Program Overview

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Overview

Discover works ranging from the ancient classics of Greece and Rome to the modern age. Develop an understanding of historical and cross-cultural literary traditions and the ways in which they interact, and explore what literature can tell us about different social, cultural and historical periods.

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Why study Comparative Literature at Kent?

Your course, your way:

Tailor your degree and inspire your curiosity with modules exploring childhood and adolescence, vampires in literature and film, women writing and gender, morality in literature, and film adaptation.

Global perspective:

all the benefits of a traditional literature degree combined with the study of literatures from around the world, including Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

Unearth hidden treasures:

Gain access to the Canterbury Cathedral Library and our Special Collections archive containing manuscripts, historic records, photographs, maps and printed books dating back to the late 8th century.

Explore historic Canterbury:

Our city is steeped in literary traditions from Chaucer to Dickens, from Marlowe to Conrad. In the heart of Kent, you can travel to London in under an hour by train, and coastal beaches are a short bus ride away.

Join a welcoming community:

Kent was first institution in the UK to teach Comparative Literature. Take advantage of our experienced, world-leading lecturers, working at the cutting edge of their fields and providing excellent support.

Get career-ready:

develop important skills to prepare you for tomorrow's world, leading to a wide range of careers including journalism, broadcasting, PR, teaching, marketing, publishing and writing.

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Did you know?

You do not need to be able to read in a foreign language to study Comparative Literature. The global texts studied will be provided in full translation, alongside literature originally written in English.

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What you'll learn

Throughout your course you will explore questions such as: What can a book say that a film cannot? What makes a tragedy by Sophocles so different from one written by Shakespeare? How have writers such as James Joyce engaged with Greek mythology? What is the evolution of the fairy tale from Charles Perrault to Walt Disney? In what ways might an English nineteenth-century novel of female adultery relate to a French, German, or Russian one?

Themes and areas you may explore include politics, testimony and power; the fairy tale; crime fiction; Latin American fiction, postcolonial literature; literature and seduction and creative writing.

See the modules you'll study

In addition to lectures and seminars, you can take part in events including literary readings, guest lectures and seminars. We offer workshops that provide a range of valuable skills that will enable you to apply your knowledge in the wider world and make you attractive to employers in a range of professions. At the end of your course, you could even add a year in Computing, Data Analytics, Journalism or a Language to your degree to increase your employability.

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What our students say

“(Doing Comparative Literature at Kent) I was exposed to literature I never would have picked up, ideas that shape the modern world we now live in and new ways of looking at things I thought I already knew a lot about.”

– Kuba Shand-Baptiste, graduate and commissioning editor at The Independent.

“The variety on my course has made me adaptable and I think I’ve gained a lot of transferable skills. I visited other universities but none stuck in my mind as much as Kent. I think it was the atmosphere and the attitude towards learning that people have here.”

– Naomi Gilad, graduate and Academic Instructor.