Comparative literature personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

During my breaks on the bakery night shift, I read Jhumpa Lahiri's In Other Words, the book she wrote in Italian about choosing to write in a language she was still learning. My edition prints her Italian and Ann Goldstein's English translation on facing pages. I could not read the Italian, but I kept glancing across at it, noticing where a short sentence on one side became longer on the other. That habit of looking across has shaped how I read. I want to study comparative literature because I am most interested in what happens to a story when it moves between languages, countries and readers, and I want the training to answer those questions properly rather than by instinct. The idea of setting texts beside each other, rather than reading each in isolation, is what draws me to this subject over a single national literature. I am also keen to keep developing a second language seriously, so that my reading is not always mediated by someone else's translation.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

I left school after A-levels and returned to study this year through an Access to HE Diploma in Humanities, which I take two evenings a week alongside work. My extended essay compared Jane Eyre with Wide Sargasso Sea, looking at how Jean Rhys gives Bertha Mason a childhood, a name and a voice that Brontë's novel withholds. Writing it taught me to hold two books in mind at once and to ask what each assumes about the other, and my tutor's feedback encouraged me to tighten my close reading of individual passages. In a literature unit we read Things Fall Apart, and I was struck that Achebe took his title from Yeats's 'The Second Coming', borrowing a European poem to frame a story of colonial disruption in Igboland. I now notice these borrowings everywhere. I am also in my second year of an adult evening class in Spanish. I can read short stories slowly with a dictionary, and I have been working through a bilingual collection, covering the English to test my own version before checking the printed one. It is humbling and enjoyable in equal measure, and it has shown me how many small decisions a translator makes in a single paragraph. Close comparison has made me wary of using a second book merely to illustrate a theme I have already decided on. I want to allow differences in voice and form to challenge my interpretation, especially when I am reading one of the works through translation.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

For nine years I have worked nights at an industrial bakery, mostly on the bread line and, for the last three, training new starters. The work is physical and repetitive, and it has given me stamina, reliability and the ability to concentrate when tired, which has helped me balance study with full-time shifts. Training people taught me to explain a process clearly and to check whether someone has actually understood, not just nodded. Several colleagues speak Polish or Romanian as a first language, and I have seen how meaning slips in workplace instructions, which made translation feel practical rather than abstract. For two years I have co-run a monthly reading group at my local library. I help choose the books, and I have pushed for translated fiction alongside the usual bestsellers. Hearing ten people read the same novel ten ways has taught me to listen before arguing and to back up a point with the text. Away from books, I keep an allotment with a friend, which mainly teaches patience. I am ready to commit to full-time study, and I would bring maturity, steady work habits and a genuine curiosity about how literature crosses borders.