The three year ASNC tripos is divided into two main academic phases - Part I and Part II (described here). Part I spans two years and consists of the 'Prelim to Part I' year (first year of study) and the 'Part I' year (second year of study). Students then move onto Part II (the third and final year).
Part II Candidates
Candidates for Part II must offer four papers, chosen from Papers 1-18 below, plus a compulsory dissertation. No more than one paper may be chosen from among Papers 14-18. As one of their four papers, candidates may offer one paper from Papers 1-10 of Part I, provided that the choice complies with certain regulations.
It may be possible for students who have successfully completed Part I of a different Tripos to take ASNC Part II over two years; there are special regulations for this.
Full course descriptions are available for current students on the Part II paper options Moodle site (Raven access only for university members).
Part II Papers
- A subject in Anglo-Saxon history: Saints and Farmers: Economy and Society c. 950–1050
- A subject in Scandinavian history of the Viking Age: Rethinking the Viking Age
- A subject in Celtic History: Socio-Economic and Ecclesiastical Relations Between Britain and Ireland in the Pre-Viking Era: Interaction and Exchange
- A subject in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic History: Islands of the Ocean
- A subject in Old English literature: Beowulf
- Advanced medieval Scandinavian language and literature
- Advanced medieval Welsh language and literature
- Advanced medieval Irish language and literature
- A subject in Insular Latin literature: Writing Women
- Textual criticism
- Germanic philology
- Celtic philology
- Writing Rituals
Borrowed papers for the academic year 2024-25
- Medieval English literature, 1066-1500: Medieval Supernatural (Faculty of English, Part II, Paper 6)
- Powerful Words: How and why people used writing in medieval western Europe (c.1050-c.1250) (Historical Tripos, Part II, Special Paper Option B)
- a) Historical Linguistics (MML, Linguistics Tripos, Part II, Paper 11
b) The History of English (MML, Linguistics Tripos, Part II, Paper 13) - NOT RUNNING IN 2024-25 - Topics in Medieval Studies: Bodies in Space in Medieval French Literature (MMLL, Department of French, Part II, FR7)
- Christianity in late Antiquity (to circa 600) (Faculty of Divinity, Part IIA Paper B6)
- England before the Norman Conquest (ASNC Part I, Paper 1)
- Scandinavian history in the Viking Age (ASNC Part I, Paper 2)
- The Brittonic-speaking peoples from the fourth century to the twelfth (ASNC Part I, Paper 3)
- The Gaelic-speaking peoples from the fourth century to the twelfth (ASNC Part I, Paper 4)
- Old English language and literature (ASNC Part I, Paper 5)
- Old Norse language and literature (ASNC Part I, Paper 6)
- Medieval Welsh language and literature (ASNC Part I, Paper 7)
- Medieval Irish language and literature (ASNC Part I, Paper 8)
- Insular Latin language and literature (ASNC Part I, Paper 9)
- Palaeography and codicology (ASNC Part I, Paper 10)
1. A subject in Anglo-Saxon History: Saints and Farmers: Economy and Society c. 950–1050
PAPER COORDINATOR: PROFESSOR RORY NAISMITH (rn242@cam.ac.uk)
An advanced topic in the history and civilisation of England from the age of the Anglo-Saxon settlements to the Norman Conquest. Students will be required to use primary sources in the original language or in translation.
Set for 2024-25: Saints and Farmers: Economy and Society c. 950-1050
This paper takes an in-depth look at how later Anglo-Saxon (c. 950-1066) society operated in the region around the monastery of Ely. It considers how people in this part of England adjusted to wider political changes, but also looks at local economic and social structures in themselves. Gender, family, status, landscape and towns will all be considered, as students build up expertise in how late Anglo-Saxon society worked on the ground. Key sources will include rich texts from Ely and neighbouring monasteries that illuminate how these institutions inserted themselves into the landscape of eastern England, together with laws, charters, coins, place-names and other forms of archaeological and material evidence. Students are encouraged to think critically and imaginatively about how these various categories of evidence intersect.
2. A subject in Scandinavian history: Rethinking the Viking Age
PAPER COORDINATOR: 2024-25 PROFESSOR ELIZABETH ROWE (ea315@cam.ac.uk) MR DAVIDE SALMOIRAGHI (2023-24) (ds938@cam.ac.uk)
An advanced topic in the history and culture of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in the Viking Age, including the westward expansion to the North Atlantic and the eastward expansion to Russia and Ukraine. Candidates will be required to use primary sources in the original languages or in translation.
