Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

MSc in Medieval Literatures and Cultures

Programme details

The MSc in Medieval Literatures and Cultures aims to maximise flexibility of choice. Students will take three 20-credit courses in each of the two teaching semesters (120 credits), and write an independent dissertation guided by a personal supervisor (60 credits).  The taught courses are divided into three key groups: Core, Skills and Options.  Students take at least one 20 credit course from each of these groups. The remaining 60 credits of taught courses may be chosen as desired from between the Skills and Option strands, enabling students to create individual pathways according to their interests.

Elements of the degree

Core course:
Reading the Middle Ages: This first semester core course offers an introduction to advanced literary study of the European middle ages.  It will consider medieval ideas about literary writing and the manuscript culture of the middle ages, and then survey the important genres and modes of writing that flourished through the period.  Each seminar will focus on close engagement with one seminal literary text, through which significant issues for the writing, thinking and literary culture of the period will be explored.                                         

Skills course:
Working with Pre-modern Manuscripts. This second semester course, taken by all students on the degree, provides an introduction to manuscript study and the skills involved in reading and working with manuscripts from the pre-modern era.  There will be seminars on the manuscript cultures of the middle ages and Renaissance, held in the Library’s Special Collections with direct access to the manuscripts.  These will be followed by an introduction to basic principles of palaeography, codicology and textual editing.  Later in the course each student will work on an individual textual project within their own area of specialisation.    

Further skills courses.  Students may also choose to take courses of language study, from a range of languages important in the middle ages.  These may include: Latin (elementary or intermediate), Old Norse, Old Irish or Welsh, Middle English, Old English, and Medieval Dialectology.  Other languages, such as Arabic, may be available by special arrangement.

Option strand:
The programme draws options from a wide range of courses offered by medieval specialists both in the literatures taught in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, and from the subjects and disciplines taught in other Schools.  Students must take at least one of their options from among those offered in LLC. Listed here are examples of the kinds of options that may be available:

LLC:
Medieval Romance
Chivalry and its mythologies in the European Middle Ages
The Heroic Ballads of Gaelic Scotland
The Quest for Identity in Medieval Spain
Epic and Romance in Medieval Spain
Reflections of the Crusades in Medieval German Literature
Falling in Love in the Middle Ages
Writing and Tyranny at the Court of Henry VIII
The Road to 1611: How the English Bible came into being
Church, Court and City: Writing London and Edinburgh 1480-1560
Early Drama: Performance and Reception

Other Schools:
Expanding the Book: Image and Literacy in Valois France
Medicine, Science and Society in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy
Normandy and the Normans c. 900-1204
The Sources of Medieval History
Women in Medieval Europe, c.1000-c.1500
Interactions of Islamic and Christian Art in the Medieval Islamic World
Saints Cults, Pilgrimage and Piety in Scotland
The Celtic Question : Art in early Britain and Ireland

Dissertation:
The dissertation (c 15,000 words) is the point where students progress from structured, taught courses to more independent research. Individual topics arising from the student’s own interests are developed through consultation during the second teaching semester, and students work with personal supervisors on researching and writing the dissertation from April to August.