Greek and or Latin Languages and Literature MPhil

**The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2024). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas.** <br/><br/>**MSt**<br/> This nine-month course is designed to allow you a period of study of Greek and/or Latin literature which is both more advanced and more independent than you will be used to from your undergraduate course, and at the same time more tightly structured and supervised than work for a doctorate.<br/><br/>The MSt in the main masters course in Classical literature and the one which the faculty recommends unless there are particular reasons for preferring the MPhil in Greek and/or Latin Languages and Literature.<br/><br/>The majority of students take the course as preparation for a research degree, and for such students it might offer, for instance, linguistic training; the opportunity to become acquainted with an ancillary discipline such as papyrology or palaeography; engagement with a particular authors texts at a deeper level; and a first introduction, via the dissertation, to extended research and the extended presentation of a scholarly argument.<br/><br/>You will undertake three modular options, one of which must be from lists B or C. Most students offer a dissertation (option D) as one of those three options, although this is not compulsory.<br/><br/>List A comprises a choice of options on genres, authors or groups of texts, eg historiography, Greek tragedy, comedy, Cicero, Ovid. You may also devise your own option, subject to approval of your set of texts. List B comprises a range of options on methods and techniques of scholarship, eg papyrology, palaeography, reception, linguistics, and textual criticism.<br/><br/>List C comprises language options in Ancient Greek and Latin, for those who have not studied both languages to a high level in the course of their first degree. Only one language option may be taken. Language classes are available in Greek and Latin at both elementary and intermediate levels. Option D comprises a dissertation of up to 10,000 words.<br/><br/>The scheduling of the options depends on the choices you make, but typically you will work particularly on your first two options in the first two terms and particularly on your dissertation in the third. <br/><br/>All students attend a class on research techniques in Classical literature, extending over two to three terms. This looks at aspects of Classical scholarship and its history, and includes direct viewing of papyri, manuscripts, vases, and other resources in Oxford. In the second and third term considerable attention is paid to presentational skills, as the students deliver papers of their own to each other.<br/><br/>**MPhil**<br/>The MPhil in Greek and/or Latin Literature is a 21-month taught graduate course that can be used as a route to the DPhil, if then followed by at least two years of doctoral study. Applicants for the MPhil wishing to enter doctoral programmes elsewhere after their masters degree at Oxford are also welcomed.<br/><br/>The majority of students take the shorter MSt, which the faculty recommends as the default masters choice in Greek and/or Latin languages and literature. However, the MPhil is often taken by two groups of students and designed with them in mind: those who feel that they would benefit from two more years of taught education in Classics before embarking on a doctorate; and those who have a clear idea of the topic that they hope to research eventually for their doctorate, and who wish to start extensive work on this topic already in their masters dissertation.<br/><br/>**For the full descriptions, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas**