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Sample Statement of Purpose for 20th Century American Literature
“The apparition of these faces in the crowds: /Petals on a wet,
black bough.” My first reaction on reading Ezra Pound’s 1916 poem In a
Station of the Metro was that of outrage. Is it a poem by any
definition? If it is a poem, how is it to be interpreted and
understood? And finally, what are the implications that this poem has
produced for the twentieth- century American literature?
My initial bewilderment subsided as I realized that there must a
raison d’etre behind this apparently bizarre literary phenomenon. What
I should do is to put this poem into the context of the American
literary evolution and literary history. At least, the poem raises an
important challenge. It requires me to understand some of the crucial
changes that must be happening around the turn of the last century.
My subsequent studies indicate that this poem represents part of the
larger literary movement known as Imagism, which included such
theorists and practitioners as T. E. Hume, Hilda Doolittle, Amy
Lowell, Ezra Pound, etc. The movement was a direct reaction to the
late Victorian poetry, which had become extremely artificial, emptily
“rhetorical” and “ornamental”. To address such problems, it was
necessary to loosen the metrical pattern and bring it back closer to
the rhythms of ordinary speech. Consequently, the “imagist” movement
had a great deal to do with promoting experiments with free verse,
advocating among many creeds the need “to allow absolute freedom in
the choice of subject” and “to produce poetry that is hard and clear,
never blurred nor indefinite.” When Archibald MacLeish said in his Ars
Poetica (1926) that “A poem should not mean / But be”, he had similar
concerns in his mind. Imagism, minor as it is as a literary movement,
triggered important changes in literary criticism, introducing the
notion of internal studies as embodied by New Criticism to substitute
the conventional critical practices.
The foregoing incident is but one instance that happened in my study
of literature. For a Chinese student like me, it has at least two
important implications. First, a literary work must not be treated in
isolation. It interacts with what is written before it and after it
and this historical perspective is one way in which we may add to our
interpretation. Second, it is important to be acquainted with relevant
literary theories when interpreting a given literary work.
A student majoring in English (& International Trade) at the English
Department of XX University, I grew increasingly interested in
literature during the second half of my undergraduate program. Of
course, I was trained to be a student of English language in the first
place and as such I received the standard academic training typical of
a student of English major. For the first two years, I primarily had
intensive trainings in basic English language skills by attending
courses in advanced listening, writing, reading and oral
communication. My distinguished academic performance is demonstrated
by the four consecutive first-class and second-class scholarships I
won from 1999 to 2003. In 2001, I was awarded the second prize in the
campus-wide English composition contest and in 2002 the first prize in
the translation contest. Another indicator of my scholastic
achievements is the honor of Outstanding Graduate of XX Province that
I received by the time I completed my undergraduate program.
I started reading English novels as soon as I began my undergraduate
program. But I primarily used it as a way to increase my vocabulary
and to improve my reading comprehension. Since the second year in my
undergraduate program, our curriculum included five major courses
related to Anglo-American literature and culture: Selected Readings in
English Literature, Selected Readings in American Literature,
Introduction to European Culture, The History of English and American
Literature, Selected Readings in English & American Fictions. Those
courses provided me with a cultural and historical framework with
which to understand Anglo-American literature and to know their
interrelationships. I grew familiar with major authors and works in
British and American literature and gained tentative knowledge of
western critical approaches. Books like Literary Theory—An
Introduction by Terry Eagleton and 20th Literary Criticism edited by
David Lodge proved somewhat esoteric to me, but they allowed me to
realize that there are important critical approaches very different
from those in Chinese literature and different from conventional ones
in western literature itself.
My defining interest in British and American Literature led me to
write about T. S. Eliot and his poetry in my thesis Dull Roots Stirred
by the Spring Rain—Meaning Through Imagery in T. S. Eliot’s “Waste
Land”(available upon request). In this thesis, I examined different
groups of imagery that T. S. Eliot employed to externalize his central
ideas and emotions. I also analyzed the theoretical justifications for
his virtually excessive use of imagery by tracing it to his theory of
“Objective Correlative” that he proposed in Hamlet and His Problems, a
critical essay contained in The Sacred Wood (1920).
In an extracurricular event, students in our department put on
Shakespeare’s drama Romeo and Juliet and I was the performer-director.
Based on my own understanding of the play, I changed its tragic ending
and made it a happy one by allowing the hero and the heroine to be
resurrected and reunited. I believe that a love of such intensity
should be fulfilled, otherwise it would be too pathetic.
In the last semester of my undergraduate program, I was recruited by
my university to teach the course Appreciation of American Literature
to students of non-English major. By applying my computer skills, I
developed a series of courseware, covering different periods of
American literature and illustrated by graphics and diagrams to make
an otherwise difficult course interesting and easy to understand.
Nevertheless I am fully aware that my knowledge of American literature
is far from sufficient. I need to receive more advanced education for
the sake of a better career development. Therefore I plan to apply for
a Graduate program in English at the University of XX, concentrating
on modern and contemporary American literature. Your program is
nationally recognized (listed as among the top 10 in XX according to
XX) and it attacks me for its quality, small size and close
mentorship. I am interested in your well-designed curriculum whose
Contemporary American Literature, American Literary History, Special
Topics in American Literature, American Literature 1865-1914,
1914-1960. Among your 13 professors, I would like to receive
instructions from XX, XX, XX. XX, and XX. I believe I am well-prepared
and genuinely motivated for your program, which will teach me the
knowledge and expertise nowhere to be sought in my own country. |
