Comparative Literature (M.Phil.) postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Last winter a customer at the pharmacy where I work asked me to explain the leaflet that came with her new inhaler. She was French, recently arrived, and her English was good, but the leaflet's careful hedging (may, in some cases, rarely) was defeating her. I translated it aloud at the counter, and found myself choosing between "peut" and "il arrive que" as if the difference mattered, which for her it did. That small exchange returned me to a question I first met as an undergraduate: what happens to the shape of a text, not just its words, when it moves between languages and readers?

I studied English and French, and my final-year dissertation compared the endings of short stories by Guy de Maupassant and James Joyce. I began with a simple contrast: Maupassant's stories often close on a turn or revelation, as in "La Parure", where the final line reverses everything before it, while the stories in Dubliners tend to stop without resolving. As I worked, the contrast became less tidy. Several of Maupassant's quieter stories end in suspension rather than surprise, and Joyce's "The Dead" builds towards a final paragraph that feels conclusive in tone even though nothing is settled. I argued that the endings of both writers are better understood through how they handle a reader's expectation than through a division between plot and epiphany. My supervisor's most useful criticism was that I relied too heavily on English translations when discussing Maupassant's rhythm, and I rewrote two sections working directly from the French. The dissertation received a high 2:1, and it left me wanting the methods to make such comparisons with more rigour.

Alongside my degree I read beyond the syllabus in ways that now feel connected. Edward Said's essay "Reflections on Exile" made me think about writers who work between places, and I followed it with Assia Djebar's Fantasia, which I read in French. Djebar writes about using French, the language of colonisation, to record Algerian women's histories, and I found it hard to discuss the novel without asking who it was written for. I would like to study those questions properly, particularly the relationship between translation, audience and power in francophone writing.

My work since graduating has been ordinary but has taught me some useful habits. As a dispensing assistant I check prescriptions against labels, manage stock and speak to customers who are often anxious or rushed. Accuracy is non-negotiable, and so is explaining things plainly without condescension. I have also become more aware of how much official language assumes about its reader, which has sharpened my attention when reading texts of every kind.

On Sunday afternoons I help my thirteen-year-old cousin with her French homework. We have moved from vocabulary lists to short passages from Le Petit Prince, and explaining why a sentence sounds right in French but stiff in a literal English version has made me better at articulating instincts I used to leave unexamined. I also swim three mornings a week with a local club, which has nothing to do with literature but gives my week a steady structure that I expect to rely on during independent study.

I am applying for postgraduate study in comparative literature because I want to move from noticing differences between texts to explaining them with sound theoretical grounding. I am especially interested in short fiction and in writing produced across linguistic borders, and I would welcome training in translation theory and in reading literatures I cannot yet approach in the original. I bring close reading in two languages, experience of sustained independent research, and a working life that has made me careful, patient and attentive to readers. I hope to develop these into research that takes the movement of texts between languages as seriously as that customer took her leaflet.