MA Classics and Ancient History / Course details

This course will introduce students to a substantial selection of Books of letters (and selections of individual letters) taken primarily from the principal epistolary corpora of Latin classical and late antiquity. Through close (and comparative) reading of Books of prose letters by particularly Cicero, also Seneca, Pliny the Younger, Fronto and Symmachus - as well as a book of poetic letters by Horace - students will be asked to investigate and think about a range of topics key to this emergent area of scholarly research. No prior knowledge of Latin is required: all texts are studied in translation. 

Students will engage with the following problems and topics:

a) the problem of defining an epistolary 'genre'

b) the editorial process which lies behind the creation of ancient books of letters

c) the relationship between individual letters and the collections in which they appear

d) the relationship between letters, history / biography / autobiography   

e) the relationship between writer and addressee          

f) the varied functions of the letter (didactic, consolatory, political, philosophical)

g) the importance of letters as a means of self-representation

• Knowledge of a range of books of Latin letters

• Understanding of how books of letters were put together and the consequences for how read them.

· Knowledge of key aspects of the cultural contexts and expectations surrounding the production of letters in the Roman world

• The ability to construct an argument in written and oral form;
• The ability to assimilate and summarise large quantities of evidence, and to engage critically and analytically with this evidence
• The ability to conduct independent research at a sophisticated level, and to present the results in a professional manner with appropriate and detailed reference to sources and modern published scholarship.

• · Time-management
• The ability to work co-operatively in small groups
• The ability to engage in critical discussion and debate.

• The ability to analyse and examine complex information.
• An ability to synthesise an argument in a cogent form
• The ability to retrieve information from complex sources and present it in a compelling and cogent fashion, as exemplified by engaging at a sophisticated level with difficult primary and secondary material.
• Development of presentation and discussion skills (including confidence) through face-to-face discussion of difficult topics in class.

M. Trapp, Greek and Latin Letters: an Anthology (Cambridge, 2003) 1-43

R. Gibson and A. Morrison, ‘What is a letter?’, in R. Morello and A. Morrison (eds.), Ancient Letters (Oxford, 2007), 1-16

R. Gibson, ‘On the nature of ancient letter collections’, JRS 102 (2012) 56-78

M. Beard. ‘Ciceronian Correspondences: making a book out of letters’, in T.P. Wiseman (ed.), Classics in Progress (2002), 103-44

P. White, ‘The editing of the collection’ = Chp. 2 of Cicero in Letters (Oxford, 2010), 31-61

20 contact hours which may include lectures, seminars, tutorials, workshops, essay planning and development, fieldtrips