Greek and or Latin Languages and Literature MPhil

University of Oxford

MSt

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.

The MSt in the main master's 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.

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 author's texts at a deeper level; and a first introduction, via the dissertation, to extended research and the extended presentation of a scholarly argument.

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.

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.

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.

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.

MPhil

The majority of students take the shorter MSt, which the faculty recommends as the default master's 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 master's dissertation.

Most 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; engagement with a particular author's texts at a deeper level; and/or textual criticism of Greek and/or Latin; or, reception studies. The MPhil also offers, through an obligatory dissertation, the first steps in actual research and the extended presentation of a scholarly argument.