Ancient Greek Language and Literature

The master’s degree study focuses on deepening the knowledge and linguistic competences gained in the Bachelor study programme. Moreover, the knowledge is broadened with the complete development of Greek language, Greek dialects, and literature (as well as history and culture, in general) in the periods following Hellenistic era. Reading of Greek texts focuses on the territories outside Attica and on the texts of pre-Classical and post-Classical periods. Their understanding is possible only on the grounds of the detailed knowledge of phonological and morphological development of Greek language in its whole extent. The knowledge of the development of Modern Greek crowns complex understanding of language in its whole history. Students specialise according to their own choices of optional courses in the following areas: diachronic linguistics, history of literature, and ancient history.

After successfully completing his/her studies the graduate is able to:

• use the terminology of diachronic linguistics and characterise the linguistic development of Greek language from its Indo-European outset up to the Hellenistic, or Byzantine era (Single-subject study) including its dialectal variants;
• employ methods of historical and historical-comparative linguistics and be knowledgeable about the history of approaches to the development of Greek language;
• describe the main features of Greek literature, its genre stratification, and its development in Late Antiquity;
• outline the philosophical, historical, and religious backgrounds of the social development in antiquity;
• translate more complicated Ancient Greek prosaic and poetic texts into Czech language and critically interpret them;
• apply principles of Greek prosodic system on epic texts and selected lyric stanzas;
• work independently with scholarly literature written in foreign languages, electronic databases, and various sources of information;
• write a longer structured text on a scholarly topic.

Graduates are qualified to work as teachers at secondary schools and some universities. Thanks to the deep knowledge of ancient culture, history and literature, they may work in humanities-oriented departments of the Czech Academy of Sciences, archives, libraries, museums, bookshops, travel agencies, and, possibly, in diplomacy. By virtue of the focus on the handling of language, the graduates are also prepared for various editorial jobs in media (in culture- and literature-oriented sections, in particular) and in the publishing houses. Besides jobs in the field of study (scholarly and research activities, translation), the graduates assert themselves in all the professions requiring the ability of independent and critical thinking and excellent mother tongue language skills.

The required length of master’s thesis is 140,000 characters including footnotes, table of contents, index, bibliography, and summary. Students choose the subject of their theses on their own from the list of topics available in IS MU ("Topic lists"), or after agreement with their supervisors. In the master’s thesis, students prove that they are familiar with both domestic and especially foreign scholarly literature relevant to the subject and that they can assess the texts critically. In the thesis, students are supposed to apply modern and relevant theories and methods, show their ability to work with Greek primary sources, and to formulate and defend their own conclusions.

After completion of the master’s degree study programme, graduates can further continue with PhD studies in Classical Philology, provided they meet the admission requirements.