phd topics in english literature

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English at Leicester

• Research degrees
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Suggested research topics

Below is a list of suggestions for PhD projects that English at Leicester would be interested in supervising.

Dr Claire Brock

Women surgeons in britain, 1860-1918.

This Wellcome Trust-funded project is an exploration of the changes in the perception, both popular and medical, of the art of surgery and the figure of the surgeon and how they coincided with the entrance of women into the medical profession. It also considers the procedures women actually performed, their intervention in controversial surgery of the day, and their successes and failures, in order to assess how the ways in which women operated contributed to their public and professional reputation. How did the practice of surgery both help and hinder the cause of the medical woman in her pursuit of professional equality?

Risk and Responsibility in Surgery

How were risk and responsibility conceptualised in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods when surgery could be seen simultaneously as safe (due to developments in surgical science) and increasingly risky (because such progress allowed for greater experimentation)?

The Representation of Medical Women in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century

This project examines the cultural, social and self-representation of the woman surgeon from the second half of the 19th century until the end of the Great War.

• Dr Claire Brock's staff profile

Dr Lucy Evans

Representations of caribbean cities.

Critical debates on Anglophone Caribbean literature have often been concerned with rural folk culture, despite the fact that cities such as Kingston, Jamaica and Port of Spain, Trinidad feature prominently in the region’s novels, short stories and poetry. This project will explore the role of urban experiences in shaping literary cultures of the Anglophone Caribbean.

Popular Music and Anglophone Caribbean Literature

This project will explore how Anglophone Caribbean literary writing has been informed by, and engages with, the region’s popular musical traditions, such as calypso and reggae. Considering both the local significance and the global reach of these musical forms, the project will investigate how they have influenced the style, structure and thematics of Caribbean fiction and poetry.

• Dr Lucy Evans's staff profile

Dr Sarah Graham

Representations of lgbtq people in comics and graphic novels.

This project could map the changing depiction of LGBTQ figures in relation to changes in American society, or consider their representation in a specific genre, such as the superhero, or in relation to a specific event, such as the spread of HIV/AIDS.

New Yorker Cartoons and American Culture

This project will explore the portrayal of American culture and society in the cartoons published in one of its most popular magazines, The New Yorker .

Queer Writing in Fifties America

This project considers how queer writers, such as Carson McCullers, Gore Vidal, John Cheever, Paul Bowles, James Baldwin, Truman Capote critique American society in an era that was hostile to sexual difference.

• Dr Sarah Graham's staff profile

Professor Martin Halliwell

Mental health in 20th century american culture.

This area of study – which can be defined in terms of period or genre – will examine the cultural representation of mental illness in the United States during a particular phase of the 20th century. The precise project could focus on autobiographical accounts of illness; institutional treatment; family and broader social relationships; the workplace; or gender and sexual identity.

Transatlantic Avant-Garde Culture

This project will focus on either (i) the early 20th-century avant-garde or (ii) the rediscovery of avant-garde practices in the 1940s and 1950s. The project will have a transatlantic dimension, exploring the movement of multimedia cultural forms (text, image, sound) across the Atlantic (for example, New York and Paris) by examining relevant publications and exhibitions.

American Protest

This project will focus on a particular protest movement in the United States since World War II, for example: the 1960s Peace Movement, the Weather Underground, the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street. Through the examination of primary source documents it will look particularly at the interface between politics, activism and cultural expression.

• Professor Martin Halliwell's staff profile

Professor Sarah Knight

Drama at the elizabethan inns of court.

This project will consider the development of in-house drama at the Inns of Court from the mid-16th century until the early 17th century, exploring how the metropolitan setting and proximity both to commercial theatres and centres of political influence shaped its formation. Central to the dissertation will be a consideration of the role played by professional theatre companies (e.g. the Lord Chamberlain's Men) in helping to shape Inns drama.

Milton and Tragedy

This project will examine how Milton represented and experimented within the genre of tragedy throughout his writing life, extending from the early poem 'Il Penseroso' (c. 1630) to one of his last published works, Samson Agonistes (c. 1665-7). The influence of Reformation biblical tragedy and classical tragedy (particularly Euripides and Seneca) on Milton's writing will be of particular interest.

Ancient Poetry in the Modern World

This project will focus on three contemporary women writers' engagements with classical poetry, exploring in particular their use of epic and lyric forms. Alice Oswald's Memorial (2011) will be considered in relation to Homer's Iliad , while Anne Carson's Nox (2010) and Tiffany Atkinson's Catulla et al  (2011) will be read as responses to Roman elegy.

• Professor Sarah Knight's staff profile

Dr Catherine Morley

Religion and spiritual identity in the work of john updike.

This project will take James Woods's essay on Updike and religion as its point of departure to examine the contours of religious identities in works such as the Rabbit tetralogy, In the Beauty of the Lilies , and Terrorist .

Finding an Authentic Self in the Later Writing of Philip Roth

This project will examine Roth's metafictional alter-egos in texts from Operation Shylock  through to the Nemesis trilogy.

Language and Silence in Post-9/11 Fiction

This project will look at the role of literature in the wake of international terror and trauma.

Metropolitan Lives and Prairie Wives: Edith Wharton and Willa Cather's Modernist Aesthetics

This project will examine two very different responses to the American modernist moment and interrogate each writer's notions of the 'the modern'.

• Dr Catherine Morley's staff profile

Dr Julian North

Mary shelley as a biographer.

Some critical essays and articles have been published focusing on Mary Shelley’s work as a biographer. This research project would aim to build on these in order to present a major, integrated study of her biographical publications (e.g. for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia and as editor of her husband’s poetry) and of her unpublished auto/biographical work, including letters and journals. It would relate this to her fictional writing (e.g. the importance of biography in Frankenstein ) and to the biographical culture of the period.

Theatre and the Gothic Novel

Some work has been done on gothic theatre in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and a considerable body of criticism exists on the gothic novel from this period. This project would develop this to look at the theatricality of the gothic novel. It could focus on one or all of the following: the interactions between novels and their stage adaptations; the use of theatrical devices in gothic fiction; and allusions to theatrical traditions, e.g. Shakespeare, in gothic fiction.

• Dr Julian North's staff profile

Dr Emma Parker

Jane eyre and contemporary fiction.

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847) has inspired numerous prequels, sequels, revisions, retellings, adaptations, and spin-offs, the most famous of which are Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938) and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). By considering the ways in which contemporary literature offers both a loving homage to and alternative perspective on Bronte's classic, the thesis will reflect on the influence and significance of Jane Eyre in contemporary culture. Texts studied might include Emma Tennant's Adele (2000), Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair (2001), and Michele Roberts's The Mistressclass (2002). A similar but alternative project would be a thesis on the influence of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Texts studied might include Alasdair Gray's Poor Things (1992), Patricia Duncker's The Deadly Space Between (2002) and Peter Ackroyd's The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008).

The Country House in Contemporary British Fiction

This project will consider the significance of a recent resurgence in the country house novel. It will examine the ways in which contemporary fiction responds to the tradition of country house literature, particularly in terms of gender, class and sexuality. It will also analyse how the country house is used to reflect on family, history, and the State of the Nation. Texts studied might include Toby Litt's Finding Myself (2004), Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger (2009), Martin Amis's The Pregnant Widow (2010) and Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child (2011).

Music in Contemporary Fiction

This project will examine the relationship between fiction and music (pop, opera, blues, jazz - one or all of these genres) and consider the representation of musicians and use of music both as theme and fictional trope. Texts studied might include Ann Patchett's Bel Canto (2001), Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) and Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues (2011).

• Dr Emma Parker's staff profile

Professor Mark Rawlinson

First world war poetry.

Investigating the legacy of war poetry (1914-18) in British and/or American writing up to the current centenary. Doctoral projects could focus on the concept of the war poet, on poets writing back to the First World War poets from the 1930s onwards, on poetry of later wars, on the representation of war poets in narrative genres such as fiction and feature film, or on any other aspect of war commemoration in literary writing.

The Second World War in Literature after 1945

This is an area in which much good work is being done, but in which there is still significant scope for original research on under-studied writers and problems. Projects could focus on individual writers (e.g. Doris Lessing or Robin Jenkins) or on political, historical or social contexts which have determined the way in which the Second World War has been re-presented in culture after 1945. This field overlaps with Cold War cultural studies, and projects might take this approach.

Twentieth-Century Fiction

An investigation of the themes, forms and significance of the writings of one of the following 20th century British writers: George Friel, Rex Warner, T H White, Edward Upward, James Hanley, Elizabeth Taylor, Eric Ambler, Nigel Balchin, Rumer Godden, Anthony Burgess, and Angus Wilson. The resulting thesis could contextualise an oeuvre in historical, cultural and literary-historical terms, and include an analysis of its artistic distinctiveness.

• Professor Mark Rawlinson's staff profile

Professor Philip Shaw

Religion in the prelude.

This project will examine Wordsworth’s treatment of Christianity and the Anglican tradition from the earliest manuscript versions of The Prelude to the final published version of 1850. Additional reference will be made to related works by Wordsworth, e.g. Ecclesiastical Sonnets , The Excursion .

Romantic Poetry and the Press

This project examines the relations between poetry and the press in the period 1789-1832. The project will make extensive use of the online resource Gale NewsVault to identify poems published in contemporary newspapers by canonical authors and non-canonical authors. Close attention will be paid to the material contexts in which Romantic poems are produced, disseminated, and discussed. Topics to discuss might include: the influence of history and politics; relations between poets, editors and newspaper proprietors.

Wordsworth and Byron

This thesis will explore the ways in which Wordsworth and Byron responded to each other's works and how these works, in turn, were read by subsequent generations. In addition to engaging in detailed analyses of these key Romantic poets students undertaking this project will be encouraged to consider how later Victorian writers, such as Matthew Arnold, A C Swinburne and Mark Rutherford, depicted Wordsworth and Byron as the bearers of diametrically opposed moral, political and religious values.

• Professor Philip Shaw's staff profile

Dr Jonathan Taylor

Contemporary life writing in theory and practice.

The literary memoir has experienced a resurgence in popularity since the early 1990s, and this project encourages students to investigate the contemporary memoir form both in theory and creative practice. Possible topics might include: memoir and illness; memoir and subjectivity; memoir and 'truth'; memoir and contemporary psychology; memoir and political, cultural, or historical contexts; and contemporary forms of the personal essay.

Contemporary Fiction in Theory and Practice

This project encourages students to investigate the forms of contemporary prose fiction – novels, short stories, composite novels – and, particularly, ways in which these forms might be revitalised by contact with other disciplines and contexts. For example, students might investigate, both in theory and practice, points of convergence and divergence between music and fiction, history and fiction, literary theory and fiction, and memoir and fiction.

