Bachelor of Arts (BA)

BA Latin and French

Compare ancient and modern literature with a focus on French language and culture.
  • Duration: 4 years
  • Year of entry: 2025
  • UCAS course code: Q6R1 / Institution code: M20
  • Key features:
  • Study abroad
  • Study with a language

Full entry requirementsHow to apply

Fees and funding

Fees

Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2025 will be £9,535 per annum (subject to Parliamentary approval). Tuition fees for international students will be £26,500 per annum. For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.

Policy on additional costs

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

Scholarships/sponsorships

Course unit details:
Otherworlds: Distance and Difference in Ancient Greek Literature

Course unit fact file
Unit code CAHE20232
Credit rating 20
Unit level Level 2
Teaching period(s) Semester 2
Available as a free choice unit? Yes

Overview

This unit enables students to develop an enhanced understanding of how Greek writers, mainly historians, represented non-Greek peoples and those, such as shepherds, who lived on the margins of the urban world. Students will read texts from the classical period to the Second Sophistic, authors, and genres. They will encounter a range of literary techniques employed to explore the customs, habits, and political organization of numerous peoples, both Greeks and non-Greeks. A focus on close reading will enable detailed scrutiny of the linguistic means by which the texts fashion meaning and articulate points of view. 

Pre/co-requisites

Co-requisite: CAHE30121 Advanced Greek 1 (higher is fine) 

Aims

The unit aims to:

1. To introduce students to the varieties of style, language and narrative structure in ancient Greek ethnographic and historiographical writing.

2. To enable students to develop a sense of the effects created by ethnographic writing.

3. To enable students to carry out close and comparative reading of original texts, developing technical skills acquired in earlier Greek Language course units.

 

Teaching and learning methods

The weekly lectures will explore important themes and intellectual issues in the texts under discussion, as well as introducing important scholarly debates.

The first seminar each week will be devoted to close reading of the passages of Greek texts for the week, including issues of vocabulary, diction, syntax, scansion (where relevant).

The second seminar will concentrate on wider discussion of the passages for the week, including intertextuality, rhetoric, and social and intellectual context.

Students will be given specific tasks to prepare for each seminar, including passages to be translated and analysed, as well as wider questions to be addressed.

Discussion of secondary literature will be related to the primary aim of improving students’ ability to read the texts closely. 
 

Knowledge and understanding

  • Have increased their knowledge of the Ancient Greek grammar, syntax, and rhetorical techniques
  • Connect and compare different treatments of ethnic, religious, cultural, and economic identities in different periods 

Intellectual skills

  • Have increased ability to read and translate Ancient Greek
  • Develop critical reflection on the literary qualities of texts and the scholarly debates surrounding them
  • Be able to make a reasoned argument for a particular point of view regarding literary interpretation
  • Developed a basic understanding of how technical aspects learned in Advanced Language courses can enhance interpretation
     

Practical skills

  • Have increased ability to use library, electronic and online resources to enhance the study of Ancient Greek texts
  • Engage with other members of the class in order to develop literary reading as a communal activity
     

Transferable skills and personal qualities

  • Attention to detail

Assessment methods

Commentaries - 50%

Online exam - 50%

Feedback methods

Commentaries - written feedback via Canvas within three weeks

Online exams - written feedback via Turnitin as for other exams

Recommended reading

F. Harzog, The Mirror of Herodotus (Berkeley CA, 1988)

P. Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander (Berkeley CA, 2001). 

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Lectures 11
Seminars 22
Independent study hours
Independent study 167

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