UCL Medieval and Renaissance Studies

UCL Medieval and Renaissance Studies

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• MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies (MARS)
  • An overview of the degree
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    • Course options
    • Preparatory Reading
    • Submission of course work
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Courses

The MARS MA is a flexible degree that permits you to specialize or take a broad interdisciplinary range of courses. European vernacular literatures, Latin literatures, art history, palaeography, cultural history, religious history, and political history: MARS offers both scope and opportunities.

• Full list of courses

Degree Structure

The requirements of the course are that you take 180 credits, by completing:

1) at least 30 credits of one course or two courses that fulfill the medieval/renaissance language requirement (marked with an asterisk in Course Options);
2) a dissertation (60 credits);
3) a further 90 credits of courses.

Choosing your Courses

Within this, students can be as focused or as wide-ranging as they wish. Those who wish to go onto PhDs are advised to consider courses which equip them to deal with manuscripts and primary sources in the relevant fields. Courses which teach these skills are:

(a) ‘The Medieval English Book’, for specialists in in the Old and Middle English (and Anglo-Norman) literature of Britain between c. 700- c.1500;
(b) ‘Manuscripts and Documents’, a substantial palaeographical course for historians and medieval Latinists; and
(c) ‘Medieval and Renaissance Texts: Resources and Research Techniques’, for students with a good reading knowledge of Italian.

The MARS Degree Tutor advises students individually about their choice of courses, devising an academically coherent programme of study appropriate to their plans after the MA.

A good reading knowledge of Latin is necessary for most research in medieval and renaissance studies and students who do not read Latin comfortably are strongly encouraged to take a Latin course at the appropriate level. Normally students are expected to write a dissertation that complements or extends interests developed in their course options.

To illustrate just a few of the many possible combinations of courses:

• A student interested in studying medieval English might take, say, The Medieval English Book, Anglo-Saxon Court Culture, and English and Englishness: the Politics of the Vernacular.
• A student wishing to develop interdisciplinary skills in relation to Norse literature and history could take Old Norse, Written Sources for the Viking Age and Identity and Power in Medieval Europe or Medieval Archaeology.
• A student wishing to take courses across a comparative range might combine Middle High German with The Medieval English Book with The Rise of Romance or Comparative History of Medieval Literature.
• A student wanting to develop medieval historical competencies might take Intermediate Medieval and Renaissance Latin, Medieval Manuscripts and Documents, and The Medieval Papacy.
• A student wanting to acquire the skills in Renaissance intellectual and literary history might consider taking Medieval and Renaissance Texts: Resources and Research Techniques, Political Thought in Renaissance Europe with Marsilio Ficino’s De amore.
• A student interested in documents and the history of the book from the early Middle Ages through to the Renaissance might take The Medieval English Book, The Italian Book, 1465-1600, and Places of Learning in the Medieval Latin West: from Monasteries to Universities.