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Sample Personal Statement for 18th-19th English Literature
To what extent can the language and literature of a nation or a
race reflect the history and culture of this nation or race? To what
extent can the soul of a nation and the universal values in the
innermost recesses of the minds of humanity be revealed in the
language and literature of a given country? To those questions, only
the person who is long engaged in the study of this field can find
distinctive answers and develop unique perceptions. I believe that the
perception of the historical and cultural impulses and national legacy
through literature is an important sensibility for a student of
literature. I am very proud that as a Chinese student I have developed
such a sensibility through my past academic studies of English
literature. What is more, I would like to further develop and expand
such a sensibility to acquire a scholarly and professional dimension
in the very nation whose literary heritage has not only influenced the
country itself but also extended to almost every part of the world.
Currently, I am a senior student at the Department of English, Foreign
Language School of XX University of China. Before entering the
university, I had been learning English for nearly ten years since my
elementary school and from the very beginning I was interested in
understanding the social and cultural aspects behind the English
language. By the time I completed my senior middle school and
succeeded in the highly competitive national university entrance
examination, I decided that I was to study English language and
English literature in my undergraduate program, because I had been
cast under the inextricable spell of this beautiful language and the
fascinating world of English literature. However, only after I began
my systematic and formal education in English language and literature
in my undergraduate program did I develop an in-depth understanding of
English beyond the level of mere language instrument.
In my comprehensive study of English, I have also come to a perceptive
appreciation of English language in terms of its emotional and
literary expressiveness. My study of English literature has been
conducted in two ways. The first is the formal academic education in
which I took or audited a number of courses such as English
Literature, Selected Readings of English and American Prose, Theories
of Literary Criticism, American Literature，and English and American
Poetry. Next, I relied on self-study to familiarize myself with most
of the major works of English literature starting with Beowulf and
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer to works written in the first half of 20th
century. In order to deepen my interpretation of individual works, I
have also resorted to prevailing literary critical approaches like
those in Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory—An Introduction and 20th
Century Literary Criticism edited by David Lodge to give my
interpretations some theoretical weight.
My strong interest in English language and literature, my special
aptitudes in language study, as well as my exacting attitude toward
coursework, all have contributed to make my undergraduate study an
important success, bringing me first-class scholarships with top
academic performance in my class; my overall GPA has reached 3.8.
While helping me lay a solid academic foundation, my dedicated efforts
at coursework also significantly improved my perseverance and both the
academic foundation and my persistent personality will be of immense
significance to my future academic pursuit. As a junior student, I
have gone beyond my language learning to perform tentative study on
the English culture, history, society and historical figures and wrote
a series essays ranging from Cultural Convergence and Divergence as
Evidenced in the Translation of English Idioms, Jane Austin’s View of
Marriage in Pride and Prejudice, and The Teaching of English
Literature to Chinese Students of English Major. At present, I am busy
writing my BA thesis entitled Coleridge’s Romantic World, in which, by
examining his premise of “willing suspension of disbelief” in his
Biographia Literaria, I analyze his views of the mind as creative in
perception, intuitive in its discovery of the first premises of
metaphysics and religion, and capable of a poetic re-creation of the
world of sense by the fusing and formative power of the “secondary
imagination”.
Apart from formal academic education, I have also devoted myself to
extracurricular development by participating in a number of social
practices and charity activities. Besides serving as a student leader
in my class, I have been the chairperson of AIESEC’s XX University
Branch, launching several major cross-cultural studies and helping
many students to do internship at European and American companies in
Beijing. I also helped organize XX in XX and acted as the
organization’s chairperson from 2002 to 2003, contributing my efforts
to popularizing humanitarianism and advocating the love for humanity.
As a recognition of my contributions, I won my university’s
scholarship for social work, scholarship for outstanding student
leadership, and outstanding volunteer of XX. An important byproduct of
those activities enhanced my awareness of different cultural values,
developed my cultural tolerance, and deepened my understanding of
western culture. What is most important is that while working for XX I
gained a totally new understanding of the meaning of life and realized
the importance of universal human concerns to the interpretation of
literature.
Although 18th-19th century English literature did not reach the
literary greatness represented by Shakespeare and the Elizabethan
Period, this period produced a number of writers whom I am very
interested in studying, novelists like Defoe, Fielding and Sterne. But
I am more interested in examining the relevance of the political and
satirical literature of the 18th century, represented by Pope and
Swift, to the social and political reality of that time. For 19th
century English literature, I am interested in tracing the development
of English romantic tradition starting with Blake, Wordsworth and
Coleridege and leading to John Keats，Byron and Shelley. I am
interested in tracing the development of the romantic sensibility and
looking into underlying reasons underlying the Romanticists’ efforts
to exalt the primary role of imaginative literature in keeping man
emotionally alive and morally sensitive, that is, keeping him
essentially human, in the face of the pressures of a technological and
increasingly urban society, with its mass media and mass culture that
threaten to blunt the mind’s “discriminatory powers” and to “reduce it
to a state of almost savage torpor.” In my proposed program, I would
like to study Romantic poets and poetry from the perspectives of
literature, philosophy, religion and psychology and, hopefully, to
arrive at some original interpretations. A tentative topic for my
thesis would be something like The Romantic Poets: Aesthetics and
Ideology.
As the most prestigious university of the UK, XX University is the
university of great masters. For a person like me who is deeply
enamored of English literature, XX University is ideal for ushering me
into the sacred and the beautiful palace of literature. I am so
delighted to find that almost all the major 18th and 19th century
English writers are covered in your curriculum. I am convinced that my
prospective study at XX will immeasurably improve my specialized
understanding of English literature but also expose me to the essence
of English culture and language, in addition to cultivating my sense
of elitism at the world’s first-rate university. Of course I am well
aware of the challenging nature of my undertaking. Yet my faith is
firm and my efforts will be persistent, and my firm faith and
persistent efforts are bound to lead me into the realm of literature
to which I am ready to devote to for the rest of my life. Or just as
what Shelley says, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” |
