Literature and Classics

Literature is an age-old human creative practice. It unites features that are uniquely human: the artistic use of language and the capacity for story-telling, combined with the creation of worlds that represent humanity in its fundamental joys and anxieties, its successes and failures. Engaging with the literary narratives and experiences of otherness they offer, we can become aware of our position in the world in new ways. Through reading literature we can learn about specific historical contexts and eternally human struggles, about the perspectives of others on themselves, and ourselves. 

At University College Utrecht you not only learn how to analyse literary texts from various regions, genres and periods but also how to connect the study of literature to other fields such as history, media studies or politics. This prepares you for graduate work in the field of literature, but it also serves a general education as envisaged in the Liberal Arts and Sciences programme, for which the reading and understanding of literature is indispensable. The second line in this track studies the literature and culture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, which constitutes one of the cornerstones of Western culture. The history of the Ancient World also includes the Mesopotamian, Jewish and Christian tradition. All these traditions have contributed to the richness and variety of the literary, philosophical, religious, artistic and scientific achievements of the West.