Oct 15, 2024  
Undergraduate College Catalog 2024-2025 
    
Undergraduate College Catalog 2024-2025

English Major: Medieval/Renaissance Literature concentration


Return to {$returnto_text} Return to: Programs of Study

Major in English

The English major offers students a rich variety of courses in literature, culture, and rhetoric that foregrounds learning from diverse perspectives. You will be joining a collaborative environment with your professors and peers, in which you read, discuss, and write about poetry, fiction, nonfiction, dramatic literature, and theoretical texts. You’ll expand your worldview while sharpening your analytical and communication skills. In addition to the general English major, Wheaton offers concentrations for students who want to focus on a particular area such as literary and cultural studies, writing studies and rhetoric, youth literature, media, and culture, and medieval/renaissance studies. Wheaton English majors become writers, editors, content creators, project managers, analysts, researchers, and more in nearly every profession from publishing and marketing to law and healthcare. They’re also well-prepared for law school or graduate study in English, Creative Writing, library science, and teaching.

 

Medieval/Renaissance Literature Concentration


Students who have a particular interest in the literature and culture of Europe in the Middle Ages (500-1450) and the Renaissance (1450-1625) can choose to concentrate in Medieval and Renaissance literature. There are opportunities to learn earlier forms of the English language–Anglo-Saxon (500-1200) and Middle English (1200-1500), to study Old Norse and the Vikings, and to read Beowulf, the Canterbury Tales, Dante’s Inferno, the plays and poems of Shakespeare, and many other literary monuments. 

A total of 44 credits are required. Four of these credits may be from a course on Medieval or Renaissance topics in a department other than English, but you are not required to go outside the department.

Five Medieval/Renaissance literature courses from the following:


Two 300-level English literature courses


Any 300 level English course can fulfill this requirement.

Two additional English courses


Students may also take one Medieval/Renaissance course at any level in another department and one English course to fulfill this requirement. 

Return to {$returnto_text} Return to: Programs of Study