• Dr Jonathan Taylor's staff profile

PhD Topics in English Literature

PhD in English Literature is the ultimate opportunity for the students to train themselves and get equipped with research skills to become potential researchers. The criterion for obtaining the degree is that their thesis must represent a real contribution to the existing knowledge by conducting a significant research. The discipline supports students to develop research projects in their choice of period, author, or book of English Literature. The research can be conducted on Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic, or the 19th and 20th centuries along with its literary critical analysis. It may involve interdisciplinary projects across the School of literature, languages, and cultures.

The key to successful research lies in asking a valid and valuable research topic which can sufficiently explore the particular area. To come up with a viable topic, intellectual preoccupation, curiosity and exploration like reading, thinking, discussing makes up the preliminary research. We, at Thesis India, have formed a team of research consultants to help you do the same. Our research experts are specialized in English Literature and helped over 3400 students in generating well-defined PhD research topics. They have provided PhD topics in English Literature to exemplify the quality of our topic selection service.

Sample PhD topics in English Literature:

• The role of African literary responses to Racism: an examination of the works of Maya Angelou
• Exclusion and Silence: variables in the post 9/11 South Asian fiction
• Illustrations of masculinity: A comparative study between pre-independence and post-independence Indian novels
• Talking points: Surrealism in Arun Kolatkar’s poetry
• Between tradition and modernity: Through the lens of Tagore’s Gora

As our experts believe, exploration and evaluation can be done by looking at specialized as well as general information to obtain a more focused research topic. We can help you brief the plenty of information and formulate a succinct research topic in English Literature. You can request us a PhD topic by writing in to us at [email protected] .

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Most colleges need their students to first select creative and useful business management thesis topics which is also helping you on English literature research topics for their dissertations, after which they must compose their thoughts on the subject while supporting them with reasonable justifications. In this situation, assistance becomes absolutely necessary to match the demands of finding a suitable literature dissertation topic. This blog will provide useful thesis topics on English literature. Here are some ideas for literature students who want to write their dissertations on the following list of themes by selecting the most appropriate one for them.

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Major English literature Thesis Topics

How does modern cinema present our society, aim and objectives.

The basic aim of this study is to investigate the role of modern cinema in the representation of modern society. The other key objectives of this research study are explained below.

• To investigate the significant ways in which modern cinema represents society.
• To determine the ways in which modern cinema can influence our society today.
• To explore the positive and negative impact of modern cinema on our society today.
• To find out how modern cinema affects the views and opinions of people.
• To assess how modern cinema is a reflection of modern society.

The importance of and reflection on social issues found in the major works of literature

The basic aim of this topic is to discuss the importance and to reflect on social issues found in the major works of literature. The other core objectives that this study seeks to find out are highlighted below.

• To explore the importance of learning about the social issues in literature.
• To investigate the effective ways in which literary texts help in solving the social issues.
• To find out key the benefits of studying literature studies.
• To find out the importance of social awareness.
• To demonstrate the contribution of major works of literature in our lives.

The significance of understanding literary terminology in the literature

The basic aim of this study is to explore the significance of understanding of literary terminology in literature. The other major objectives of this current research study are described below.

• To demonstrate the importance of literary devices and how it helps in the understanding of a literary work?
• To determine the key terminologies in English literature.
• To explore the importance of literary devices in writing and how it helps in expressing and conveying the meaning of the ideas to the readers.

How do critical theories relate to societal and literary issues?

The key aim of this research study is to investigate the relationship between critical theories and societal and literary issues. The other objectives of this current research article are indicated below.

• To explore the ways in which literary criticism can be used in our society.
• To describe the major critical theories of society.
• To find how literary criticism and literary theories relate to each other.
• To investigate the ways in which critical theory helps with literature.
• To explain the major critical social theories.
• To determine the ways in which critical theory contributes to the study of sociology and in a particular understanding of society.

The aim of this current research paper is to investigate the relationship between lesbian feminism and feminism and the other core objectives include:

• To explore the historical perspectives of lesbian feminism.
• To explore the current possibilities of lesbianism.
• To investigate how lesbians can be feminist allies and play an important role in the movement towards gender equality.

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Historical Analysis of Children's Literature

This study aims to comprehend the historical analysis of the literature of children. This study also seeks to find out other key objectives which are mentioned below.

• To investigate the importance of the history of children’s literature.
• To explore how the literature of children has evolved over time.
• To identify the main key features of the literature of children.
• To describe the historical fiction of the literature of children.

The key differences between symbolism and criticism?

The core aim of this research paper is to explore the key difference between symbolism and criticism. The other objectives of this study include:

• To explore the key features of symbolism in English Literature.
• To explain the significant features of criticism in literature.
• The described the theoretical nature of symbolism and criticism.

What Are the Differences Between American and British Literature?

This current research paper seeks to find out the key differences between American and British Literature. The other objectives of this study are demonstrated below.

• To explore the different features of American Literature.
• To explain the main features of British Literature.
• To find out the key similarities between American and British Literature
• To identify the common themes of British and American Literature.
• To investigate the relationship between American and British Literature.
• To assess the difference between American and European Literature.

Thesis Topics for MA English Literature Students and PhD Topics in English Literature for PhD Students

Changes in the roles of women in the twenty-first century.

This study aims to explore the changes in the roles of women in the twenty-first century The other main objectives of this article are listed below.

• To analyse the ways in which the roles of women have changed over time in literature.
• To explore the representation of women in modern literature.
• To determine the major contributions of women in literature.
• To explain the roles of the writing of women in the newly growing and emerging literature.
• To investigate how literature contributes to the advancement of women’s rights.

The impact of secularization on the views of individuals.

The aim of this research paper is to explore how secularization impacts the views of individuals on life. The other main objectives are mentioned below.

• To explore the positive impacts of secularization on the views of individuals.
• To investigate the factors that affect the process of secularisation.
• To assess how secularisation is presented in religious studies.
• To analyse the impact of secularisation on society.
• To find out the major reasons behind the rise of secularisation.
• To describe the main features and characteristics of secularisation.

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How science fiction affects English literature

The aim of this research article is to find out the impact of science fiction on English literature The other main objectives of this current research article are listed below.

• To explore the main features of science fiction.
• To determine the positive influence of science fiction on English literature.
• To find out how science fiction negatively impacts English Literature.
• To investigate the reasons behind the rise of science fiction in English Literature.

The rise of postmodernism and the circumstances that shaped and transformed literature

The aim of this current research study is to explore the events that led to postmodernism’s rise and transformed literature. The other primary objectives of this study are as follows.

• To explain the major events of history that shaped the literary period of postmodernism.
• To describe the key ideas of postmodernism in literature.
• To determine the main key features and characteristics of postmodernism literature.
• To explore the positive and negative effects of postmodernism in literature.
• To identify the major themes of postmodern literature.

The impact of globalization on promoting and inspiring literature

The primary aim of this research article is to investigate how globalisation help in the promotion of literature. The other primary goals of the current research investigation include.

• To explore the impact of globalisation on literature.
• To explain the possible outcome of globalisation, discuss in the literature.
• To determine the ways in which literature helps in understanding globalisation.

Writing styles of gender-based literary works

The main objective of this research thesis topic is to find out the writing styles of gender-based literary works. The other primary objectives of this study are highlighted below.

• To explore the representation of gender issues in the works of literature.
• To find out the ways in which gender influence writing.
• To determine the differences between the writing styles of males and females.
• To analyse the representation of female characters in literary works.
• To explain the importance of gender in literature.

How racial discrimination influences the development of works of literature.

The key aim of this study is to investigate the impact of racial discrimination on the development of literary works. There are other number objectives that this study seeks to find out and these include;

• To determine the impact of race on literature.
• To explore the major impact of racial discrimination on society
• To identify the different meanings of racism in literature.
• To find out the major causes behind discrimination in society.
• To identify the representation of racism in literature.
• Analyze various forms of historical fiction and their impact on today’s society.

Different kinds of historical fiction and their influence on today’s society

The primary aim of this thesis article is to explore the different kind’s historical fiction and to investigate the impact of historical fiction on todays’ society. There are other objectives that this study seeks to find out are described below.

• To determine the positive and negative influence of historical fiction on today’s society.
• To identify the main features of historical fiction.
• To find out the major themes of historical fiction.

How Literature Thesis Papers Contribute to Social Welfare?

Literature students have a close relationship with society, and when they write their dissertations and research papers, a field trip allows them to understand the problems that are now being faced. By illustrating these socially harmful behaviours in literature, governments can create new regulations to curtail them.

Spend some time reviewing the class materials, such as the course syllabus, curriculum, and some previously written works, to come up with the ideal topic on your own. You can get some wonderful ideas for your greatest thesis topic by using the resources provided. They can also help you save time on both the decision-making and the research processes. You’ll have more time to concentrate on writing, structure, revisions, and your creative abilities as a result. It is crucial to begin the idea-generation process first. Is the subject compelling? Is it pertinent to your class? Additionally, avoid picking a subject that your classmates might use for their own papers. Once you have an idea, discuss it with your peers or your professor and conduct further research to ensure you have all the necessary data to produce an excellent report. Change your topic instead of taking a chance if it appears that there will be some incomplete information. To organise your thoughts, create an outline.

A strong literature paper almost always contains an argument. You will be providing an analytical assessment, a critical interpretation, and a perspective. So having a thesis that is up for debate is a good idea. However, this is only a starting point recommendation! It would be a good idea to seek your instructor’s okay before you begin writing about anything you decide. You can be certain that your thesis topic for English literature does so in this manner. Once you have selected a topic, devote some time to continuously looking for research materials and making notes of what you uncover.

Need any help regarding the completion of your assignments on time?

The guardian research has professional writers that have great experience in writing dissertations and they can write on different topics and research areas such as PhD topics in English literature or research topics for English literature students who are enrolled in MA classes can also get assistance related to English literature topics for research. Our writers will meet all the requirements and can complete the thesis instantly. Our feasible thesis writing service provides complete assistance to students who struggle with any aspect of their papers.

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English Literature PhD

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Why choose this programme

We perform innovative and world-leading research across literature, writing and linguistics.

We’re part of the interdisciplinary School of Literature and Languages, which has research-active staff who are at the forefront of knowledge in English literature, creative writing, film studies, translation studies, theoretical and applied linguistics, and literary and cultural studies.