Set for 2024-25: Rethinking the Viking Age
Our understanding of the Viking Age and the Viking world—from Vinland in the West to Baghdad in the East—is changing rapidly thanks to new archaeological discoveries, new theoretical perspectives, and new historical frameworks. Yet one thing that has not changed is a personal investment in or identification with the subject of study, and just as nationalism (for example) shaped earlier understandings of the Viking Age, so too identity politics and feminism (for example) might be shaping our understanding of the Viking Age now. This course scrutinizes aspects of the Viking Age that are hotly debated today, and through rigorous source criticism, fully informed historical scholarship, multi-disciplinary evidence, and interrogation of the premises of contemporary theory, reaches independent and solidly grounded evaluations of the historical plausibility and significance of the debated phenomena. The course builds upon the historical background acquired by students who have taken Part I, Paper 2 ‘Scandinavian history in the Viking Age’, but that paper is not necessarily a prerequisite for this course, provided that the novice is willing to work hard.
3. A subject in Celtic history: Socio-economic and ecclesiastical relations between Britain and Ireland in the pre-Viking era: Interaction and exchange
PAPER COORDINATOR: DR ALISON BONNER (acb64@cam.ac.uk)
An advanced topic in the history and culture of the Celtic-speaking peoples from the fourth century to the twelfth. Candidates will be required to use primary sources in the original languages or in translation
Set for 2024-25: Socio-economic and ecclesiastical relations between Britain and Ireland in the pre-Viking era: Interaction and exchange
This course is aimed at students who have taken either the History of the Brittonic-speaking peoples or the History of the Gaelic-speaking peoples (or both of these courses) at Part I. The course will consider from first principles both evidence for interrelations between Ireland and Britain in the sphere of socio-economic and ecclesiastical relations, as well as how we gather it and evaluate it, and how scholars have represented this evidence in the past. We will reflect both on our own paradigms and on those that have underpinned scholarship.
The course starts with movement of groups of people between the isles, looking at literary representations of population movement, archaeological evidence, and epigraphic evidence (such as ogam stones in Britain). Next the relationship between the Church in Ireland and Britain is examined in depth, encompassing personnel; intellectual culture including engagement with eastern ascetic Christianity; hagiography; and the ‘Celtic Church’ paradigm. In studying hagiography, seminar discussion will cover the Lives of Patrick, Ailbe, David, and Columba. We will also consider what script and manuscript transmission can tell us about contact between the two islands, and what analyses of Insular manuscript art contribute to our understanding. We will also look at aspects of social organisation such as kinship, fosterage, kingship, succession practices, and law. In looking at social organisation students will choose at least two areas to focus on. By the end of the course students will have acquired a good knowledge of the interplay between the islands in terms of people, ecclesiastical culture, and social organisation.
The course also allows students to consider the historiography about interaction between Ireland and Britain, to think about how historians work with categories and models. We will look at what drives historiographical paradigms, consider how history is written, and engage with research on cognitive bias. We will do this by looking at some influential historiographical models, their genesis and their evidence base, to assess their validity. One example is the notion of a ‘Celtic Church’, already mentioned; another is Heinrich Zimmer’s account of preservation of texts by Pelagius in Ireland.
The primary sources which will be studied during the course are available in print and most of them exist in recent and accessible editions and translations. Essential primary evidence will be available on Moodle. There is also key secondary scholarship, such as Patrick Sims-Williams’ Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature. All essential secondary reading will be on Moodle. Secondary scholarship will aid students’ research study, but students will find that this paper offers considerable scope for original thought and research.
4. A subject in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic History: Islands of the Ocean
PAPER COORDINATOR: PROFESSOR RORY NAISMITH (rn242@cam.ac.uk)
An advanced topic in the history and culture of Anglo-Saxon England, medieval Scandinavia, and the medieval Celtic-speaking peoples. Candidates will be required to use primary sources in the original languages or in translation.
Set for 2024-25: Islands of the Ocean: Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and the Wider World
The aim of this paper is to interrogate the ways in which people in the ‘ASNC world’ of Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia viewed and interacted with the wider world, and also how the wider world touched on them. This includes relations with other parts of Europe, such as the Frankish lands and Rome, but also areas further afield such as Byzantium, the Muslim Caliphate, North America and beyond. The paper invites students to compare the experiences of different people and of different groups or regions, and to adopt varied viewpoints: artistic, cultural, economic, political and others. As such, it will call upon a variety of sources. Highlights will include the travelogues of St Willibald and Archbishop Sigeric, manuscripts with insular script from Mount Sinai in Egypt, graffiti left by pilgrims in Rome and Mount Gargano in Italy, coins and other artefacts from distant lands brought to the ASNC world, early maps that reflect the imagined layout of the world, and fantastic literary accounts of the wonders thought to exist in far-off places. Students taking this paper will engage critically with the concept of globalisation, and sensitively examine how peoples of the past encountered and imagined one another, with reference to the effects of current or historical inequalities.
