310+ Top Dissertation Topics in English Literature

Dissertation Topics in English Literature: English literature is a vast field that offers a wealth of dissertation topics spanning from contemporary works to classical text. Through these dissertation topics, you can easily explore various themes of identity, postcolonial narratives, feminist perspectives and etc. Selecting an appropriate dissertation topic is crucial step in any academic journey, as it helps you to research originally for intellectual growth and career development.

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Table of Contents

310+ Top Dissertation Topics in English Literature

In this article, we have listed around 310+ dissertation topics in English literature categorized into different literature like

Shakespearean Literature

Gender roles in Macbeth: A feminist perspective.
The influence of political context in Julius Caesar.
Madness and power in King Lear.
The concept of fate in Romeo and Juliet.
The role of women in Shakespeare’s comedies.
Racism and cultural identity in Othello.
Shakespeare’s portrayal of kingship in Richard II.
The supernatural in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Love and betrayal in Antony and Cleopatra.
Tragic flaws in Hamlet.
Shakespeare’s treatment of time in The Tempest.
The use of comic relief in Shakespeare’s tragedies.
The representation of revenge in Titus Andronicus.
Shakespeare’s depiction of historical events in Henry V.
The significance of soliloquies in Shakespearean drama.
Patriarchy and rebellion in The Taming of the Shrew.
Class and social mobility in Twelfth Night.
The evolution of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes.
The theme of political manipulation in Coriolanus.
Shakespeare’s influence on the modern stage.

Victorian Literature

The portrayal of industrialization in Charles Dickens’ novels.
Gender and class in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South.
The gothic elements in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
Marriage and morality in Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
The evolution of the Byronic hero in Victorian poetry.
The role of nature in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
The concept of the “fallen woman” in Victorian literature.
Social criticism in George Eliot’s Middlemarch.
The symbolism of the red room in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
The role of colonialism in Rudyard Kipling’s works.
Science versus religion in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine.
The treatment of mental illness in Victorian novels.
Social realism in Dickens’ Oliver Twist.
Gender politics in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The role of the supernatural in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White.
Female agency in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Victorian poetry as a response to industrial change.
The portrayal of childhood in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Class conflict in Hard Times by Charles Dickens.
The role of women in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poetry.

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Modernist Literature

Stream of consciousness in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
The fragmentation of identity in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
Virginia Woolf’s treatment of time in Mrs. Dalloway.
The role of war in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.
Alienation in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.
The concept of absurdism in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
Gender fluidity in Woolf’s Orlando.
The impact of modernity in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
Class disparity in D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers.
Imagery in Ezra Pound’s poetry.
Existentialism in Albert Camus’ The Stranger.
Colonial discourse in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
The exploration of sexuality in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Modernism in W.B. Yeats’ poetry.
Myth and modernity in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
The role of technology in E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops.
Loss and despair in Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier.
Gender roles in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.
The significance of objects in Gertrude Stein’s writing.
The theme of nostalgia in Modernist poetry.

Postcolonial Literature

Identity and displacement in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
Postcolonial feminism in Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood.
Hybridity in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.
Language and power in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Decolonising the Mind.
Resistance in Derek Walcott’s poetry.
The role of history in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines.
The concept of exile in Edward Said’s critical essays.
The representation of diaspora in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies.
Postcolonial critique in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.
Cultural identity in V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas.
The role of myths in Wole Soyinka’s plays.
Decolonization in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.
Gender and colonialism in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve.
Religion and identity in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.
Postcolonial ecocriticism in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss.
Nationhood in Salman Rushdie’s Shame.
Power dynamics in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.
The effects of colonial trauma in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy Man.
Globalization in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Postcolonial allegory in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North.