Our research concentrates on a range of periods, themes and subjects, including:

•  Medieval literature
•  Shakespeare and the Renaissance
•  Romanticism
•  Victorian and 19th-century literature
•  Modern and contemporary literature
•  Creative writing
•  Film studies.

Our diverse mix of subject specialities mean that we are a vibrant and imaginative community with lots of opportunity for intellectual exchange.

We’re part of  TECHNE , an  Arts and Humanities Research Council  (AHRC)-funded doctoral training partnership, which provides access to comprehensive academic and professional training programmes, as well as the possibility of funding for your studies.

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 ranked the School of Literature and Languages 10th for research impact in the UK, with 75% of our case studies rated as having outstanding impacts, in terms of reach and significance (4*). Our submission to REF included contributions from the Guildford School of Acting (GSA).

Frequently asked questions about doing a PhD

What you will study

Our English Literature PhD will train you in critical and analytical skills, research methods, and knowledge that will equip you for your professional or academic career. It normally takes around three or four years to complete our full-time PhD.

You’ll be assigned a primary and secondary supervisor, who will meet with you regularly to read and discuss your work and progress. For us, writing is essential for understanding and developing new perspectives, so you’ll be submitting written work right from the start of your course.

In the first year of your PhD, you’ll refine your research proposal and plan the structure of your work with the guidance and support of your supervisors. As you go into your second and third year, you’ll gradually learn to work more independently, and your supervisors will guide you on how to present at conferences and get your work published.

After 12-15 months, you’ll submit a substantial piece of work for a confirmation examination. The confirmation examination will be conducted by two internal members of staff not on your supervisory team and will give you the opportunity to gain additional guidance on your research-to-date. The final two years of your PhD will be devoted to expanding and refining your work ready for submission of the final thesis.

As a doctoral student in the School of Literature and Languages, you’ll receive a structured training programme covering the practical aspects of being a researcher, including grant-writing, publishing in journals, and applying for academic jobs.

Your final assessment will be based on the presentation of your research in a written thesis, which will be discussed in a viva examination with at least two examiners. You have the option of preparing your thesis as a monograph (one large volume in chapter form) or in publication format (including chapters written for publication), subject to the approval of your supervisors.

Research support

The professional development of postgraduate researchers is supported by the Doctoral College , which provides training in essential skills through its Researcher Development Programme of workshops, mentoring and coaching. A dedicated postgraduate careers and employability team will help you prepare for a successful career after the completion of your PhD.

Studentships

South east doctoral training arc (sedarc) studentship.

Studentships are awarded on the basis of the academic excellence of both the candidate and the research proposal.This competition-funded studentship is available to UK and International students and includes full UK or International fee waiver and stipend at UKRI rates.

Techne studentship 2024

This competition funded studentship is available to UK and International students. Studentships are awarded on the basis of the academic excellence of both the candidate and the research proposal.Full UK or International fee waiver and stipend at UKRI rates (currently £18,622).

Research themes

• Women's writing (especially medieval women's writing, early modern women's drama and Victorian women writers)
• Medieval romance
• Romanticism
• Victorian studies
• Modernism and modernity
• Travel and mobility
• Western and global esotericisms
• Sexuality and queer theory
• Postmodern and post-postmodern writing
• Contemporary fiction
• Transnational literature.

Our academic staff

See a full list of all our  academic staff  within the School of Literature and Languages.

Research areas

Research facilities.

You’ll be allocated shared office space within the School of Literature and Languages and have full access to our library and online resources. Our close proximity to London also means that the British Library and many other important archives are within easy reach.

In addition to a number of excellent training opportunities offered by the University, our PhD students can take additional subject-specific training and take part in the School’s research seminars and events. These provide a valuable opportunity to meet visiting scholars whose work connects with our own research strengths across literature, theory, and creative writing.

Edwin Gilson

A real highlight for me was having an article published in a well-known journal in my field. This came out of a chapter I wasn’t expecting to write at the start of the thesis, on a novel I read during the PhD.

Entry requirements

Applicants are expected to hold a good first-class UK degree (a minimum 2:1 or equivalent) and an MA in a relevant topic.

International entry requirements by country

English language requirements.

IELTS Academic:  7.0 or above with a minimum of 6.5 in each component (or equivalent).

Application requirements

Applicants are advised to contact potential supervisors before they submit an application via the website. Please refer to section two of our  application guidance .

After registration

Students are initially registered for a PhD with probationary status and, subject to satisfactory progress, subsequently confirmed as having PhD status.

Selection process

Selection is based on applicants:

• Meeting the expected entry requirements
• Being shortlisted through the application screening process
• Completing a successful interview
• Providing suitable references.

Student life

At Surrey we offer the best of both worlds – a friendly campus university, set in beautiful countryside with the convenience and social life of Guildford on your doorstep.

Start date: April 2024

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Start date: January 2025

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Creative British English Dissertation Ideas

• Write about a cozy spot you enjoy at home
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Top-Notch Dissertation Topics In English Literature

• A closer look at the poetry of William Shakespeare
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• A study of time and space in ancient literary works

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• Discuss the notion of being in the modern literary works
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• The role of print culture and mass distribution in advancing literary works

World-Class Literature Dissertation Writing Ideas

• How authors use landscape as a source of literary inspiration
• Describe how most authors portrayed the rural-urban divide
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• Analyze the correlation between nature, narrative, and literature
• How do the descriptions of Africa differ from those of the West?
• The impact of globalization on promoting and inspiring literature
• Who determines what literature is appropriate for society or not?
• A discussion of the features that make an Epic
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• The unmatchable role of humor in children’s literature

Top English Literature Dissertation Ideas

• What is the critical role of names in any literary work?
• Why storybooks are the most acceptable form of literature among children
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• The effects of everyday use of social media on literacy levels
• A critical analysis of the promotion of women empowerment through literary works
• Discuss the evolution of modern literature compared to 18 th -century literature
• A systematic study of ancient literature writers
• The relationship between early 17 th century plays and emerging plays
• How climate change has contributed to modern literature
• The impact of feminist movements on contemporary literary works

Example Dissertation Titles on Gender

• Discuss the history of British and American literature on gender
• Discuss the ‘new women’ concept among modern literature writers
• What role does the writer play in his/her own story?
• Why gender affiliations affect the overall thought of a literary work
• Discuss the characterization of the male and female genders
• Evaluate the circulation of feministic literary works as compared to the patriarchal works
• Explore the various myths and misconceptions associated with literature and gender
• Analyze the issue of gender association in the 20 th -century literature
• The impact of women theatre managers on literary works performed
• Discuss the writing styles and impression of gender-based literary works
• Look at the role of the female members of the Gothic subculture in literature

Out-of-the-World Ideas For Dissertation Topics

• Analyze the various 20 th -century representations of Black males
• The globalizing nature of modern literary works
• The emerging logic of the Public Sphere in writing
• Discuss the poetics, rhetoric, and social struggle of select literary works
• How the politics of feeling and belonging affects the effectiveness of literature
• Discuss the colonial and postcolonial differences in American fiction
• A critical analysis of the national and continental writing styles
• Developing an interactive literature audience through the internet
• How to write for social action: A case study of activism
• Discuss the impact of racial discrimination on the development of literary works
• How to register for the local and global audience at the same time

Custom English Language Dissertation Ideas

• The characterizations of womanhood in modern-day literature
• A critical analysis of the characters in a play of your choice
• The extent to which literary works shape the reality of today
• Discuss the aspects of nationalism and regionalism within novels
• Analyze various forms of historical fiction and their impact on today’s society
• Compare and contrast romantic, historical fiction, and recessionary pressures
• Techniques used to bring a sense of place in ancient literature
• Changing approaches to imagery in modern literary works
• The impact of living in a media-oriented world on the success of literature
• The aspects of history and sociology in analyzing literary works
• An analysis of the roles of blindness and nature Shakespeare’s classical works

Professional Examples of Dissertation Titles

• A comparison of John Donne’s metaphysical love poems and sermons
• Discuss the undisputed value of text speech in literature
• Compare and contrast the literature in Marxists versus communist societies
• The role of gender and patriarchy stereotyping in literature
• A comparative study of the various themes displayed in Shakespeare’s works
• An evaluation of the use of plot and characters in plays
• The impact of discriminatory attitudes towards other marginalized sectors in literary works
• Do literary works depict the contemporary reality of any society?
• The role of literature in controversial issues such as homosexuality and abortion
• The role of clowns in comic literary works
• An exploration of the facets of evil in highly controlled societies

Dissertation Titles For ‘A’ Grade Students

• Explore the various genres used in college literature
• The reception of the 19 th -century novels by academicians and the public alike
• How the understanding of literary works affects our modern-day perspective of life
• An analysis of abortion in literature
• Discuss the ever-changing role of women in modern literary works
• Why some literary works are appealing to adults and children alike
• The growth of feminism in the 21 st -century literature
• How did Milton’s Paradise Lost affect 17 th -century literature?
• The critical role of imagination in any work of literature
• How accurate is history in various historical novels?
• The role of J.K. Rowling to modern-day literature

Literature Based Dissertation Example Topics

• A rhetorical analysis of American and British literature
• How to achieve creative writing for college literature papers
• The role of place and culture in novels and plays
• Why dramatic memoirs are efficient in illustrating grief and love
• The influence of other disciplines on the study of literature
• Discuss the subject of love in medieval romance
• A close textual analysis of modern-day authors
• The role of pros poems centered around death in communicating loss
• How to narrate colonialism and slavery in the expansion of capitalism
• Critique the American literary naturalism and the aesthetic of integration
• The role of short stories in communicating themes

Expert Thesis Topics in English Literature

• Effects of representation of class and nation in women’s writing
• Discuss the various multi-ethnic literature in the UK
• A study of the medieval European romances
• Evaluate some of the stories that queer kids tell themselves
• Analyze multimodal composition and digital technology
• An examination of the old English literature
• How to expand the theoretical and instructional frameworks for literature
• An investigation of American Yogi
• An interrogation of death in literature
• Explorations of the Bible
• Why does there exist an intimate debate between the reader and the work?

