Filologia angielska, studia drugiego stopnia

Admission Topics for Second-Cycle Studies

English and American Literature

1. Literary theory and contemporary methodologies: fundamental concepts of literature and key critical approaches (e.g., Structuralism, Psychoanalytic criticism, Feminist and Gender Studies, Postcolonialism, Ecocriticism, and Trauma studies) in the interpretation of literary texts.
2. Medieval and Renaissance literature: major genres and surviving texts of Old and Middle English (the Arthurian romance, the Alliterative Revival, Chaucer); the English sonnet, and the development of Elizabethan secular theatre (including Shakespeare's dramatic output).
3. 17th-century and Augustan literature: literature of the Interregnum and Restoration; John Milton's epic poetry; the rise of the essay, and Augustan prose and satire (Swift, Pope).
4. The rise of the novel and British Romanticism: the genesis of the English novel (Defoe, Richardson, Fielding); the "new theory of poetry" (first and second generation of Romantics), and the Gothic novel.
5. The Victorian age and the fin de siècle: the socio-intellectual background (Darwinism, industrialisation), the Victorian novel (Dickens, Brontë sisters), realism vs. aestheticism, and the beginnings of colonial discourse (Kipling, Conrad).
6. The early 20th century and Modernism: the socio-intellectual background of Modernist poetry (Imagism, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats) and experimental prose (stream of consciousness in D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf).
7. Post-war UK literature and drama: the post-war novel (Orwell, Golding) and the evolution of 20th-century theatre (from poetic drama to Kitchen Sink drama, Angry Young Men, and the Theatre of the Absurd).
8. Contemporary British literature: postmodernism and postcolonial perspectives in the contemporary novel (McEwan, Ishiguro); major trends in contemporary women's literature (Hilary Mantel, Ali Smith, Deborah Levy).
9. ​American Literature to the late 19th century: Native American heritage, the American Revolution and Enlightenment, American Romanticism (Transcendentalism vs. Dark Romanticism), and the shift towards Realism, Regionalism, and Naturalism.
10. 20th-century American Literature: the genesis and development of American Modernism, the Lost Generation, and post-war movements in American prose and poetry.

English Linguistics

1. Main units of syntax: phrase, clause, and sentence; modification vs. complementation in English syntax.
2. The internal structure of major phrasal categories: NPs, AdjPs, AdvPs, PPs, and VPs.

1. Tense, aspect, and mood in the English verb system.
2. Sentence patterns in English: intransitive, intensive, monotransitive, ditransitive, and complex-transitive constructions.
3. Syntactic functions (subject, direct/indirect object, complement, adjunct) and semantic roles (agent, patient, experiencer, etc.) in English sentences.
4. Finite and non-finite clauses in English: types, distribution, and syntactic functions.
5. Construction Grammar: intransitive, monotransitive, ditransitive, and resultative constructions in English.
6. Information packaging: passive constructions, raising constructions, and extraposition in English.
7. Cleft sentences in English: It-clefts vs. Wh-clefts (structure, function, and information structure).
8. Contrastive grammar: typological contrasts between English (analytic/isolating) and Polish (synthetic/inflectional); structural, categorical, functional, and morphosyntactic differences illustrated with examples.