MPhil Text Seminar

The MPhil students meet as a ‘Seminar’ once a week throughout the Michaelmas and Lent Terms, to discuss a wide range of important texts. They meet as a ‘Symposium’ once a week in the Easter Term, to discuss papers given by two or three students on their own research. Timetable information (days, times, rooms etc) can be found on the annual lecture list (here). The schedule for the current term is as follows.

Michaelmas 2017

Week 1:    The Bible (the Psalms) (any translation)
Week 2:    Virgil, The Aeneid (any translation)
Week 3:    Eusebius, The History of the Church (Penguin Classics) and The Life of Constantine (any translation)
Week 4:    Q&A session on the the Review of Scholarship Essay
Week 5:    Life of St Anthony the Hermit and Sulpicius Severus, Life of St Martin, in Early Christian Lives (Penguin Classics)
Week 6:    Suetonius, Life of Augustus (Penguin Classics) and Einhard, Life of Charlemagne (Penguin Classics)
Week 7:    Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning (Everyman)
Week 8:    Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (any translation)

Lent 2018

Week 0 [17 Jan]:     Q&A session on the Take-home Essay on seminar texts
Week 1:   Bede, Ecclesiastical History including 'Letter to Ecgberht' (Oxford World's Classics)
Week 2:   Beowulf (any translation)
Week 3:   Táin Bó Cúailnge (free translation by Thomas Kinsella, Ciarán Carson, or closer translation in the edition by Cecile O'Rahilly)
Week 4:   Four Branches of the Mabinogi in G. Jones and T. Jones, The Mabinogion, or trans. Jeffrey Gantz
Week 5:   Hrafnkels saga in The Sagas of Icelanders (Penguin Classics)
Week 6:   Asser's Life of King Alfred in Alfred the Great (Penguin Classics)
Week 7:   Adomnán, Life of St Columba, translation by Richard Sharpe (Penguin) or in the edition by A. O. and M. O. Anderson