Thesis Topics For English Literature Students

• Explore the various essay writing styles
• The impact of literature on life decisions
• Confronting social issues using literature
• How we can use literature to deal with grief and loss
• The psychology of reading novels in the afternoon
• Discuss the modalities of material culture in religious narratives
• An examination of sexuality in modern literature
• How different people respond to literary works
• The role of poems in exploring culture and history
• Dealing with racism and poverty using literary works
• The media and proliferation of literature

British Lit Research Paper Topics

• Is memory all that matters when composing a literary work?
• A discourse of gender and race in British literature papers
• Poetic and economic interpretations of the Great Revolt of 1381
• Stigma and subjectivity in British works
• Discuss politics, aesthetics, and the urban space in postcolonial British literature
• The innovative perspective of British Literature
• Discuss the similarities between British Literature and American literature
• Survey the various perspectives of humanity contemporary British literature
• The English imperial selfhood in British literature
• Discuss female education and reading of the 18 th century British novels
• Considering the sublime through the late 19 th century, British works
• Reconfiguration of British literary works
• Discuss female subjectivity in British literature
• A case study of early books in the UK
• Experimental narrative structures in Britain

First-Class English Literature Topics

• Role of symbolism in literature
• Love in literature
• Traditions in literature
• Melancholy as used in poetry
• How each genre tells a story
• Allusions in novels
• Gender roles in literature
• Historical background of plays
• Religion and novels
• Critiquing a novel
• Psychological realism in literature

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The Library

Browse by phd thesis by university of warwick department.

Addyman, Mary (2016) 'All bundled together in endless confusion’ : museums, collecting and material practices in late Victorian culture. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Adjei, Cassie (2015) Duality, genre and the "Modern Mulatto" : bresponse and representation in contemporary British fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Alhathlool, Khalid (2013) "Attachment to the soil and aspiration toward departure" : tradition, modernity, cosmopolitanism, globalisation & identity in Amin Maalouf. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Angelov, Dimitar (2008) Language, selfhood and otherness in the works of D. H. Lawrence. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Akel, Regina (2007) The journals of Maria Graham (1785-1842). PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Ashby, Kevin John (1998) Disciplines of the king : Arthurianism, historiography, poetics and surveillance in Tennyson's Idylls of the king (1859). PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Attridge, Steve (1993) The soldier in late Victorian society : images and ambiguities. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Andermahr, Sonya (1993) Difference, identification and desire : contemporary lesbian genre fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Armitt, Lucie (1992) Pushing back the limits: the fantastic as transgression in contemporary women's fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Al-Issa, Ahmad (1989) Polyphony and the anxiety of influence in the fiction of Henry James. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Aston, Elaine (1987) Outside the doll's house : a study in images of women in English and French theatre, 1848-1914. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Audette, Florestine (1979) Religious elements in Marlowe's 'Tamburlaine'. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Bondré, Natasha (2020) Reading ‘Emperor Oil’ in the expanded Caribbean : petroleum, ecology and Caribbean literature in the twentieth century. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Bailey, Thomasin Mary (2020) Authority and influence in Lady Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Bibizadeh, Roxanne Ellen (2019) Freedom and unfreedom in the literature of the Iranian and Arab diaspora. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Borg Cardona, Karen (2018) The failed quest in contemporary world literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Breidenbach, Birgit (2017) Stimmung and modernity: the aesthetic philosophy of mood in Dostoevsky, Beckett and Bernhard. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Bhattacharya, Sourit (2017) The crisis of modernity : realism and the postcolonial Indian novel. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Brljak, Vladmir (2015) Allegory and modernity in English literature c. 1575-1675. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Bumrungsalee, Intira (2013) Translating culture in films : subtitling in Thailand. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Bahrawi, Nazry (2013) Sacred impulses, sacrilegious worlds : postsecular intimations in Graham Greene and Naguib Mahfouz. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Barnard, Donald Edwin (2012) A critical edition of Derek Walcott's Omeros. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Brown, La Tasha Amelia (2011) The diasporic black Caribbean experience : nostalgia, memory and identity. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Bugeja, Norbert (2010) Rethinking the liminal : threshold conciousness in four Mashriqi memoirs. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Beer, Lewis (2010) Fortune and desire in Guillaume de Machaut. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Byatt, Jim (2009) Taboo and transgression : reconfiguring the monstrous in contemporary British fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Brigley, Zoë (2007) Exile and ecology: the poetic practice of Gwyneth Lewis, Pascale Petit and Deryn Rees-Jones. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Biswell, Andrew (2002) Conflict and confluence: Anthony Burgess as novelist and journalist. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Brock, Claire (2002) The feminization of fame from Rousseau to de Staël. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Breen, Peter Thomas (1993) Place and displacement in the works of Brian Friel and Seamus Heaney. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Bakshi, Parminder Kaur (1992) Distant desire : the theme of friendship in E.M. Forster's fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Becket, Fiona (1992) Metaphor and "metaphysic" : the sense of language in D.H. Lawrence. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Barker, Jill (1992) Characterizations of otherness in the sixteenth century moral plays and their morality actecedents. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Bendjeddou, Mohamed Yazid (1985) Two literary responses to American society in the early modern era : a comparison of selected novels by Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair in relation to their portrayal of the immigrant, the city, the business tycoon, women, and the problem of labour, 1900-1929. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Belsey, Catherine (1973) Patterns of conflict in the English morality plays. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Buckley, Brian R. (1972) Lawrence's novels : themes and precedents. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Castle, Nora (2022) Food futures : food, foodways, and environmental crisis in contemporary science fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Cao, Siyu (2020) Performing post-Britishness : a quest for independence in the contemporary literature of England. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Champion, Giulia (2020) The empire bites back : literary cannibalism in the extractiono(s)cene. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Campion, Louise G. E. (2019) Christ in the kitchen, Christ in the chamber: the language and imagery of domestic space in late medieval religious literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Cohut, Maria-Silvia (2018) Before and beyond the glass: women and their mirrors in the literature and art of nineteenth-century Britain. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Choksey, Lara (2017) 'Life itself' in Doris Lessing's space fiction : evolution, epigenetics and culture. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Charlwood, Catherine (2017) Models of memory : cognition and cultural memory in the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Chen, Chi-Fang (2016) A study of political humour in British literature in the 1790s. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Collins, Nicholas J. (2015) Forming the nation : early modern England and modern Ireland. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Christie, James, (Researcher in English) (2013) Fredric Jameson and the art of Modernism. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Cowaloosur, Vedita (2013) "The home and the world" : representations of English and bhashas in contemporary Indian culture. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Cornford, Thomas (2012) The English theatre studios of Michael Chekhov and Michel Saint-Denis, 1935-1965. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Carta, Giorgia (2012) The other half of the story : the interaction between indigenous and translated literature for children in Italy. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Cirstea, Arina-Nicoleta (2010) Urban imaginaries : mapping space and self in the writing of Doris Lessing, Michèle Roberts and Sara Maitland. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Carlin, Gerald (1994) Art and authority : a comparative study of the modernist aesthetics of Ezra Pound. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Concepción, Díez-Medrano (1993) Women's condition in D.H. Lawrence's shorter fiction : a study of representative narrative processes in selected texts. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Campbell, Irene (1992) Frank Swinnerton : the life and works of a bookman. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Coe, Jonathan (1986) Satire and sympathy : some consequences of intrusive narration in Tom Jones and other comic novels. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Curtis, Francis Brett (1979) Shelley and the idea of epic : a study, with particular reference to three pre-1818 narratives. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Clews, David (1972) The Dickens - Thackeray debate. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Daroy, Alys (2022) Biophilic Shakespeare : towards an ecology of form. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Dakkak, Nadeen (2020) “An immense cargo of wanderers seeking their own destruction” : migration to the Arab Gulf states in Arabic fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Dashwood, Rita J. (2018) Women in residence: Forms of belonging in Jane Austen. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Daniel, Robert W. (2018) The manuscript poetry of Thomas St Nicholas and the writing of ‘scripturalism’ in seventeenth-century England. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Dean, Dominic (2016) The child and authority in contemporary literature and critical culture. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Davis, Christopher P. (Researcher in literature) (2016) Reading, writing and understanding the postcolonial. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Degirmencioglu, Nesrin (2013) Uneven cities : the dialectic of urban modernity and literary form in Dos Passos, Tanpınar, Auster and Pamuk. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

DiMeo, Michelle Marie (2009) Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh (1615-91): science and medicine in a seventeenth-century Englishwoman’s writing. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Deckard, Sharae Grace (2007) Exploited Edens: paradise discourse in colonial and postcolonial literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Dauncey, Sarah (2003) The uses of silence : a twentieth-century preoccupation in the light of fictional examples, 1900-1950. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Dent, Shirley (2000) Iniquitous symmetries: aestheticism and secularism in the reception of William Blake's works in books and periodicals during the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Dixon, John Spencer (1991) Representations of the East in English and French travel writing 1798-1882 : with particular reference to Egypt. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Dusinberre, Juliet (1969) Attitudes to women in Jacobean drama. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Emmett, Christine (2020) Inequality, moralism and legitimacy in South African literature : re-reading apartheid from Millin to Wicomb. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

