Portuguese and Scottish Literature

For centuries, both Scottish and Portuguese-speaking (lusophone) cultures have had a significant international influence on literature. Today, alongside English, Portuguese is one of the world's ten most widely spoken languages.

This joint honours programme aims to develop your critical, analytic, linguistic and creative skills. As well as language learning, you will engage with a broad range of texts in English, Scots and Portuguese, and a variety of approaches to reading.

Over the course of your degree, you will explore the relationship between literary texts and the construction of national, international and imperial cultures.

The programme shows an openness to ideas and perspectives other than your own, an essential attribute in many careers and a global marketplace.

Portuguese

Study with us and you will be immersed in an extraordinary range of literature, film, music and the arts from Portugal, Brazil and Lusophone Africa.

Intensive language training, including a year abroad, gives you the opportunity to develop advanced speaking, writing, reading and translating skills in Portuguese.

Many of our graduates started as complete beginners. By the end of the programme, you will be able to demonstrate a range of linguistic and critical skills and crucial intercultural competencies.

Scottish Literature

Based in the first UNESCO World City of Literature, which many Scottish writers have called home, you will study in the oldest department of literature in the UK, one of the longest-established in the world.

You will gain the essential skills needed for the critical close reading of poetry, drama and prose and explore the cultural contexts of writing in English and Scots from the late Middle Ages to the present.

At honours level, you will select courses on the basis of your own interests in specific topics, periods or literary genres.

Why Edinburgh

We are unique in Scotland in offering students a full academic year abroad within the four-year honours programme, regardless of whether you spend the year studying or working.

Our programme is flexible. In Years 1 and 2, as well as your core subjects, you will choose option courses from a wide range of disciplines. You will then specialise as you progress through your honours years.

When you graduate, you will have the combination of a broad cultural education and the specialist knowledge that employers worldwide value.