MA Translation Exams
In order to qualify for the Master of Arts Degree in Classics, candidates must have read the following texts and be acquainted with the basic recent scholarship concerning them. This will be tested in a Reading List Exam. Exam sittings are offered three times per year (normally November, March or April, and June or July), and each candidate should discuss the best options with the Director of Graduate Studies before signing up for a sitting. Exams must be taken in the department, with exceptions granted only to MA candidates who have left St. Louis after completing all other program requirements. The exam is set and evaluated by a faculty subcommittee. When signing up for the exam, a candidate can request a limited number of appropriate substitutions for items on the Reading List. Preparation for the exam should be a year-round activity for every candidate, requiring both self-structured individual study and group work. Special effort should be made to construct an individual reading schedule during the summer after the first year.
Each sitting of the Reading List Exams will first be scheduled for a particular week of the semester (or summer) and then for particular time slots over the course of that week, allowing individual students to sit their exam(s) at the time of their choice.
Most students choose to tackle Latin and Greek in different sittings (e.g., Latin in Fall, Greek in Spring), but this is not required.
Most students choose to tackle prose and poetry on different days during the sitting, but this is not required.
Length and Format:
Each passage will amount to 100-150 words.
1) Latin Prose: three passages to be selected out of four; 90 minutes allowed.
2) Latin Poetry: two passages to be selected out of three; 60 minutes allowed.
3) Greek Prose: three passages to be selected out of four; 90 minutes allowed.
4) Greek Poetry: two passages to be selected out of three; 60 minutes allowed.
No dictionaries or notes will be allowed. The student will be asked to write out a translation of each passage you select, and to identify and briefly explain the significance of the passage. This commentary section should, in one or two paragraphs, briefly contextualize the passage in the work from which it comes, and point out any ways in which the passage’s themes and language illustrate key features of the work and the genre. The student should also comment briefly, to the best of his or her ability, on what the passage has to offer to scholarly debates concerning the work. The exam is not designed to test the student’s speed, and students may be allowed to run over the allotted time to finish; at the same time, they should plan to apportion energy reasonably in order not to prolong the exam unnecessarily.
Preparation tips:
While the Reading List Exam does not allow space or time for exhaustive histories of scholarship, each student’s preparation should include some reading about scholarly work on the texts. Students should familiarize themselves with key issues and studies by using the best scholarly commentaries on the texts on the lists, such as Green and Yellows, Oxford Commentaries, and other that have similarly thorough introductions and notes. Critical texts or Loebs should always be supplemented with commentaries. Also useful will be recent general handbooks such as The Cambridge History of Classical Literature and (particularly for discussion of genre) Conte’s Latin Literature: A History. Cambridge and Blackwell Companions, and Oxford Bibliographies Online entries for the authors, give useful overviews of the issues and bibliography. Consult the faculty for further advice. A student-authored commentary on Horace Satires 2.6 is available here.
Failure and Retake Policy
Failing exams typically show consistent problems with the languages (e.g., serious misinterpretation of grammar or vocabulary, or consistent inattention to detail), consistent gaps in knowledge about the texts and their contexts, or a substantial gap concerning one or more text (e.g., misidentifying one or more passages). A student may fails one section (e.g., Latin Poetry) and pass the rest, needing only to retake the relevant section. Many students have successfully re-sat exams after substantial and guided preparation. Only in exceptional circumstances will a candidate be offered the opportunity to re-take a specific section more than once.