English (650-1550) MSt

University of Oxford

The MSt in English Language and Literature 650–1550 offers the knowledge and understanding, research materials and opportunities, and the skills and techniques, for undertaking the study of the languages and literatures produced in England, Scotland and Wales before 1550.

We aim to broaden students’ experience of the literature produced in the British Isles and related areas across nearly a millennium. We also offer unrivalled training in the core skills for research in medieval studies. This includes reading, understanding and editing medieval manuscripts and early printed books; developing skills in languages such as Old English and Old Norse; and debating a wide range of approaches and methods in the study of medieval literature and culture.

The range of the literature and approaches likely to be encountered is challenging and rewarding. We have no one method or theoretical approach; the course gives you time to learn which sort of medieval studies you wish to practise, or invent. Whatever your past experience and expected career path, the course can help you to become an accomplished medievalist with a wide range of expertise.

Course structure

A. Core course: Literature, contexts and approaches

This core course is not formally assessed. Seminars over the first two terms introduce a range of medieval literatures composed between 650 and 1550, and a variety of topics and approaches for consideration, such as voice and writing, authorship, form and formalism, and historicism. Students give presentations in the weekly seminars.

B. Core course: Bibliography, theories of text, history of the book, manuscript studies

This core course provides extensive training in handling and thinking about the ‘material text’ – how we read, date, interpret, and edit from primary sources – including coursework studying some of Oxford’s astounding holdings of manuscripts and early printed books. Such training will transform the way you think about medieval literature, bringing it to archaeological life, and open up new resources for research as well as new kinds of research.

C. Special options

Students take two special option courses, one in the first term and one in the second term, choosing from a range of about six which change each year. Recent years’ courses have included Anglo-Saxon riddles, Cynewulf, archetypes of the high Middle Ages, early Middle English women’s religious writing, post-Conquest literature, Chaucer’s places, intellectual dissidence and dissent in the fifteenth century, the language of Middle English literature, and the languages and literatures of medieval Wales and Ireland. Students are also welcome to choose a course offered by another MSt strand, for example in another period, or in the English Language.

D. Dissertation

In discussion with faculty members, each student devises a research project of their own on any subject concerning the language, literature, or cultural history of the British Isles and the Norse world in the Middle Ages. They receive one-to-one supervision on that research and complete a dissertation of 10,000-11,000 words by the end of the third term (June). These dissertations bring to bear the skills and perspectives acquired throughout the course on one focused piece of research.

The MPhil

For those who would like to take their studies further, the MPhil runs over two years, with the same first-year syllabus as that of the MSt course. It includes further taught courses, opportunities for more linguistic training, and a second, longer dissertation in the second year. It is possible to apply for this course from the outset or apply to switch onto it at the end of the MSt.