Comparative literature personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

I began reading in French because I wanted to know what was actually in the sentences. We had studied a translated extract of Camus in an English lesson and a passage of Maupassant in French, and I noticed that the translated prose felt smoother, tidier, more explained than the French I was struggling through. Since then I have kept a notebook of places where two versions of the same text pull in different directions: a tense that suggests habit in one language and single action in another, a word for shame that also means embarrassment. Comparative literature attracts me because it treats that gap as a subject rather than an inconvenience. I am interested in how texts travel, and in what happens when a form moves between cultures. Reading Achebe's Things Fall Apart alongside proverbs my grandmother repeats in Igbo made me think about how a novel written in English can carry the rhythms of another language inside it, and about who a book is addressed to. I do not want to study only English-language writing, and I do not want to study only French. I want to keep working across languages, to read criticism and translation theory properly rather than guessing at it, and to learn the historical background that makes comparison something better than noticing coincidences. A degree that requires me to read closely in more than one language, and to argue about why a comparison matters, is the study I want to spend three years on.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My A-levels are English Literature, French and History, and the three support each other more than I expected. In English Literature I have worked on Shakespeare, Duffy's poetry and a coursework essay comparing narrative voice in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, which taught me to build an argument from small textual details rather than from a general impression. My French course involves literature and film as well as language, and translating both ways has been the most useful discipline: it forces me to decide what a sentence is doing before I can render it. I now draft translations twice, once for accuracy and once for rhythm, and compare the results. History has been the corrective to my instinct to read texts as though they floated free of their conditions. Studying nineteenth-century Europe gave me context for the French realist writing I enjoy, and essay work on source reliability has made me more careful about the difference between evidence and assertion. Outside the syllabus I attend a college reading group where we choose one short book a month; recent choices included a Chekhov collection and Kafka's Metamorphosis, which produced a long argument about how much the opening sentence's translation shapes everything afterwards. I have also been reading about translation more deliberately, starting with essays on the choices translators make, and I keep a list of questions I cannot yet answer.

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

With a friend from my French class I produce a small zine, four pages, photocopied at college, appearing roughly every half term. Each issue contains one short poem or prose passage in French or Spanish, our own translation, and a paragraph explaining one decision we could not agree on. We have made nine issues and give away about forty copies; a tutor now takes some for her Year 12 group. Dividing the work has been as instructive as the translating. My friend is better at layout and deadlines, I am better at drafting the commentary, and we learned to fix the running order early rather than argue about it the night before printing. I volunteer fortnightly at my local library, helping with the Saturday reading session for younger children: setting out books, reading aloud, and finding the next title for a child who has finished a series. Reading aloud to an audience that fidgets has improved my sense of pace and sentence length. On Saturdays I work in a garden centre café, taking orders and clearing tables, which has taught me to stay pleasant when it is busy and to notice when a colleague needs help. I also care for my younger brother two afternoons a week while my mother works, which means my reading happens in fixed pockets of time and has made me organised about what I can realistically finish. These commitments have made me steadier and more used to explaining ideas to people who have not read the same things as me.

This example has 4,313 characters across the three answers. Use it for ideas and structure. Your own UCAS answers must fit within 4,000 characters in total, including spaces.

Review this personal statement

Latest reviews