5. A subject in Old English literature: Beowulf
PAPER COORDINATOR: PROFESSOR RICHARD DANCE (rwd21@cam.ac.uk)
The work of an author or a group of authors, or a group of texts, or a literary topic or genre within the field of Old English literature, will be prescribed for special study. Students will be required to use primary sources in the original language.
Set for 2024-25: Beowulf.
This course is devoted to the study of the poem Beowulf, and students will be expected to get to know the poem fully. The course tackles the poem from various different angles: the date and circumstances of composition; literary analogues from other Germanic and Anglo-Latin literature; presentation of themes such as religion, kingship, ethics, the heroic ideal, and much more.
6. Advanced medieval Scandinavian language and literature
PAPER COORDINATOR: PROF JUDY QUINN (2023-24) (jeq20@cam.ac.uk), DR DALE KEDWARDS (from 2024-25, email tbc)
In this course students will study Old Norse Poetics and Old Norse prosimetrum in depth. Texts, including legendary sagas, kings' sagas and family sagas will be read, along with a range of poems and verses. Students will be required to translate extracts from these set texts, to translate unseen passages, and also to write essays on selected topics in medieval Scandinavian literature.
7. Advanced medieval Welsh language and literature
PAPER COORDINATOR: DR BEN GUY (bdg25@cam.ac.uk)
The work of an author or a group of authors, or a group of texts, or a literary topic or genre within the field of Medieval Welsh literature will be prescribed for special study. Candidates will be required to use primary sources in the original language.
8. Advanced Medieval Irish language and literature
PAPER COORDINATOR: PROFESSOR MAIRE NÍ MHAONAIGH (mnm21@cam.ac.uk)
Irish language and literature from the beginnings to the end of the Middle Ages are studied. There will be set texts in the original language. Students will be required to comment on extracts from these set texts and to translate unseen passages, and also to write essays on selected topics in medieval Irish literature.
9. A subject in Insular Latin literature: Writing Women
PAPER COORDINATOR: PROFESSOR ROSALIND LOVE (rcl10@cam.ac.uk)
A subject in Insular Latin literature.
The work of an author or a group of authors, or a group of texts, or a literary topic or genre within the field of Insular Latin literature, will be prescribed for special study. Students will be required to use primary sources in the original language.
Set for 2024-25: Writing Women.
This course focuses on Insular Latin texts written by, for, and about women, and will include study of primary sources from a variety of literary genres, including letters, hagiography, secular biography, handbooks of spiritual guidance, and biblical commentary. The texts to be studied will cover both Anglo-Latin and Celtic Latin, and will range in date from the seventh to the eleventh century. Students will be required to translate and comment on extracts from the set texts, and also to write essays on selected topics relating to the sources studied during the year, including matters such as genre-expectation, audience, attitudes towards women’s status, images of female sanctity, misogyny.
10. Textual criticism
PAPER COORDINATOR: PROFESSOR ROSALIND LOVE (rcl10@cam.ac.uk)
An introduction to the processes by which extant sources written in the languages studied for Papers 5-9 have been transmitted, and of the scholarly methods by which these sources are converted into a readable form. The various editorial and diplomatic approaches and techniques are studied. In the exam, students will be required to answer a compulsory practical question and to write essays on selected topics.
11. Germanic philology
PAPER COORDINATOR: PROFESSOR RICHARD DANCE (rwd21@cam.ac.uk)
The history and grammar of the Germanic languages will be studied, in relation to one another and to their Indo-European background. Candidates will be required to comment on passages in any two of Old English, Old Norse, Gothic and Old High German, and to write essays on selected topics.
12. Celtic philology
PAPER COORDINATOR: PROFESSOR MÁIRE NÍ MHAONAIGH AND DR BEN GUY (mnm21@cam.ac.uk and bdg25@cam.ac.uk)
The history and grammar of the Celtic languages will be studied, in relation to one another and to their Indo-European background. Students will be required to write essays on selected topics.
13. Writing Rituals
PAPER COORDINATOR: DR ERIK NIBLAEUS (egn21@cam.ac.uk)
In this paper, we will explore how people in medieval north-western Europe performed Christian religious services, and how manuscripts reflected and shaped those practices. Students will be required to write essays on selected topics.