El-Masry, Heba Fawzy (2017) A comparative study of Arthur John Arberry’s and Desmond O’Grady’s translations of the seven Mu‘allaqāt. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Eardley, Alice (2008) An edition of Lady Hester Pulter's Book of 'Emblemes'. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Erdogan, Armagan (2002) Encountering the foreign : the educative effect of the foreign in George Eliot's novels of English life. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Efstratiou, Dimitris (2001) Disintegration of essence and subjectivity : the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and T. S. Eliot. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Earnshaw, Brian (1982) Translations from the German and their reception in Britain, 1760-1800. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Farnsworth, Fiona Emily (2020) Contemporary literary foodways between Sub-Saharan Africa and the USA. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Fletcher, Andrew (2019) Shakespeare and the fiction of theatre. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Fakhrkonandeh, Alireza (2015) Howard Barker's drama of aporias : from a phenomenology of the body to an ontology of the flesh. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Fowler, Benjamin Brynmor (2015) (Re)directing the text : politics & perception in the work Katie Mitchell & Thomas Ostermeier. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Frank, Lucy Elizabeth (2003) Sarah Piatt and the politics of mourning. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Fernández de Pinedo, Eva (2002) From the Virgin of Guadalupe to El Santo : new motifs and directions in contemporary Chicano/a writing. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Frith, Gill (1988) The intimacy which is knowledge : female friendship in the novels of women writers. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Funk, Gisela (1988) The sealed room : Lou Andreas-Salomé and Anaïs Nin : a study in the genesis of fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Flower, Celeste (1985) A study of aspects of the 'Romances amorosos' of Luis de Góngora. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Fairclough, Peter (1976) Humour in the novel 1800-1850 : the moral vision and the autonomous imagination. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Gill, Jagvinder (2010) Re-oriented Britain : how British Asian travellers and settlers have utilised and reversed Orientalist discourse 1770-2010. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Gott, Henry Michael (2010) Ascetic modernism in Eliot and Flaubert. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Goodman, Gemma (2010) Cornwall : an alternative construction of place. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Gunne, Sorcha (2010) ‘A mirror with two sides’ : liminal narratives and spaces of gender violence and communitas in South African writing, 1960–present. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Graham, James (James John George) (2006) Writing the land : representations of 'the land' and nationalism in Anglophone literature from South Africa and Zimbabwe 1969-2002. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Ganobcsik-Williams, Gruffudd Aled (2001) The sweat of the brain: representations of intellectual labour in the writings of Edmund Burke, William Cobbett, William Hazlitt and Thomas Carlyle. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Gallagher, Ron (1986) Science fiction and language : language and the imagination in post-war science fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Greenslade, William (1982) The concept of degeneration, 1880-1910, with particular reference to the work of Thomas Hardy, George Gissing and H. G. Wells. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Garnett, George Rhys (1977) The search for the self in the fiction of Malcolm Lowry. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Green, Robert (1977) The novels of Ford Madox Ford. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hillion, Marianne (2021) Between the epic and the ordinary : locating the politics of contemporary Indian urban writing in English (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata). PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hatfull, Ronan (2018) ‘The other RSC’: the history and legacy of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hudson, Julie Patricia (2017) The environment on stage: scenery or shapeshifter? PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Huang, Bo-Yuan (2014) China on the periphery : transitions of Chinese "Orientalism" from Oliver Goldsmith to Thomas De Quincey. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hassen, Rim (2012) English translations of the Quran by women : different or derived? PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hentea, Marius (2010) Social reality and narrative form in the fiction of Henry Green. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hartwig, David W. (2010) The place of Shakespeare : performing King Lear and The tempest in an endangered world. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Holroyd, Sophia Jane (2002) Embroidered rhetoric: the social, religious and political functions of elite women's needlework, c.1560-1630. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hampton-Reeves, Stuart (1997) Henry VI in performance : history, culture and Shakespeare reproduced. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hapgood, Lynne (1990) "Circe among cities" : images of London and the languages of social concern, 1880-1900. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Higgins, Ian (1989) The sentiments of a Church-of-England man : a study of Swift's politics. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Head, Dominic (1989) The modernist short story : theory and practice in five authors. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hadfield, Duncan John (1982) Real and imaginary golf-courses : systems of order in Malcolm Lowry's Under the volcano. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hancock, Ann (1981) The life of Henry Yorke and the writing of Henry Green. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hunter, Shelagh (1981) Transformations of pastoral : studies in the idyllic fiction of Mary Russell Mitford, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Hermans, Theo (1977) Aspects of the structure of Modernist poetry, 1908-1918 : a structural and comparative study of the poetic writing of Guillaume Apollinaire, Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Georg Heym, T.E. Hulme, Max Jacob, Ezra Pound, Pierre Reverdy, and Georg Trakl. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Intepe, Demet (2020) Environmental justice and writers as activists in multi-ethnic U.S. literatures, film, and theater. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Ivanova, Rossitza Pentcheva (2006) Cross-cultural and tribal-centred politics in American Indian studies: assessing a current split in American Indian literary scholarship and re-interpreting Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and Louise Erdrich's Tracks. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Inan, Dilek (2000) The city and landscapes beyond Harold Pinter's rooms. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Imoru, Nike M. (1994) A theatre of black women : constructions of black female subjectivity in the dramatic texts of African-American women playwrights in the 1920s and 1970s. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Ibrahim, Hasnah binti Haji (1992) Oh Babel! : the problems of translating Malay verse into English. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Iliopoulos, Spyridon (1985) 'Out of a medium's mouth' : Yeats's art in relation to mediumship, spiritualism and psychical research. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Janssen, Catharina Gertruda Maria (2021) ‘Future scholars, future poets’ : the contemporary reception of Sir William Jones’s translations of oriental literature, 1770-1835. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Jackson, Joseph Horgan (2011) Devolving black British theory : race and contemporary Scottish literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Jones, Jonathan D. (2003) Orphans : childhood alienation and the idea of the self in Rousseau, Wordsworth and Mary Shelley. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Jones, David Francis (1987) Swift's use of the literature of travel in the composition of "Gulliver's travels". PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Khattak, Aiman (2022) The bio-political empire sovereignty, race and war in Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani literatures. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kaur, Gurpreet (2017) Beyond the binary : postcolonial ecofeminism in Indian women's writing in English. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Khan, Gohar Karim (2013) Narrating Pakistan transnationally : identity, politics and terrorism in Anglophone Pakistani literature after "9/11". PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kim, Paul Chi Hun (2013) The notion of nature in Coleridge and Wordsworth from the perspective of ecotheology. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kritsis, Konstantinos (2013) Exploring theatre translation : the translator of the stage in the case of a Stanislavskian actor. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kirwan, Peter (2011) Shakespeare and the idea of apocrypha : negotiating the boundaries of the dramatic canon. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kenward, Claire (2011) 'Memory wrapped round a corpse' : a cultural history of English Hecubas. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kurata, Kenichi (2010) Vicissitudes of desire in George Eliot’s fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kahn, Kristian Thomas (2009) The boy figure and male same-sex desire in Britain from Walter Pater to E.M. Forster. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kaisary, Philip James (2008) The literary impact of the Haitian Revolution. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kamali, Leila Francesca (2007) Spectres of the shore : the memory of Africa in contemporary African-American and Black British fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kim, Rina (2007) Beyond mourning and melancholia : women and Ireland as Beckett's lost others. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kawanami, Ayako (2006) The art of dissembling in three Elizabethan writers: John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Shakespeare. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Komporaly, Jozefina (2001) Configurations of mothering in post-war British women's playwriting. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Key, Jonathan Benjamin (1999) Paranoia and irony in the Anglophone dectective narrative and the novels of Umberto Eco. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kavanagh, Kevin Sean (1997) Raymond Williams and the limits of cultural materialism. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kastelein, Barbara (1994) Popular/post-feminism and popular literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Khan, Nosheen (1986) Women's poetry of the First World War. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kirk, Peter Nigel (1983) The voice of authority : Evelyn Waugh's fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Kerr, Douglas (1978) A comparison of some French and English literary responses to the 1914-1918 War. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Love, Angus (2020) Alain Badiou’s twisted contemporaneity : inaesthetics and the contemporary. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Laug, Katja (2019) Mementoes of the broken body: Cormac McCarthy’s aesthetic politics. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Littau, Karin (2018) Sub-versions of reading. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Loh, Waiyee (2016) Empire of culture : contemporary British and Japanese imaginings of Victorian Britain. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Leonard, Alice (2014) Error in Shakespeare : Shakespeare in error. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Lewis, Jennifer (2014) Variations around a theme : the place of Eatonville in the work of Zora Neale Hurston. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Liao, Chia-hui (2011) A critical study of the reception and translation of the poetry of Wang Wei in English. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Ludlow, Elizabeth (2008) 'We can but spell a surface history': the biblical typology of Christina Rossetti. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Lawlor, Clark (1993) The classical and the grotesque in the work of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Lawley, Paul Anthony, Ph.D. (1978) The paradox of self-annihilating expression : representations of ontological instability in the drama of Samuel Beckett. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Mukim, Mantra (2022) Lyric failure : Samuel Beckett and poetic form. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Mak, Wing Haang (2018) Kinaesthetic bodies in contemporary literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Martín-Castaño, Mónica (2017) Translating Disney songs from The Little Mermaid (1989) to Tarzan (1999) : an analysis of translation strategies used to dub and subtitle songs into Spanish. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Murgia, Claudio (2016) [Beyond] posthuman violence : epic rewritings of ethics in the contemporary novel. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

McGowan, Jack (2016) Slam the book: the role of performance in contemporary UK poetics. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Maughan, Christopher J. (2015) Activism Ltd : environmental activism and contemporary literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Morrissey, Joseph J. (2013) Gentry women and work and leisure 1770-1820. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Mearns, Gabrielle (2012) Appropriate fields of action : nineteenth-century representations of the female philanthropist and the parochial sphere. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Marques dos Santos, Ana Teresa Brisio (2012) Translation, radio and drama during the Estado Novo. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Mathieson, Charlotte Eleanor (2010) Bodies in transit : mobility, embodiment and space in the mid-nineteenth century novel. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

McIntosh, Malachi (2010) "Home" : emigration, identity and modern Caribbean literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Murray, Chris M. (2009) The tragic Coleridge : the philosophy of sacrifice in the life and works. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Muzica, Evghenii (2006) 'A place where three roads meet': Sophocles's Oedipus and Shakespeare's Hamlet after Freud. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

MacCartey, Kelli (2004) "different sentiments & different connections supports them" : sensibility, community, and diversity in British women's Romantic-period poetry. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

McKenzie, Sarah (2003) Death, inheritance and the family : a study of literary responses to inheritance in seventeenth-century England. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

McKenzie, Mary Virginia (2003) Gertrude Stein's 'Melanctha' : a feminist and deconstructive approach. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Muto, Hiroshi (2001) The 'disembodied voice' in fin-de-siècle British literature : its genealogy and significances. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Mason, Emma (2000) Religious intellectuals : the poetic gravity of Emily Brontë and Christina Rossetti. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Mounsey, Chris (1992) William Blake's The Four Zoas : a reassessment of its implied metaphysics. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Matthews, Julia (1991) Characterization and structure in the development of Tudor comedy. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Middleton, Tim (1991) The operation of discourse as a motive for critical practice : a Bakhtinian perspective. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Minow-Pinkney, Makiko (1985) Feminine writing and the problem of the self : an examination of Virginia Woolf's novels in the light of recent critical and psychoanalytic theories. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Munns, Jessica (1980) A critical study of Thomas Otway's plays. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Nichols, K. Madolyn (2014) The women who leave : Irish women writing on emigration. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Nardi, Valeria (2012) Translation in advertising : marketing cars in Italy and the UK since the 1980s. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Neculai, Catalina (2008) ‘Some fanatical New York promoting’: literary economies of urban regime transformation in New York City, 1970s-1980s. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Niebrzydowski, Sue (1998) Verry matrymony : representations of the Virgin Mary and her mother, Saint Anne, as wives in medieval England, 1200-1540. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Nicholson, John Andrew Lamont (1983) Poetry and action in Byron's development. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Oloff, Kerstin Dagmar (2007) Modernity and the novel in the expanded Caribbean : Wilson Harris, Patrick Chamoiseau and Carlos Fuentes. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

O'Brien, George (1979) Life on the land : the interrelationship between identity and community in the Irish fiction of Maria Edgeworth, William Carleton and Charles Lever. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

