Example English dissertation topic 12:

Contrasting sides of urban-life? A comparative study of the urban imagery used in Gaskell’s Mary Barton (Manchester) and Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Nottingham)

As two great northern cities Manchester and Nottingham are depicted very differently within the works of Gaskell and Sillitoe. This dissertation firstly analyses the ways in which both cities are depicted and then compares and contrasts them thematically. Thereafter it seeks to contextualise the novels with public perceptions of the north during the period and asks the extent to which the reality of public perceptions of industrial cities is borne out or questioned by the depictions of Nottingham and Manchester within the two works.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Hones, S. (2008), ‘Text as it happens: Literary geography’. Geography Compass, Vol. 2, pp. 1301-1317.
• Pocock, D.C.D. (1979), ‘The novelist’s image of the north’,
• Pollard, A. (1961), ‘Sooty Manchester and the social reform novel 1845 – 1855 an examination of Sybil, Mary Barton, North and South, and Hard Times’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine, Vol. 18, pp. 85 – 101.
• Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 4, (1), pp. 62-76.