Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford

The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, England, was established in 1903. European languages (other than Latin and ancient Greek, taught as part of classics) were first taught at Oxford in the 19th century. The Jesus Professorship of Celtic is the oldest of the chairs in the faculty, dating from 1877. A range of languages are studied at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Modern languages, as opposed to ancient ones, were not taught in Oxford for much of the University’s history. In 1724, a donation by George I was intended to provide teaching in French and German to train future diplomats, but the scheme soon failed. Another endowment, by Sir Robert Taylor (1714–1788), was contested by his son so that the University only received the sum (of £65,000) in 1835. The money was invested and it was only in 1844 that the Hebdomadal Board proposed that Modern Languages should be taught within the University. By then the construction of two contiguous, grandly harmonious buildings was almost complete. The first, the Randolph or ‘University’ Galleries, was to house galleries for statues and paintings, and is now called the Ashmolean Museum. The matching second building was designed to house lecture rooms and libraries for the study of European languages, and is now the Taylor Institution. The Faculty's administrative offices are situated in Wellington Square.

Initially there were only two Taylorian Teachers, one in French and one in German. In 1847, Jules Bué was appointed to teach French; he also produced the first French translation of Alice in Wonderland. In 1848, F.H. Trithen was appointed as the first Professor of Modern European Languages. He was followed by the Germanist and Orientalist Friedrich Max Müller (1854–68), who went on to become Professor of Comparative Philology. A statute for the Founding of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages was approved by Congregation in 1903. The University of Oxford also has the only established Chair of the Romance Languages in Britain, which dates back to 1909, though since 2008 this Chair has been shared with the new Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics.

...
Wikipedia