Have you ever wondered how our language was created and why we speak like and write like we do? What inspires us to write great works and why are they great? We have a vast and interesting past of conflict, settlers from Scandinavia to Germany and Africa leading to Brythonic, Norn, Doric, and Gaelic. English itself is complicated by words similar to Viking, Italian, French, Gael, German and other more exotic influences due to our trading and travelling past.

Aberdeen offers focused, supportive teaching from internationally renowned scholars who are leaders in their field. Our flexible, modular degree programmes in English allow you to develop your own interests and enthusiasms while acquiring advanced critical and communicative skills that will prepare you for a wide range of careers. Our literature has inspired people the world over to create and understand the times we live in, documenting them forever, inspiring our imagination and creating visions from the past in our minds.

The literature of Scotland is intertwined with heritage and innovation from the early Middle Ages to the modernist period looking at the great periods such as Romanticism and writers such as Sir Walter Scott. In Aberdeen, we are not far from the birth place of J.M.Barrie of Kirriemuir who inspires children's imaginations globally and the adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson and more recently Alistair McLean to give a different dimension to our survival instinct in modern times. Throughout all of this literature we are able to build a picture of living, culture, history and thinking of each period.

With English you can also look at literature from Ireland, translated European literature and American literature looking at the approach to writing, theory and reading.