One of the great privileges of teaching at Oxford is meeting a wide variety of exceptional students and this issue gives us a chance to hear from several of them. Madison Stanton-Kami is a first year whose path to Oxford was made smoother thanks to remarkable outreach programmes. Nobody from her school had ever studied here, but she has taken to university life like a fish to water and, amid the irregular Italian verbs and medieval tales which are her daily fare, is finding time for badminton and theatre too. Madison’s joy of reading has echoes in the other pieces in this issue.
There is sheer delight too in Erin Hamer’s discovery of a mysterious French manuscript at the Bodleian. Fittingly enough, it is a pedagogical treatise, centred on a young girl whose mother is teaching her about the world. Both the text and the object itself prove fascinating as the article shows and Erin is now hoping that her future professional life will allow her to have more to do with such documents.
We are always proud of our students’ achievements. Anna Glieden was awarded a prestigious scholarship to spend a term at IZEA, the Enlightenment centre in Halle (Germany). Her time there was one of intense engagement with other specialist scholars. It gave her the opportunity of examining archives in Gotha as well as of viewing the extensive collection of Houdon statues in the castle museum. This was particularly valuable for her as her thesis deals with texts about sculpture in the eighteenth century.
Many of you, I hope, will have seen the marvellous Kafka exhibition in Oxford last year or attended one of the events associated with it. From the Bodleian, many of the treasures on show have been lent to a follow-on exhibition in New York. Ian Ellison, who was part of the organising team, tells us about Franz K’s very successful transition to NYC.
The example of Kafka’s The Castle as one of the great unfinished works of literature was given by Usbek-born writer and journalist, Hamid Ismailov, in his Ilchester lecture. John Spence found much food for thought in Ismailov’s reflection on books finished and unfinished which ranged widely from the effect of trauma on inspiration to the creative power of fragments.
Oxford offers its students unparalleled opportunities to engage with contemporary authors. Georgie Fooks and Mary Orsak tell of the events marking a recent visit to Oxford by Slovak novelist Nicol Hochholczerová and one of her translators, Julia Sherwood. There were readings and discussions about the difficulties of translation and the new directions in Slovak fiction including Hochholczerová’s powerful debut novel.
As intellectual stimulation during his year abroad in a tech company, Miles Oleksak got involved in what is now the fifth edition of the UK’s Choix Goncourt, reading four French novels and judging them with his peers from Oxford and fourteen other universities. He enjoyed the reading, but also the discussions and the whole experience of engaging with the most recent fiction—not to mention the opportunity of meeting other students, journalists and the French ambassador over a glass of champagne at the French Residence in London.
Someone whose love of fiction in foreign languages has never left him is alumnus Richard Village. After years in business, he has set up his own publishing house to translate novels in languages of the Mediterranean area into English. Reading Italian and Spanish at Oxford led him to his lifelong interest in modern writing. We caught up with him to hear both about his undergraduate memories and his exciting new venture bringing great writing to an English-speaking audience.
I hope that you too can revel in the joy of languages and what they offer us. From Oxford, where the trees are heavy with blossom as the finalists in sub-fusc head off to Examination schools, I send you warm wishes from us all here in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages.