Mary Morrissey

Within the department I teach across a range of literary periods, looking at non-realist and fantasy literature from the Middle Ages to the present, and political non-fiction.

I convene:

• EN2WPS (Writing in the Public Sphere). This module looks at political non-fiction on five historical debates on topics that continue to shape our politics (race, class, women’s rights, workers’ rights and the environment).
• EN3LV (Lyric Voices 1340-1660). This module explores short poems across the Medieval and Renaissance period with a particular emphasis on the adaptability of literary conventions and the links between poetry and song.

I co-convene:

• EN2MLR (Myth, Legend and Romance: Medieval storytelling). This module explores early and later medieval texts, from Beowulf  to The Canterbury Tales through an exploration of different models of storytelling, from ancient legend to courtly Romance.
• EN3RF (From Romance to Fantasy). This module looks at the history of non-realist fiction in English, from the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, through the Romances of Shakespeare, the Gothic stories of eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to twenty-first century Fantasy.
• ENMWRW (Women’s Writing, Women’s Rights). This interdisciplinary module (taught with colleagues from the History department) considers women’s writing on women’s rights, from Mary Wollstonecraft to the 20th century campaign for women’s suffrage.