French/Latin

French and Latin is a combination with a deep intellectual logic: Latin is the parent of French, and reading Latin literature illuminates French in ways that no other language quite does. Latin gives direct access to Virgil, Cicero, Caesar, Ovid, and Tacitus, as well as to the medieval Latin that continued as the language of scholarship and the Church long after French had emerged as a vernacular. French, meanwhile, carries a literary and intellectual tradition that stretches from the chansons de geste of the Middle Ages to the existentialism of Sartre and the experimental fiction of the twentieth century.

At the University of Glasgow, you will develop French to a high level of linguistic and literary proficiency, with the opportunity to focus on a wide range of topics including French comics, song, travel writing, medieval France, and contemporary French history. Alongside this, you will study Latin language and literature, developing your ability to read classical and medieval texts in the original. The two languages illuminate each other, and the combined programme develops unusually sophisticated skills in language, textual analysis, and cultural history.

The programme runs over five years full-time.

Graduates of French and Latin programmes pursue careers in education, publishing, translation, the civil service, heritage and museums, journalism, and academic research. The combination of living and classical language skills is particularly valued in humanistic roles that require depth of cultural and historical knowledge. Many graduates go on to postgraduate study in French literature, classical studies, medieval studies, or linguistics.