Classics and English

专业详情

The Classics and English degree at Oxford gives students the opportunity to study the literature and culture of the ancient and modern world, both separately and in comparison; to trace ideas, forms, and genres across cultures and time; and to think about continuities and change in how people think, write, and imagine their world. All students study either Latin or Greek or both, so that they can encounter ancient literature in the original language(s). Course I is a three-year course for candidates with an A-level or equivalent in either Latin or Greek; Course II is for those who have not had the opportunity to study either language at school or college and includes a preliminary year, in which students learn Latin or Greek alongside some study of classical literature, making it a four-year course.

You can choose to specialise in what you find most interesting from each side of the course, taking a range of options in English literature, and in ancient literature, history, philosophy, and linguistics. But the degree also integrates the two sides of its course, offering several papers designed specifically for the kind of comparative work that the course encourages. In the first year (second, for Course II), students take a paper in English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – the period during which writers were most consistently and intensely engaged with the languages and literatures of ancient Greece and Rome. Among the highlights of the latter two years are the four ‘link papers’: all students take Epic, and read and compare authors such as Homer, Virgil, Milton, Alice Oswald, and Derek Walcott; and then choose to take either Comedy, Tragedy, or Reception (in which you study the reception of ancient literature in 20th-century poetry). (Students who choose to take up a second classical language in their second (third for Course II) year only take Epic.) The final-year dissertation allows students to pursue an independently devised topic with an expert supervisor, which may combine the subjects or focus on an aspect of one of them. All of the courses allow students to pursue the twists and turns of literary genres across time.

Oxford has a long and distinguished tradition of research and teaching in both Classics and English, and possesses remarkable library provision in both subjects. Oxford has the largest Classics department and programme of courses in the world, with outstanding teaching, library and museum resources, including the  Bodleian and Sackler Libraries, the Ashmolean Museum and a designated Classics Centre. The English Faculty is the largest English department in Britain. All Oxford colleges have tutors in English who are responsible for tutorial teaching (in groups of three students or fewer) in their own college. Many also give lectures to all students in the English Faculty. You therefore have the opportunity to learn from a wide range of specialist teachers. Library provision for English at Oxford is exceptionally good: all students have access to the Bodleian Library (with its extensive manuscript collection), the English Faculty Library, their own college libraries, and a wide range of electronic resources.