BA Italian and Beginners' Portuguese
About this course
Italian and Portuguese together span two of the Romance language family's great branches, offering access to the literary and cultural worlds of Italy and the Lusophone sphere, which stretches from Portugal itself through Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, and beyond. Italian carries the inheritance of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Calvino, along with the art, music, and intellectual history of one of Europe's most creatively rich nations. Portuguese opens the literature of Pessoa, Saramago, and Clarice Lispector, as well as the vast and distinct cultural world of Brazil and the vibrant literatures of Lusophone Africa. At the University of Oxford, this four-year, full-time programme takes you from existing competence in Italian and from beginner level in Portuguese to advanced proficiency in both. The programme is a genuine intellectual challenge: developing two Romance languages simultaneously, reading their literatures in the original, and engaging with the critical and historical scholarship that surrounds them. Oxford's tutorial system provides intensive small-group teaching that allows rapid linguistic progress alongside deep literary and cultural engagement. You will study Italian literature across historical periods from the medieval to the contemporary, and develop Portuguese from scratch to a level where you can engage with literary and cultural texts in the original. The shared grammatical structure of the two languages makes the comparative dimension of the programme particularly rich. A typical entry tariff of 184 UCAS points reflects Oxford's demanding entry standards. Mastery of Italian alongside Portuguese acquired from scratch at this level is genuinely rare. The combination gives graduates access to cultural and business contexts across Europe, Latin America, and Lusophone Africa. Graduates pursue careers in international business, diplomacy, translation, the cultural sector, journalism, law, and education. Many continue to postgraduate study in Italian or Lusophone studies, comparative literature, or translation.
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