Old and Middle English literature. Introduce the background and the various literary genres current in the period (597–1066–1450). The heroic epic, the romance, lyric poetry. Talk in more detail about Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, analysing two particular tales.
  English drama from medieval times to the Renaissance. Introduce the main developments in, and the major dramatic genres of, the period (theatrical traditions, performances, audiences; tragedy, comedy, tragi-comedy, the chronicle play, the romance). Discuss, in detail, one comedy and one tragedy either by Marlowe or Shakespeare.
  English poetry from Wyatt to Milton. Introduce the main developments in the history of the genre in the period (the birth of new poetical forms in England, the reception of the Continental Renaissance, etc.). Discuss, in detail, three representative works of the genre written in the period.
  The long eighteenth century. Provide an overview of the era, highlighting the major developments in its literature (Restoration drama; the rise of the novel; diverse trends in eighteenth century poetry). Discuss, in detail, one longer work (drama, novel) or two major poems from the period.
  Romanticism. Provide an overview of the era, highlighting the major developments in its literature (the emergence of Romanticism: the historical context, the intellectual and poetic inheritance; the first generation of Romantic poets; the second generation of Romantic poets). Discuss, in detail, two representative works from the period.
  The Victorian age. Provide an overview of the era, highlighting the major developments in its literature (the Romantic tradition; Victorian realism; transition towards modernism). Discuss, in detail, one novel, or two major poems from the period.
  The English novel from the 1890s to the 1960s. Introduce the main developments in the history of the genre in the period (modernism, realism, allegory and satire, utopia and dystopia, etc.). Discuss, in detail, one representative novel.
  English drama from the 1890s to the 1960s. Introduce the main developments in the history of the genre in the period (the comedy of ideas, turn-of-the century experimentation, modernism, the theatre of the absurd, the “Angries” and the kitchen-sink drama, etc.). Discuss, in detail, one representative drama.
  English poetry from the 1890s to the 1960s. Introduce the main developments in the history of the genre in the period (early and “classical” modernism, the “engaged” poetry of the 1930s and 1940s, New Romanticism, the Movement, etc.). Discuss, in detail, two representative poems.
  Contemporary English literature. Highlight some characteristic developments in the literature of the recent past. Introduce the work, in some detail, of a major writer or poet (Salman Rushdie, John Fowles, Angela Carter, Tom Stoppard, Seamus Heaney).
  American poetry and drama. Discuss one of the following topics in detail: American poetry from the period of Colonization to the age of Enlightenment; The poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson; High modernism and radical modernism (Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams), the Harlem Renaissance (Langston Hughes); Postmodern poetry (the Black Mountain Poets, the Beats, the Confessionals, the San Francisco Renaissance, the New York School, the Language Poets); Modern American drama (Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee).
  American prose and fiction. Discuss one of the following topics, in detail: American prose from the period of Colonization to the age of Enlightenment; Aspects of 19th century prose (Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Henry James); American Transcendentalism (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller); 19th century women writers and the slave narrative; Modernist fiction (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner); Twentieth century women writers (Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Villa Cather, Toni Morrison), Postmodern fiction (Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut).