Comparative Literature and French and Spanish

Comparative literature, French, and Spanish together create a degree of remarkable cultural range and intellectual ambition. Comparative literature is the study of literary texts across languages, cultures, and periods, examining the relationships between literatures around the world rather than treating national literary traditions as isolated units. French and Spanish, meanwhile, give you genuine access to two of the world's major literary and cultural traditions, and to the living communities in France, francophone Africa and Canada, Spain, and Latin America where these languages continue to shape cultural life.

Reading and comparing texts across these languages and traditions develops the capacity to see patterns, differences, and influences that a single-language literary education cannot reveal.

At St Andrews this four-year full-time programme opens literary study across the boundaries of culture and language, allowing you to read texts of any genre, period, and linguistic origin, including in English translation where appropriate, while also developing your French and Spanish to a high level of proficiency. Comparative literature draws on expertise from across the School of Modern Languages, enabling you to push at the boundaries of textual analysis and read without the borders that national literary syllabi typically impose. The programme includes a year abroad, providing immersive experience in both French and Spanish-speaking environments.

You will develop skills in close reading, literary and cultural analysis, translation awareness, and the construction of comparative arguments across texts from very different contexts.

Graduates move into careers in publishing, journalism, translation and interpreting, education, cultural organisations, diplomacy, and international business. Many also continue to postgraduate study in comparative literature, French studies, Hispanic studies, or literary theory.