O'Toole, Bridget (1974) The poet and the city : the city as a theme in English poetry of the nineteenth century. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Pitt Scott, Harry (2022) Energy futures : finance and petroculture. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Phillips, Leah Beth (2016) Myth (un)making : the adolescent female body in mythopoeic YA fantasy. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Poltrack, Emma (2015) The history and working practices of the Propeller Theatre Company (1997-2011). PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Putz, Adam (2010) Shakespeares wake : appropriation and cultural politics in Dublin, 1867-1922. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Piasecki, Bohdan A. (2010) Anthologies of contemporary Polish poetry in English translation : paratexts, narratives, and the manipulation of national literatures. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Parkes, Simon John (2009) Home from the wars: the Romantic revenant-veteran of the 1790s. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Poyner, Jane (2003) The fictions of J. M. Coetzee: master of his craft? PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Poulson, Sally (2000) Reversed perspectives : a re-examination of the later novels of William Wilkie Collins. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Pearl, Monica B. (1999) Alien tears : mourning, melancholia, and identity in AIDS literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Potts, Tracey (1997) Can the Imperialist read? Race and feminist literary theory. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Petrone Fresco, Gabriella (1991) Shakespeare's reception in 18th century Italy : the case of Hamlet. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Qiao, Qingquan (2018) China in Britain in the interwar period : Bertrand Russell, W.H.Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Shih-I Hsiung. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Quinn, Patrick J. (1988) Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon : from early poetry to autobiography. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Richards, Julian (2022) “This Man Is Great” : Glen Byam Shaw directs Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon, 1951-1959. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Rybczak, Emil (2020) A bibliographical enquiry into Thomas Johnson's A Collection of the Best English Plays. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Rao, Divya Ramakrishna (2019) New alphabet in sight: representation and the reframing of Dalit identity. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Rumbold, Matthew (2017) Epic relation : the sacred, history and late modernist aesthetics in Hart Crane, David Jones and Derek Walcott. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Robertson, Lisa C. (2016) New and novel homes : women writing London's housing, 1880-1918. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Rzepa, Joanna M. (2014) Literary and theological modernisms : Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Józef Wittlin. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Rudland, Sophie (2013) Faith, feeling and gender in the writing of Hartley, Wollstonecraft and Blake. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Reddick, Yvonne J. (2012) The genius of the stream : Ted Hughes and fluvial influence. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Ray, Sumana (2011) The rise of the 'liminal Briton' : literary and artistic productions of black and Asian women in the Midlands. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Rahwan, Yamen Rahmoun (2010) Constellations of allegory : Gabriel García Márquez, Angela Carter and J.M. Coetzee. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Reuter, Anne-Marie (2009) Fictions of authority : enchanters, teachers and mentors in selected fiction of Iris Murdoch and A.S. Byatt. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Roynon, Tessa Kate (2006) Transforming America : Toni Morrison and classical tradition. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Regan, Lisa (2005) 'Men who are men and women who are women': fascism, psychology and feminist resistance in the work of Winifred Holtby. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Rogers, Natasha (2004) The representation of trauma in narrative : a study of six late twentieth century novels. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Robson, Lynn Alison (2003) 'No nine days wonder': embedded Protestant narratives in early modern prose murder pamphlets 1573-1700. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Ray, Nicholas (2002) Tragedy and otherness: Sophocles, Shakespeare, psychoanalysis. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Reeves, Kate (2000) Laughter and madness in post-war American fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Robson, Julia Caroline (2000) The dialectic of self and other in Montaigne, Proust and Woolf. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Ruben, Mel (1998) Grace under pressure : re-reading Giselle. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Robbins, Catherine Ruth (1996) Decadence and sexual politics in three fin-de-siècle writers : Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons and Vernon Lee. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Rao, Eleonora (1991) Strategies for identity : the fiction of Margaret Atwood. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Sangangamsakun, Thirayut (2021) Trans-Victorian : rewriting Victorian fiction in Thailand. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Shin, Jung Ju (2020) (Re)turn of the abject: representation of Asian (American) masculinity in the West. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Shorland, Sophie (2019) ‘Blazing stars’: early modern celebrity culture, 1580-1626. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Schauss, Martin (2018) Like a Thing Forsaken: Beckett, Sebald and the Politics of Materiality. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Scherer, Madeleine (2018) A global schema: the Graeco-Roman underworld in Ireland and the Caribbean. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Stock, Robert P. (2018) Do you hear what I hear? : inferring voice in celebrity translation in the theatre. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Stones, Andrew (2018) Lines of flight: Gilles Deleuze and the becoming of world literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Starr, Robert (2017) 'Nailed to the rolls of honour, crucified' : Irish literary responses to the Great War. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Shafer, Joseph R. (2017) Resistances in bodily form: post-1945 American Poetry and D.H. Lawrence. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Smith, Katherine Jo (2016) Ovidian female-voiced complaint poetry in early modern England. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Santos, Emanuelle Rodrigues dos (2016) Late postcoloniality : state, violence and wealth in the literatures of early 21st century Portuguese-speaking Africa. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Selleri, Andrea (2013) The author as a critical category, 1850-1900. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Sheeha, Iman (2013) Staging the servant : an examination of the roles of household servants in early modern domestic tragedy. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Skomorokhova, Svetlana (2012) "Arising from the depths" (Kupala) : a study of Belarusian literature in English translation. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Smith, Christian, (Researcher in English) (2012) Shakespeare's influence on Marx, Freud and the Frankfurt school critical theorists. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Scarth, Katherine Ada (2012) Near London and Brighton : suburbs in fiction, 1780s-1820s. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Scott, Francesca M. (2011) The fuzzy theory and women writers in the late eighteenth century. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Smith, Victoria Ellen (2011) If walls had mouths : representations of the Anglo-Fante household and the domestic slave in nineteenth-century Cape Coast (Ghana). PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Senior, Emily (2010) Communicating disease : the Caribbean and the medical imagination, 1764–1834. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Sheils, Barry (2010) Playing at being : style, ethics, and W.B. Yeats. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Spratley, Peter F. (2008) Wordsworth's sonnet corpus. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Scott, Charlotte (2005) Shakespeare and the idea of the book. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Sim, Wai-chew (2002) Globalisation and dislocation in the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Sedgwick, James Martin (2001) Emily Dickinson's grotesque: ambivalent interactions with uncertainty. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Swain, Stella (1992) The uses of madness in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction : the relation between narrative strategy and disturbed states of consciousness. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Shuttleworth, Antony (1991) The poetics of impurity : Louis MacNeice, writing and the thirties. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Salgado, Kshanike Minoli (1991) Towards a definition of Indian literary feminism : an analysis of the novels of Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal and Anita Desai. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Surma, Anne (1991) Disputing authorities : the longer fiction of Rebecca West. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Shaaban, Bouthaina (1981) Shelley's influence on the Chartist poets, with particular emphasis on Ernest Charles Jones and Thomas Cooper. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Tan Xing Long, Ian (2020) Poetry as appropriative proximity : Wallace Stevens, Martin Heidegger and the language of being. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Ttoouli, George (2017) Twentieth century North American serial poetic form & ecological thinking. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Thomas, Sita Chandra (2017) ‘In search of a new national story’: Issues of cultural diversity in the casting and performance of Shakespeare in Britain 2012–2016. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Taylor-Brown, Emilie (2016) Miasmas, mosquitoes, and microscopes: parasitology and the British literary imagination, 1885-1935. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Tsang, Michael Yat Him (2015) At interregnum : Hong Kong and its English writing. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Taylor, Juliette (2003) Foreign music: linguistic estrangement and its textual effects in Joyce, Beckett, Nabokov and Rushdie. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Terry, Jennifer Ann (2003) "Shuttles in the rocking loom of history": dislocation in Toni Morrison's fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Turner, Rachael Lucy (2000) Myth, biography and the female role in the plays of Pam Gems. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Townsend, Joanna Kate (1999) Speaking the body, representing the self : hysterical rhetoric on stage. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Taylor, Jenny Bourne (1987) Wilkie Collins and nineteenth-century psychology : cultural significance and fictional form. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Turton, Glyn (1984) Turgenev and the context of English literature, 1850-1900. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Udomlamun, Nanthanoot (2013) Materiality and memory in contemporary diasporic and postcolonial fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Verlander, Freya (2020) (Skin)aesthetics: a study of skin(s) in spectatorship. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Vince, Máté (2013) From 'aequivocatio' to the 'Jesuitical equivocation' : changing concepts of ambiguity in early modern England. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Voyiatzaki, Evi (2000) The body in the text : James Joyce's Ulysses and the modern Greek novel. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Verma, Rajiva (1972) Concepts of myth and ritual, and criticism of Shakespeare, 1880-1970. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wolfgang, William Floyd (2020) Grassroots Shakespeare: amateur and community-based Shakespeare performance in the United States of America. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wills, James (2020) Fictions of justice : literary lawyers in the American South, 1946-1966. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wu, Aurelia D. (2019) The cultural legacy of Oscar Wilde in modern China and beyond (1909–2019). PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Watt, Gary (2018) Performance rhetoric in Shakespeare and law. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Weaver, Camilla (2017) Reading seeing: visuality in the contemporary novel. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Whitehouse, Paul C. (2016) Violence and frontier in twentieth century Native American literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wood, Laura Clare (2015) Works of taste and fancy : the woman and the child reader in nineteenth century literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Williams, Alun Rhys (2014) Architects of impurity : a study of the political imagination in contemporary fantastic fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wako, Miho (2012) Figured in lively paint : Eastern decorative art, English aestheticism, and consumer culture 1862-1900. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

West, John Peter (2011) Dryden and enthusiasm. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

White, Troy Nelson (2010) The Gothic threshold of Sabine Baring-Gould : a study of the Gothic fiction of a Victorian squarson. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Webb, Andrew (Andrew S.) (2010) ‘His country...not the country he had fought for’ : British literatures and world lit. theory : the case of Edward Thomas. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wells, Sherah Kristen (2009) 'Another world,/its walls are thin': psychosis and Catholicism in the texts of Antonia White and Emily Holmes Coleman. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wallbank, Adrian J. (2008) Political, religious, and philosophical mentoring of the Romantic period : the dialogue genre. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wood, Madeleine Alice (2008) Victorian familial enigmas: inheritance and influence. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Westall, Claire Louise (2007) What should we know of cricket who only England know? : cricket and its heroes in English and Caribbean literature. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wong, Hiu Wing (2006) "Talk-stories" in the fictions of Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Weller, Saranne Esther Elizabeth (2001) 'Written with a Mrs Stowe's feeling' : Uncle Tom's cabin and the paradigms of Southern authorship in the anti-Tom tradition, 1852-1902. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wang, Nian En (1992) The xing : a comparative approach to Chinese theories of the literary symbolic. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Webster, Duncan (1984) Representing the economy and the economies of representation : readings in the fiction and criticism of Henry James. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Wheale, John William (1983) Redemption in the work of Francis Stuart. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Yoon, Jaewon (2022) Post-millennial American and British finance-crisis fiction. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Yiannitsaros, Christopher (2016) Deadly domesticity : Agatha Christie's 'middlebrow' Gothic, 1930-1970. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Yoon, Sun Kyoung (2011) (Re)-constructing Homer : English translations of the Iliad and Odyssey between 1850 and 1950. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Yun, Hunam (2010) Appropriations of Irish drama by modern Korean nationalist theatre : a focus on the influence of Sean O’Casey in a colonial context. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Are you looking for an engaging literary research paper topic? Whether you're writing a college-level essay or a master's thesis, the right literature research paper topics can make all the difference. They range from exploring particular genres or authors to examining the use of language in literary works. By researching these topics, you will gain a greater understanding of the ideas, improve your critical thinking skills, and learn to appreciate the nuances. This article will explore such literature topics for research and open up endless possibilities for analysis and interpretation, ranging from classic to modern-day texts. Are you ready to choose a trending topic and write a paper that will win your professor’s heart? 

