B.A. in Classical Studies - Villanova - Pennsylvania - Villanova University - I1180

The discipline of Classical Studies, as pursued at Villanova University, is concerned first and foremost with the languages of the Greco-Roman world, and thought, as expressed in literature (and art), from Homer in 800 BC to St. Augustine in 400 AD. In so doing we deal with a full range of literary genres: epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric, satire, elegy, epigram, oratory, rhetorical theory, history, philosophical dialogue (or treatise), didactic poetry and prose, bucolic poetry, epistolography, funerary (and other) inscriptions.

We present in Classics the ultimate in multidisciplinary study, embracing meter, textual criticism, prosopography, lexicography, paleography, the transmission of ancient texts through the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, the reception of ancient literature at different periods (Fortleben, Nachleben), epigraphy, and linguistics, both historical (the development of Latin accidence and syntax) and comparative (Greek, Greek dialects, Latin, Italic dialects, Neo-Latin languages, Indo-European). We make it a point to provide courses relevant to students’ concerns in teaching, stressing the technical side of the Latin language and examining authors, like Catullus, Horace, Vergil, Ovid, and Cicero, that figure in the Advanced Placement Syllabus.