughlin is a Professor in the Oxford English Faculty and Official Fellow and Tutor in English at Harris Manchester College. She is the author of Martha Gellhorn: The War Writer in the Field and in the Text (2007), Authoring War; The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq (2011) and Veteran Poetics: British Literature in the Age of Mass Warfare, 1790-2015 (2018) and editor of books including The Cambridge Companion to War Writing (2009), The First World War: Literature, Culture, Modernity (2018), with Santanu Das, and British Literature in Transition: 1960-1980 – Flower Power (2019). She is currently completing a literary history of silence, funded by a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. Kate will be teaching Prelims Papers 3 and 4 at Jesus.
The deadline to submit your application for undergraduate study via UCAS is 15 October. Please refer to the University’s webpages for detailed information on how to apply.
Places available at Jesus College
In a total College entry of about 100 undergraduates, 6-8 are offered places in a typical year to read English and joint schools with English.
Academic requirements
Academic requirements for this subject can be found here.
Selection criteria
The specific selection criteria are given on the Faculty’s website here.
Admissions tests
You do not need to take a written test as part of an application for this course.
Written work
Candidates are required to submit one recent piece of written work in English. The deadline to submit written work is 10 November 2024. Further information on the written work requirements can be viewed here.
Interviews
There will usually be two interviews of approximately 20 minutes. In one interview, candidates will be asked to discuss a poem which will be supplied about half an hour earlier. In the other interview, candidates may be asked about their reading interests, the written work they have submitted, and the authors and texts they have studied at A-level or equivalent.
Deferred Entry
Please refer to the Departmental website for subject-specific advice.
The Tutors have no objection in principle to offering a place to a candidate who wishes to defer entry for a year, provided this intention is made known at the outset. You must apply for deferred entry at the time of application to Oxford: you cannot change your mind after an offer has been made.
You should be aware that applicants who are offered places for deferred entry will generally be among the very strongest of the cohort for their subject, and the College limits its offers of deferred places in order not to disadvantage candidates applying in the following year. In some cases, an applicant for deferred entry may be offered a place for non-deferred entry instead.
Joint Schools
The following undergraduate joint courses are available at Jesus College:
Jesus has a thriving community of graduate students in English, and we are actively expanding our postgraduate intake. For the last few years, we have been co-funding a number of full scholarships for MSt and DPhil students and we are committed to continuing to do all we can to support our students financially, as well as intellectually.
We welcome applications for the following postgraduate courses in English:
- DPhil in English Language and Literature
- M.St. English Language and Literature (650 -1550)
- M.St. English Language and Literature (1550-1700)
- M.St. English Language and Literature (1700-1830)
- M.St. English Language and Literature (1830-1914)
- M.St. English Language and Literature (1900- Present)
- M.St. English and American Studies
- M.Phil. English Studies (Medieval Period)
- M.St. World Literatures in English
Prospective graduate students are welcome to contact the English fellows for an informal discussion about the College.
Why choose Jesus College for graduate study?
The College is unique in its financial provision for postgraduates: it provides generous allowances for research trips and book purchase, and its housing and food are heavily subsidised and among the best value in Oxford. English postgraduates are allocated one of the English tutors as a College advisor, who will serve as a pastoral and intellectual point of contact within Jesus College.
Our graduate students take an active part in the intellectual life of the College and participate in the English Society meetings and poetry readings. These involve dinner for students, tutors and guests, a talk or reading, questions, and then informal drinks. Thus they offer an opportunity to socialise with tutors and students, while also engaging with speakers of the highest calibre (including novelists, cultural historians, poets, and literary critics). There are also numerous other social and intellectual events based in College such as joint speaker evenings with members of the Senior Common Room or annual Graduate dinners to which students invite their supervisors.
In 2018, one group of Jesus DPhil students convened a Graduate Seminar on Early Modern England held at Jesus; another DPhil student hosts a Middle English reading group at Jesus; and yet another organised a speaker event with Pulitzer-prize winning contemporary playwright, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, at Jesus.
Please use the links below for further information:
If you have any questions about entrance requirements, or about applying to study at Jesus College, please contact the Admissions Officer:
Email: admissions.officer@jesus.ox.ac.uk
Web: www.jesus.ox.ac.uk