What Are Literary Research Paper Topics?

Literary research paper topics focus on a particular literary work, such as a book, poem, novel, play, or story. They provide a great starting point for researching the specific aspect you're planning to explore for a better perception of the idea and help to eliminate any artificial facet. Literary research topics may analyze a single text, compare different writings by the same author, or contrast different authors' styles.  Common literature topics for research papers comprise symbolism, characterization, themes, plot structure, historical context, point-of-view analysis, biographical contexts, and intertextual connections. These research paper topics may also focus on how an author has been interpreted or evaluated over time, analyzing the critical reception of their works and examining any changes within literary canonization. Additionally, these topics can explore how literary works intersect with other disciplines, such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, or economics.

Characteristics of Good Literature Research Paper Topics

Literary research paper topics are usually considered good when they are:

• Relevant They should be engaging, thought-provoking, and appropriate to the academic work.
• Specific Similarly, good literature research topics must have a narrow focus and not be overly broad.
• Interesting They should pique your interest and encourage you to explore and aspire to know more about the literary work.
• Challenging Deep analysis, thoughtful reflection, and creative thinking are also vital.
• Unique They should be memorable and offer new insights into academic work.

With these important characteristics of literary topics for research papers in mind, you're ready to start writing!

How to Choose a Literature Research Paper Topic?

Choosing a literature research paper topic can be daunting, but with careful thought and planning, you're sure to find the perfect one. In order to do this, you need to complete the following:

• Brainstorm: First, start by brainstorming topics that interest you. Think about the works you've been studying, authors and genres you enjoy reading, and themes that have resonated with you.
• Narrow it down: Once you've identified a few research topics that intrigue you, narrow them down to one that is most relevant and specific.
• Research: Explore if it is relevant. This will guarantee that you have enough material to work with.
• Refine: Once you have researched, refine your topic to ensure it is specific and engaging. Consider the most interesting aspects and how they can be explored further.
• Choose: Finally, choose the title that best reflects your interests and passions for an enjoyable research experience!

With these tips, you can find the perfect literary research paper topic! Don’t have time for reading piles of books? Get professional help with research paper writing from StudyCrumb and have your study completed by a real pro.

List of Literature Research Paper Topics

A list of literature topics for research offers a wide range of literary-related issues that can be explored and studied for your project. It includes ideas that could spark your creativity and help you choose the best title. Whether you're interested in exploring the works of Shakespeare or examining modern literature, this list of literary research paper topics has something for everyone!

• Use of symbolism in romantic poetry.
• Importance of technology within cyberpunk genres.
• Impact of fantasy on contemporary culture.
• Representation of male or female authors as represented by classic literary works.
• Postmodernist views of time and space in literature.
• Representation of race and ethnicity within contemporary fiction.
• Representation of LGBTQ characters in literary works.
• The role of mythology during the era of ancient works.
• Social media impact on modern texts.
• Classic and contemporary literary criticism.

Interesting Literary Research Paper Topics

If you are interested in classic books or modern trends, these ideas can be a fascinating starting point for your project. They include theories, criticism, comparison, and specific authors or genres. Besides providing an analysis of the work, a literary research paper topic could also comprise examining different themes. Explore the following interesting literature topics for your project:

• Literary influences of Jane Austen's works.
• Symbolism as represented by gothic texts.
• Relevance of classic mythology within contemporary fiction.
• The role of magic or fantasy in children's literature.
• The role of women in Victorian literature.
• Representation of race and ethnicity in early 20th-century literature.
• Themes of love and loss in romantic poetry.
• The use of horror genres in contemporary fiction.
• Postcolonialism's impact on literary works.
• Nature in 19th-century literature .
• Representation of LGBTQ characters as represented by contemporary fiction.
• Technology's impact on modern literary works.
• Classic and contemporary interpretations of gothic texts.
• The role of magic and fantasy in modern literary works.
• Representation of death and loss in 20th-century works.

Great Literature Research Paper Topics

A list of great literature research topics provides a variety of ideas related to literary works. These research topics in literature can offer an exciting starting point for your English paper:

• Rebellion themes in Shakespeare's tragedies.
• Class and economic status in Victorian texts.
• Symbolism in romantic poetry.
• Impact of British imperialism on literary fiction worldwide.
• Gender and sexuality representation in early 20th-century writings.
• Postcolonialism in 19th-century fiction.
• The literary influence of WWII on modern writings.
• Vampires' role in gothic literary texts.
• Use of fantasy in childhood writings.
• Technology's impact on contemporary literary works.
• Race and ethnicity as represented by postmodern fiction.
• Religion in romantic poetry.
• Themes of love and loss in 20th-century texts.
• Horror genres in literary fiction.
• Postmodernism's impact on contemporary literary works.

Unique Literature Research Paper Topics

Unique literature topics for research papers can help students explore new concepts and gain a deeper understanding of their subject. Below are rare literature paper topics for you to review:

• The role of jealousy in 17th-century literary works.
• Gender identity as represented by reformist fiction.
• Mythological figures as portrayed by Greek and Roman poetry.
• The relationship between gender and power in Shakespeare's plays.
• Themes of isolation in 20th-century British poetry.
• Metaphors in the works of Gabriel García Márquez .
• Themes of rebellion and revolution in African American literary texts.
• The role of women in medieval romance literature.
• Poverty representation in Victorian novels.
• Themes of oppression and freedom in colonial Latin American texts.
• Use of metaphor and allegory in Dante's divine comedy.
• Influence of industrialization on 19th-century fiction.
• Dystopian settings within modern literature.
• Religion in contemporary fiction.

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Controversial Literary Research Paper Topics

Controversial literary research topics can provide students with an opportunity to explore complex and sometimes contentious issues related to literary texts. Find below a controversial literary research paper topic for your dream English project!

• Racial stereotypes during 19th-century English literature.
• Themes of sexuality and desire in ancient Greek poetry.
• The relationship between political power and language in Shakespeare's plays.
• Conflict representation during 20th-century English fiction.
• English role in colonial Indian literature.
• Gender and racial representations within African American autobiographies.
• Themes of justice and control in Victorian English novels.
• Themes of oppression and resistance in feminist texts.
• The role of English in modern Japanese fiction.
• Themes of identity and belonging in postcolonial Indian literature.
• Censorship, free speech, and social responsibility in 19th-century English novels.
• Politics and power representations in Latin American poetry.
• Gender, race, and class representations in English renaissance drama.
• English as a tool for political ideology within the works of George Orwell.
• Language used to defy authority during modern fiction writing.

Fresh Literature Research Paper Ideas

Coming up with fresh ideas for literature research topics can be daunting. Students may want to look at the works they have studied or venture outside the traditional reading list and explore different authors and genres. Some literature research paper ideas comprise studying how certain authors influenced the literary movement, analyzing how language has been used throughout history, or examining gender, race, and class representations from a literary text. Here is a perfect list of fresh ideas!

• Aesthetics as presented by postmodern fiction.
• The theme of loss as portrayed by African authors .
• Use of language throughout history.
• Identity and belonging representation in contemporary young adult fiction.
• The intersection between art and literature in modern poetry.
• Themes of authority, rebellion, and revolution in medieval epic poetry.
• Role of fantasy in horror fiction.
• Gender, race, and class representations within British romanticism.
• American literary realism and naturalism.
• Influence of symbolism on French modernist poetry.
• Construction of memory within African American autobiographies.
• Representation of narrative time in Latin American fiction.
• Social injustice theme during early 20th-century American drama.
• The relationship between social identity and language during postcolonial fiction.
• Values and beliefs representations as presented by ancient Greek mythology.

Literature Research Paper Topics for Students

For students looking for research topics in literature for study, there is a wide variety of options available. Depending on the level and course, they might focus on analyzing particular authors, literary movements, or genres, exploring the use of language throughout history, or examining representations of gender, race, and class in books. You also need to study literary devices and their effects on readers when exploring literary topics for a research paper . Below are examples of literature topics for different students:

Literature Research Paper Topics for High School

These are literature topics to research, specifically tailored to high school students. They involve exploring the influence of literary work on culture, analyzing a single author's literary movement or genre, or investigating language use throughout history. This list of research topics in literature for high school provides an original starting point for your literary project!

• Racism as presented during early 20th-century works.
• Social criticism within contemporary dystopian young adult fiction.
• Folklore's impact on contemporary poetry.
• Representation of nature in modern literature.
• Spirituality as portrayed by reformist literature.
• Social class representation within postmodern novels.
• The theme of environment in romantic works.
• Colonialism representation during postcolonial works.
• Effects of pop culture on modern fiction.
• Mental illness representation during 19th-century poetry.
• The role of music and art in early 20th-century literary texts.
• Literature's influence on identity building in minority cultures.
• Family dynamics in postmodern poetry.
• Family and community representations during gothic fiction.
• Literature as a tool for social change.

Literature Research Paper Topics for College Students

These titles entail more serious and in-depth scrutiny than a high school literary paper. A college-level literary research paper topic provides students with a broader range of analysis. It encompasses looking at literature as a form of political commentary to get its relationship with other art forms. Below are literature research paper topics for college students:

• Identity construction during postmodern poetry.
• Alienation themes within modern fiction.
• Gender role representations in Shakespearean tragedies.
• The relationship between narrative and memory within Holocaust literature.
• Nature's role in contemporary American fiction.
• Authority and subversion themes during the early 20th-century drama.
• Race, class, and gender representation within African American autobiographies.
• Social media influence the literary language.
• The relationship between social identity and language in postcolonial fiction.
• Values as presented by ancient Greek mythology .
• Psychological distress during 20th-century war narratives.
• Attitudes towards mental illness as portrayed by gothic texts.
• The relationship between science and literary imagination.
• Social hierarchy within Victorian novels.
• Religion's role in southern American literature.

