About the Tripos
A quantity of documentation is available for each of the ASNC papers in the ASNC Tripos Parts I and II; and much of it will be found on this section of the website.
- Course Descriptions (all papers). These documents exist for all papers in Part I and Part II, and will be distributed by the teaching staff in the first lecture of term; copies may also be obtained from the Departmental Secretary. Their purpose is to provide you with a general account of the course, and some impression of what it will entail. They also incorporate a schedule of lectures and other forms of teaching for the academic year, and some guidance for private study.
- Reading Lists (all papers, but in different forms). There are various levels of reading lists:
- Introductory Reading List (Part I papers): are directed towards prospective students needing a sense of the various subjects which make up the ASNC Tripos. They may be found useful at any stage, should you wish to find out more about a particular paper, when making your own choices.
- Primary Sources Recommended for Study (Part I papers): These lists exist for all of the papers in Part I, and will be distributed by the teaching staff in the first lecture of term. They provide a basic list of those primary sources which you might reasonably be expected to have read (in translation) during the course of your preparation for the examination. For history papers, they will include all of the major sources on which questions might be set. For language and literature papers, they will include a much wider range of material (which can be read in translation) than the set texts (studied in their original languages), and will be found useful in preparing yourself for writing general essays on aspects of literature.
- Suggested Secondary Reading (Part I papers and Part II papers): For Part I, these lists provide a basic list of books and articles which may be found particularly useful in connection with the paper in question, including textbooks, important monographs, and articles of special value. For Part II, they are intended to help Part I students find out more about the various papers in Part II, when making their choices for Part II at the end of their second year, and to provide a basic list of reading for the Long Vacation.
- Bibliographies: Consolidated bibliographies of a subject as a whole exist in booklet form for some of the papers, and may be purchased (at cost price) from the Departmental Secretary and are listed in full in the Publication Section of this website; for other papers, bibliographies are prepared by the teaching staff in the form of separate sheets, and distributed in lectures or classes. Several of the items listed ought to be readily accessible in your college library; many will be found in the Departmental Library (or in other departmental or faculty libraries); and all should be found in the University Library.
- Set Texts. The Department's official List of Set Texts contains all the texts set for study and translation in the language and literature papers, from which passages may be drawn in the examinations (PATs, Prelim, Part I and Part II). For each paper, lecturers will advise students on the recommended edition of the set texts to be studied in class and in some cases will provide copies directly to students.
- Handouts. Lecturers in ASNC are enthusiastic, verging on the extravagent, in their use of handouts, distributed at the beginning of each lecture. Handouts contain essential illustrations, e.g. of objects, manuscripts, and maps, or photocopies of important texts for close analysis, or tables or diagrams. Should you miss a lecture, you should primarily contact the subject lecturer. Lists of handouts for each course may be made available, after the end of a term.
- Power Point. It is likely that increasing use will be made of Power Point for certain kinds of information. Several Lecturers have already embraced this method of delivering lecture notes, all of which can be accessed in the 'Handout' section on the Student Intranet pages.
- Past Examination Papers. Available in pdf form, for all papers. Past papers are useful for various purposes, but please be careful (for your own sakes) not to be intimidated by them (you will find them much easier when it comes to the day!), or to allow them to determine the course of your work. They will give you a sense of the kind of essay questions asked in the examinations, the sort of issues which you might be expected to be able to discuss, and the nature of the other kinds of exercise that might be involved, depending on the nature of the paper (gobbets, translation of set texts, translation of unseen texts, linguistic commentary on texts, transcription of facsimiles, etc.). You will be shown in revision lectures, or in supervision, how best to set about a question.