University of St Andrews

Key information

SCOTCAT credits : 30

ECTS credits : 15

Level : SCQF level 10

Semester: 1

Availability restrictions: Available to General Degree students with the permission of the Honours Adviser

Planned timetable: Tuesday and Thursday, 10:00-11:00

The world of Ancient Rome is full of homeless words, which travel down to us without the security of authors or dates over their heads. These take many forms, scaling up and down the social ladder. On the literary side, we have texts faking it as the work of someone else, famous or not; some others which became unhinged from their original author at a later date; and others still which remained anonymous all along, for good reasons, political or otherwise. On the borderlands of literature, we have a huge corpus of graffiti preserved from Pompeii, all of which comes to us as phantom voices from a social sphere whose surface classicists have only just started to scratch. There are also non-literary texts, such as legal documents, calling to us with the authority of their collective origins. Bringing this neglected material together, we will think about the mysteries of writing without clear context, and where these forms belong within their (and our) societies.

Learning and teaching methods and delivery

Weekly contact: 2 hours of lectures and seminars (x 10 weeks)

Scheduled learning hours: 20

Guided independent study hours: 278

Assessment pattern

As used by St Andrews: Coursework = 60%, 2-hour Written Examination = 40%

As defined by QAA
Written examinations : 40%
Practical examinations : 0%
Coursework: 60%

Re-assessment: 3-hour Written Examination = 100%

Personnel

Module coordinator: Dr T A Geue
Module teaching staff: Dr Tom Geue