Literary Research Paper Topics by Categories

Research paper topics for literature by category offer an exclusive and stimulating perspective on literary analysis worldwide. They can be grouped into literary movements, authors, and genres, as well as topics related to language and history. If you are interested in European, American, and English literature topics, these ideas will help you find the perfect literary research paper topic for your project.

World Literature Research Paper Topics

Research paper topics for world literature allow students to explore literary works from any part of the world, including texts written in English, Spanish, and other languages. Below is a list that provides original world literature research topics for any project:

• Impact of colonialism on native literary traditions.
• Gender representation within French literature.
• Religion's role within literary works from Latin America.
• Symbolism in English poetry from the 19th century.
• Themes of nationalism within modern Russian fiction.
• Power and politics in Spanish plays.
• Conflict as portrayed by African literature.
• The role of folklore within Chinese fiction.
• Themes of cultural identity in Japanese drama.
• Family ties in Italian poetry.
• Symbolism in Arabic literature.
• Social class representation in Indian novels.
• Impact of globalization on middle eastern fiction.
• Human rights themes by contemporary Australian poets.
• Western representations of other cultures in modern literature.

American Literature Research Paper Topics

In research paper topics for American literature, you examine the works of early American writers and poets, as well as those from later periods. Here is a list of American literature topics for your paper!

• Attitudes towards race in early American novels.
• Colonialism during 19th-century poetry.
• Freedom and rebellion themes within revolutionary literature.
• The emergence of gothic horror in American fiction.
• Impact of transcendentalism on American writing.
• Gender representation during pre-civil war literature .
• Themes of morality in post-World War II American fiction.
• Role of religion during 19th-century American novels.
• Slavery and its abolition by American poets.
• Social class representation during early American drama.
• Themes of identity in postmodern American fiction.
• Industrialization of 20th-century literature.
• War and conflict representation by contemporary American playwrights.
• Racism in 20th-century American novels.
• Assimilation and immigration themes in post-World War II American literature.

British Literature Research Paper Topics

In British literature research topics, you explore works from early British writers to contemporary authors. Ideally, research topics for British literature should encompass works written by authors from all eras, including Medieval, Renaissance, and modern. Here is a list of English literature research paper topics for your perfect essay!

• Gender representation during medieval English literature.
• Colonialism's effects on British literary works during the 18th century.
• Influence of British writers on modern literature.
• The role of nature in 18th-century British novels.
• Interpretations of classic British literary works.
• Social class representations during 19th-century British fiction.
• Themes of love and romance within Victorian literature.
• Industrialization's impact on 20th-century British novels.
• Patriotism and nationalism during post-World War II literary work.
• Multiculturalism representations in postmodern British fiction.
• Effects of censorship on British authors during the 20th century.
• Mental health representation in modern British poetry.
• Representation of historical events in British works throughout time.
• Technological representations in 21st-century British Novels.
• Intersectionality by contemporary British playwrights.

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European Literary Research Paper Topics

European literature research paper topics offer an excellent opportunity to explore the works of European authors. They allow you to study and analyze the academic traditions and cultures of some of Europe's most influential writers. You can find such literary research paper topic ideas in the list below:

• Representations of the European monarchy in classic novels.
• Censorship effects on European authors during the 20th century.
• Impact of World War II on European authors.
• Gender representations within Victorian poetry.
• Literary works from different countries and cultures in Europe.
• Use of language, symbolism, and imagery to explore themes in European texts.
• Themes of nature and environment within German short stories.
• Technology representations in late Victorian poetry.
• Popular culture's influence on European literary movements from the 20th century to modern times.
• Impact of European literary works on people's perceptions of other cultures.
• Use of supernatural elements within European gothic writings from the 18th to 19th centuries.
• Identity representations in French social realism texts.
• Technology's impact on contemporary European literary works.
• Family and community representations during post-war theater.
• Themes of justice and injustice within European dystopian texts.

Literature Research Paper Ideas by Periods

You may aspire to find literature topics for research papers from different historical periods. This involves studying literature from various cultures or eras, such as ancient, medieval, or modern ones. These ideas also cover the examination of themes and symbols used in writings and scrutinizing characters and their development through various works. Other topics include the exploration of texts from a political perspective in relation to their historical contexts. These ideas contain some literary research topics from various periods:

Ancient Literary Research Paper Topics

There are many exciting options to consider if you're looking for ancient literature research paper topics. They can be studied with regard to history, culture, art, and philosophy. To gain more insight, you could explore the works of Homer, Henry James, Virgil, and the Mahabharata, or old Egyptian writings, such as The Iliad and Odyssey . Below is a list of ancient literature topics for research you can choose from.

• Gender representations in epic poetry.
• Role of mythology and religion in ancient texts.
• Influence of philosophy on ancient literature.
• Power representations in Greek tragedy.
• Heroism by early epic authors.
• Love and marriage in ancient texts.
• Ancient narratives of war and conflict.
• Slavery representations in Roman poetry.
• The role of music and art in classical literature.
• Nature representations in ancient texts.
• Politics' influence on Greek comedy.
• Family and community representations in roman narratives.
• Characters' representation in epic poetry.
• The role of technology in early literary works.
• Representations of the divine in ancient texts.

Read more: History Research Topics for Students 

Medieval Literature Research Paper Topics

The medieval literary study provides a unique opportunity to explore literature research topics of the Middle Ages. From Beowulf to The Canterbury Tales , these works offer insights into this era's cultural beliefs and values. Here are such literary topics for research papers to focus on:

• Representations of medieval chivalry in literary works.
• Religion's influence on medieval works.
• Gender representation in medieval texts.
• The role of magic in medieval narratives.
• The impact of feudalism on medieval texts.
• Honor and loyalty representations by chivalric texts.
• The role of courtly love in medieval works.
• Knights and warriors' representations in literary works.
• Warfare representations in medieval texts.
• The role of education and learning in medieval literature.

Renaissance Literary Research Paper Topics

The Renaissance literature research paper ideas explore works of literature during the Renaissance era, which spanned from the 14th to the 17th century. They focus on the themes, authors, and literature of this period to provide a better understanding of how literary works have evolved within this timeframe and their impact on our current literature. Some of the most influential figures who contributed immensely to writings during this era were William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. If you are interested in researching this period, you can consider a literature research paper topic from the list below:

• Love and romance representations in Renaissance texts.
• Science and technology in 16th-century literature.
• Class and social status representations in Renaissance literary works.
• Classical mythology in Renaissance poetry.
• Representations of family and community in Renaissance narratives.
• Effects of humanism on Renaissance literature in Europe.
• Imagery role by William Shakespeare .
• Representations of art, music, and theater in Renaissance texts.
• Politics' role in 16th-century literary texts.
• Nature representation by John Milton or Torquato Tasso.
• Exploration influence on Renaissance narratives.
• Influence of Renaissance literature on modern writing.
• Women's representation in literary texts by Anne Bradstreet or Aphra Behn.
• Magic and supernatural representations in literary works of Renaissance.
• Humanism and individualism themes within Renaissance literature.

Romantic Literature Research Paper Ideas

Romantic literature emerged during the late 18th century and flourished throughout the early 19th century in Europe. It is characterized by its focus on emotion and depictions of nature. This movement had a lasting impact on literary works and has been highly influential. Research topics in literature can explore the writings of authors such as Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth. Here are some ideas related to romanticism:

• Nature representations in Romantic texts.
• The role of emotion as depicted in 19th-century literature.
• Influence of Romantic authors on modern literature and culture.
• Women's representation in Romantic narratives.
• Industrialization impact on 19th-century texts.
• Influence of religion and superstition in early Romantic texts.
• Use of technology to discuss themes in Romantic texts from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
• The role of education as portrayed by Romantic narratives.
• Character analysis and plot structure in gothic fiction.
• Nationalism and patriotism as represented by post-Napoleonic war poems.

Modernist Literary Research Paper Topics

Modern literature emerged during the early 20th century until the end of World War II. It is characterized by a rejection of traditional conventions and focused on experimentation with form. This movement had an unprecedented impact on literature research topics and is highly influential today. If you are looking for literary topics for research papers that focus on modernism, consider exploring the following:

• Nature representations by modern texts.
• Social inequality in 21st-century novels.
• Modernism's influence on current literature and culture.
• Climate change within contemporary fiction.
• Impact of social injustice on 20th-century literary works.
• Urbanization representations by modern literary texts.
• Education's influence on modernist narratives.
• Wealth and power in early modernist texts.
• Themes of urban life by Ezra Pound or Wallace Stevens.
• Modernism's impact on classical literature.
• Globalization themes within postmodern poetry.
• Multiculturalism themes in contemporary literary works.
• Mental health representations in modern British novels.
• Global conflict representation in modern fiction.
• The influence of psychoanalysis on modernist literature.

Current Literature Research Paper Ideas

Current literature paper topics can look at the latest trends. They include exploring contemporary works such as Harry Potter by J.K Rowling and Stardust by Neil Gaiman. These topics may also involve analyzing social media's effects on literary writings. If you are looking for current literary topics for a research paper, consider the following:

• Technological impact on literary works in the 21st century.
• Art, music, and theater in modern texts.
• Impact of conflict on recent literary works.
• Social injustice in 21st-century narratives.
• Racism, ethnicity, and slavery in contemporary texts.
• Wealth and power in recent literary works.
• Globalization themes in postmodern poetry.
• Urbanization in modern writings.
• Immigration within postmodern British novels.

In case you need more paper topics, feel free to browse our blog. We have a wide arsenal of ideas starting from philosophy research paper topics to education research paper topics .  

Bottom Line on Literature Research Paper Topics

Literature topics for research can explore a wide range of themes and works. Whether you are looking for visionary ideas about poetry, fiction, or books from different eras, there is no shortage of literature paper topics to choose from. To narrow down your focus and find the best idea for your project, consider researching literary movements, reading widely, and thinking about the areas that interest you most.  Literature topics for research papers should be chosen based on students' interests and areas of expertise. By conducting in-depth research, you will gain a greater appreciation for literary work and its impact on society. With this article as a guide, you can take the time to find a topic that speaks to you and create an engaging research paper.

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