The English philosopher Roger Scruton describes life as "chaos and suffering," and Scruton proposes that BEAUTY is the antidote: "Beauty is a consolation in sorrow and an affirmation in joy." Is it? If so, what is beauty? Can it be measured objectively? Where do truth and goodness fit in? And do we care? Does what we read, look at and listen to matter?

In English Literature and Culture you will reflect on this, as well as:

Read

Read a variety of texts from different periods, aiming to unearth how cultural and political environments shape literature – and appreciate how some texts are impervious to the pressures of history and politics.

Literary journey

Take a literary journey from the Renaissance, where the Machiavellian world of Macbeth leads him to murder his best friend, Banquo, to the world of the unconscious imagination in Thornton Wilder's Childhood and the far-from-innocent games of three adventurous siblings.

Improve your written and spoken English skills as you: focus on writing academic texts; correctly use that tricky continuous tense; pepper your texts with well-placed colons and semicolons; and crack open the deeper meaning of short stories, novels and poems by way of analysis and discussion.

Contemporary issues

Take a closer look at contemporary issues, such as 2016's "Fake News," 2017's "#MeToo," and 2018's Migrant Caravan.

Share in the Shakespearean endeavor of word creation, spinning from your imagination formulations such as: guitard (n., someone who plays the guitar terribly); idify (v., to make something less intelligent); and manybland (adj., something or someone that's boring).