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Feminist Literature

Female identity in Sylvia Plath’s poetry.
The feminist perspective in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Women and madness in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.
Sisterhood in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.
The intersection of race and gender in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
Power and agency in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber.
Marriage and autonomy in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.
The portrayal of motherhood in Adrienne Rich’s works.
Ecofeminism in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.
The critique of patriarchy in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.
The role of desire in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
Oppression and freedom in Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero.
Gender roles in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists.
Body politics in Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying.
Feminism in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Intersectionality in bell hooks’ critical essays.
Feminist utopias in Doris Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five.
The representation of desire in Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls.
Transgression in Monique Wittig’s The Lesbian Body.
Identity and rebellion in Audre Lorde’s poetry.

Romantic Literature

Nature as a divine force in William Wordsworth’s poetry.
The sublime and terror in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
The Byronic hero in Lord Byron’s Manfred.
Feminine identity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Keats’ philosophy of “negative capability” in his odes.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s vision of revolution in Prometheus Unbound.
Love and loss in John Keats’ poetry.
The theme of isolation in William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience.
Gothic elements in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho.
Romantic idealism versus realism in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.
The pastoral tradition in Wordsworth’s Michael.
Coleridge’s treatment of dreams in Kubla Khan.
The role of imagination in the Romantic era.
Emotion and individualism in Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
Nature and mortality in Keats’ To Autumn.
The depiction of women in Romantic poetry.
The interplay of science and the supernatural in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man.
The critique of industrialization in Blake’s poetry.
The role of melancholy in Romantic poetry.
The influence of Romanticism on Gothic literature.

Gothic Literature

Fear and desire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The role of the uncanny in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Madness in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories.
Gothic spaces in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.
The double in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
The femme fatale in Gothic fiction.
Horror and religion in Ann Radcliffe’s works.
Victorian anxieties in Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone.
The portrayal of monstrousness in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Gothic elements in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
The haunted house motif in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.
Supernatural versus psychological terror in Gothic novels.
Gender and power in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber.
The significance of Gothic architecture in literature.
Symbolism in Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla.
The interplay of science and fear in H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau.
The role of folklore in Gothic literature.
The Gothic representation of death and decay.
The legacy of Gothic themes in modern horror.
The transformation of Gothic tropes in 21st-century literature.

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American Literature

The American Dream in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
Racial identity in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
The role of religion in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.
The critique of capitalism in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
The use of symbolism in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
African American folklore in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.
The role of landscape in Willa Cather’s My Ántonia.
The impact of war in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.
Death and rebirth in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
The exploration of identity in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The significance of isolation in Emily Dickinson’s poetry.
Trauma and memory in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.
Feminist themes in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.
The role of technology in Don DeLillo’s White Noise.
Native American identity in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine.
Postmodernism in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.
The critique of Puritan society in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
Magical realism in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.
Family dynamics in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
Social class in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth.

Comparative Literature

Love and exile in The Odyssey and James Joyce’s Ulysses.
The portrayal of madness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
Gender roles in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.
The role of fate in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
The representation of war in Homer’s The Iliad and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front.
Nature in the poetry of Wordsworth and Bashō.
Colonialism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
Dystopian societies in Orwell’s 1984 and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Magic realism in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.
The concept of heroism in Beowulf and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
Religion in Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Feminism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.
Death and morality in Emily Dickinson’s and Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry.
The treatment of time in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
Class struggle in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
Nationalism in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Pablo Neruda’s Canto General.
Identity and memory in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
Tragic flaws in Shakespeare’s Othello and Sophocles’ Antigone.
The concept of evil in Goethe’s Faust and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Myth and modernity in James Joyce’s Dubliners and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.

Children’s and Young Adult Literature

The role of morality in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
The portrayal of childhood in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Coming-of-age themes in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders.
The use of allegory in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.
Friendship and loyalty in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
The critique of authority in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.
Magic as a metaphor for growth in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.
The theme of identity in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
The role of nature in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.
Social hierarchy in Louis Sachar’s Holes.
The impact of trauma in Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief.
Fantasy versus reality in Roald Dahl’s Matilda.
Adventure and courage in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Gender roles in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series.
Environmentalism in Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax.
The portrayal of family in Jacqueline Wilson’s novels.
Psychological growth in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.
Humor and its role in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The exploration of grief in Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia.
Empowerment in Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala.