Portuguese Papers

This paper offers you a thorough grounding in Portuguese grammar and vocabulary, starting at basic and taking you to intermediate level. As well as giving you the foundations for the literature, linguistics and translation work required by your course, the PGA1 paper equips you with the communicative resources to handle every day situations in Portuguese, both orally and in writing. This includes writing and speaking on topics of general interest.

The paper aims to take you to a level of linguistic ability roughly matching that of an A-Level qualification. This corresponds to level B1 as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

This paper consists of two parts: translation from Portuguese into English and an oral practice. Though each part is taught and assessed separately they add up to result into an overall mark. By acquiring and developing translation strategies you will broaden your knowledge of vocabulary, style and register in written Portuguese while becoming acquainted with literary texts from Portugal, Brazil and Lusophone Africa. Similarly, by exercising your oral skills you will be expanding your ability to communicate and master spoken Portuguese.

This ab initio course in Lusophone Literature covers a selection of four subjects, covering Portugal, Brazil and Lusophone Africa (in this instance Mozambique). Material is studied in the context of relevant information on the historical and political backdrop, and will draw on some Critical Theory. The course is available to MML and HML students.

This paper aims to help you consolidate and develop your command of Portuguese in all four skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening), with a particular focus on advanced grammar and writing skills. The paper builds upon your prior knowledge of the language, acquired in your A-Level (or equivalent) course or in the Cambridge ab initio course.

The translation class is held fortnightly in Michaelmas, Lent and Easter Terms, and is designed to introduce you to the wide range of styles and registers in Portuguese, covering different periods (19th, 20th and 21st centuries) and varieties of Portuguese (Peninsular, African and Brazilian).

The classes are aimed at preparing you to read and translate literary passages from Portuguese into English taken from a breadth of linguistic contexts. You will be taught reading strategies that will enable you to widen and deepen your understanding of texts without the need for a dictionary while also exercising a number of translation strategies.

Paper B3 is made up of two distinct components: Translation into Portuguese and Portuguese through the Media (MD). Together, the B3 Translation and MD elements will help you develop your linguistic skills and cultural competence in a range of areas.

The B3 paper is only available to Part IB (i.e., second-year students) who had an A-level or equivalent in the language when they arrived. In addition, if your other language is ab initio, you can choose not to do this paper in Portuguese and instead do an extra literature/linguistics paper from the schedule of IB papers. If, however, both your languages are post A-level, then this paper (both components) is compulsory.

The aim of the course is to expand and consolidate your ability to translate from and into Portuguese. You will reflect on translation practices, improve your understanding of the processes involved and develop strategies to tackle translation problems methodically.

This paper allows you to consolidate your reading and writing skills in Portuguese, enhance your knowledge of advanced grammar and vocabulary, and develop your sensitivity to identify and reproduce register and tone in the translation process. On completion of this course, you further develop your skill to analyse and discuss translation with the appropriated concepts and terminology.

This paper offers you the opportunity to engage with advanced use of the foreign language in stimulating and intellectually challenging ways, through the analysis of texts of various types and genres under the topic of Identity. Students will be expected to engage critically with relevant texts, placing them in their cultural contexts and analysing their formal features and content through written work in the foreign language. 

PG1 is designed to give you an introduction to the main areas of study in the Portuguese Tripos, allowing you to sample literature, linguistics and film, from Colonial to contemporary periods, and from Portugal, Lusophone Africa and Brazil.  The paper allows you to work on a variety of texts and topics that will give you solid grounding in Lusophone studies whilst making you aware of its richness and complexity. Furthermore, PG1 offers you the chance to gain a good grasp of theoretical tools in literature, film and linguistics which will enable you to work in depth with this material while gaining a wider perspective on Lusophone culture. It is available to Part IB students and to post-A-level (Part IA) students.

Portuguese is the fifth most widely-spoken world language. It is the official language of Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and S. Tomé e Príncipe, and is spoken by some 200 million people worldwide. Within the Romance languages, it bears close affinity to Spanish, and also to French and Italian. Any student within the MML Faculty, however, is welcome to choose this paper whatever her/his other language combinations, and many have done so with success.

The paper is divided into two separately taught parts: PG3L and PG3C

The PG3L (language) course is designed to take you from scratch to A-level standard in an academic year.

PG4 offers a study of Lusophone culture from the colonial period to the present day. The paper is organised into 4 thematic unites that situate a range of cultural production -literature, cinema, visual culture (paintings, photography) and music – within socially and political situated theoretical and critical debates, ranging from imperialism to democracy. The paper will allow students to develop a knowledge of major movements, artists and texts in Lusophone culture, while considering how art and culture critical articulates and responds to certain historical and political moments. The paper’s critical component is emphasized in 4 seminars in which students will be required to engage with key theoretical texts and debates, from literary studies, cultural studies and film studies.

This course considers the internal and external history of the Hispanic languages. The focus is mainly on the development of Portuguese, Castilian and Catalan but other Peninsular varieties (including those usually termed 'dialects') are also considered since the history of all the Peninsular languages is in any case interrelated.

The history of the Hispanic languages stretches from Vulgar Latin (which may conveniently be thought of as the spoken language of the Roman Empire) to the expansion of Spain and Portugal into the New World and the perceptible present-day developments which are taking place in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world of over 400 million people. The fascination of the subject lies in the piecing together of information about the emergence of early Hispanic languages out of Latin; the language in the Dark Ages and the Medieval period; the examination of possible reasons why the language changed as it did (actually not just once but all the time!); the processes of language change; and the study of modern diversity. Students will also get the opportunity to acquire a hands-on experience of the past forms of the language, and of general philological methodology, through the study of old texts during supervisions.

A prior knowledge of Latin is a help, but is neither essential nor expected. However, some knowledge of linguistics is required (SP1 and/or PG1 linguistics lectures).

Portuguese is the fifth most widely-spoken world language. It is the official language of Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and S. Tomé e Príncipe, and is spoken by some 200 million people worldwide. Within the Romance languages, it bears close affinity to Spanish, and also to French and Italian. Any student within the MML Faculty, however, is welcome to choose this paper whatever her/his other language combinations, and many have done so with success.

The paper is divided into two separately taught parts: PG3L and PG3C

The PG3L (language) course is designed to take you from scratch to A-level standard in an academic year.

PG4 offers a study of Lusophone culture from the colonial period to the present day. The paper is organised into 4 thematic unites that situate a range of cultural production -literature, cinema, visual culture (paintings, photography) and music – within socially and political situated theoretical and critical debates, ranging from imperialism to democracy. The paper will allow students to develop a knowledge of major movements, artists and texts in Lusophone culture, while considering how art and culture critical articulates and responds to certain historical and political moments. The paper’s critical component is emphasized in 4 seminars in which students will be required to engage with key theoretical texts and debates, from literary studies, cultural studies and film studies.

This course considers the internal and external history of the Hispanic languages. The focus is mainly on the development of Portuguese, Castilian and Catalan but other Peninsular varieties (including those usually termed 'dialects') are also considered since the history of all the Peninsular languages is in any case interrelated.

The history of the Hispanic languages stretches from Vulgar Latin (which may conveniently be thought of as the spoken language of the Roman Empire) to the expansion of Spain and Portugal into the New World and the perceptible present-day developments which are taking place in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world of over 400 million people. The fascination of the subject lies in the piecing together of information about the emergence of early Hispanic languages out of Latin; the language in the Dark Ages and the Medieval period; the examination of possible reasons why the language changed as it did (actually not just once but all the time!); the processes of language change; and the study of modern diversity. Students will also get the opportunity to acquire a hands-on experience of the past forms of the language, and of general philological methodology, through the study of old texts during supervisions.

A prior knowledge of Latin is a help, but is neither essential nor expected. However, some knowledge of linguistics is required (SP1 and/or PG1 linguistics lectures).

The paper offers a comparativist exploration of Iberian and Latin American cinemas, from the so-called silent period to the present day. Organized in terms of key topics, it examines important filmmaking traditions, movements and debates that have emerged in the Ibero-American context and helped to shape it. This organization provides students with a critical and theoretical knowledge of reading different film making forms, such as avant-garde films, indigenous texts, popular cinema and transnational filmmaking, while also allowing them the tremendous possibility for transcending traditional local, national and linguistic divisions in order to pose broader comparative questions. In doing so the paper’s structure reconfigures the traditional metropole-colony dichotomy into a more nuanced and multipolar interpretive frame. At the same time, individual lectures will situate films in their social, political, historical and cultural context, thereby highlighting the specificity, locatedness and historicity of cinematic production and reception, including in certain instances their relationship to state institutions. The course will thus provide students with ways of critically understanding the connectivities and dissimilarities of the cinematic culture of the Ibero-American world. Films will be viewed in their original versions with English subtitles.