The Professorship of the Romance Languages is a statutory chair at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. The first courses in

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...

were offered by

Max Müller Friedrich Max Müller (; 6 December 1823 – 28 October 1900) was a German-born philologist and Orientalist, who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life. He was one of the founders of the western academic disciplines of Indian ...

in the 1850s and the Selbourne Commission proposed the establishment of a Professorship of Romance or Neo-Latin Languages at Corpus Christi College in the 1870s. The college, however, was unwilling to fund it and so the university had to wait. An appeal for funds and a bequest by Cuthbert Shields allowed the Taylorian Professorship of the Romance Languages to be established in 1909. The first appointee was

Hermann Oelsner Hermann or Herrmann may refer to: * Hermann (name), list of people with this name * Arminius, chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe in the 1st century, known as Hermann in the German language * Éditions Hermann, French publisher * Hermann, Miss ...

, who had held the Taylorian lecturership at the university and was an expert in

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...

. The "

Taylorian The Taylor Institution (commonly known as the Taylorian) is the Oxford University library dedicated to the study of the languages of Europe. Its building also includes lecture rooms used by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Univer ...

" title was eventually dropped and the chair became associated with a fellowship at

Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...

in 1925.

List of Professors of the Romance Languages

* 1909–1913:

* 1913–1927:

Paul Studer Paul may refer to: *Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name) * Paul (surname), a list of people People Christianity *Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...

* 1927–1930:

Edwin George Ross Waters The name Edwin means "rich friend". It comes from the Old English elements "ead" (rich, blessed) and "ƿine" (friend). The original Anglo-Saxon form is Eadƿine, which is also found for Anglo-Saxon figures. People * Edwin of Northumbria (died ...

* 1930–1958:

Alfred Ewert Alfred Ewert, FBA (14 July 1891 – 22 October 1969) was an American-born scholar of French language and literature who grew up in Canada and spent his career in England. He was Professor of the Romance Languages at the University of Oxford from ...

, FBA * 1958–1968: Thomas Bertram Wallace Reid * 1968–1976:

Stephen Ullmann Stephen Ullmann ( hu, Ullmann István; 31 July 1914 – 10 January 1976) was a Hungarian linguist who spent most of his life in England and wrote about style and semantics in Romance and common languages. Biography Born in Budapest, Austria-Hu ...

* 1976–1977:

Roy Harris Roy Ellsworth Harris (February 12, 1898 – October 1, 1979) was an American composer. He wrote music on American subjects, and is best known for his Symphony No. 3. Life Harris was born in Chandler, Oklahoma on February 12, 1898. His ancestry ...

* 1978–1996:

Rebecca Posner Rebecca Posner (née Reynolds; 17 August 1929 – 19 July 2018) was a British philologist, linguist and academic, who specialized in Romance languages. Having taught at Girton College, Cambridge, the University of Ghana, and the University of Yor ...

* 1996–present: Martin David Maiden, FBA

List of Professors of the Romance Languages

References

Further reading