Wuraola Salawu
(2024) English
Cambridge Bursary Scheme
I have always really enjoyed twentieth- (and early twenty-first-) century literature and the way language seems to fragment in this time period. As the world changed rapidly, so did the literature, and I love looking at the ways authors experimented with form and structure to reflect these upheavals. In the past year I’ve grown my interest in studying relationship structures and power struggles in literature, especially in the twentieth century, and I’m currently preparing to write my second-year dissertation on sickness in the late twentieth century.
I’ve balanced a persistent interest in twentieth-century literature with a burgeoning interest in Early Modern literature, which developed unexpectedly during my Renaissance paper. I found this paper challenging, but that’s a huge part of why I enjoyed it. I was forced to find points of relatability, to really figure out where my interest could fit into this time period and to discover new things I loved to write about that are unique to those centuries. As part of my end of year Shakespeare portfolio I wrote an essay on social mobility and bedsharing in Titus Andronicus and Othello. I was drawn to this topic because of my interest in social mobility (as well as social maintenance) in the Early Modern period and the unique ways in which mobility was sought and expressed in this time period. Looking at the bed as a site of instruction, I figured that by gaining access to someone’s bed, especially through marriage, characters could better their (and others’) social and political circumstances.
My work focused on rank, order and status – something that is affected by bedsharing but on a broader scale is concerned with placement and misplacement. I dug deeper into the use of proximal descriptors that act not just as directional signs but affectional ones. By emphasising people’s places under, over, before or after people, Shakespeare (and Iago, as his surrogate dramatist) was able to shift the hierarchy within Othello. Thus, when Othello asks the senate to “let her speak of [him] before her father”, the preposition ‘before’ acts as an affectional signal and a directional one. Though Desdemona claims to have a double duty, she arrives and speaks as Othello’s wife, considering him before she considers her father. I felt that the way language facilitates shifts in power and relationships in such subtle ways is important in understanding the bigger picture of the play, and this taught me to consider things that may be overlooked as minor details – a skill I am carrying into the close reading I do in second year.
Outside of work I became Treasurer of the St John’s English Society, which is a role I love because I get to be more involved in my community and in my subject. I have joined a number of creative writing societies, submitting my work for zines occasionally, which has introduced me to the wider writing community at Cambridge and also given me the confidence to be more active in that scene in my second year!
Financial assistance has vastly improved my experience at Cambridge. The community at St John’s is an unforgettable one, and I’m incredibly grateful my bursary has given me the opportunity to meet these people and spend time with them. I can now buy tickets to student plays, student gigs and other student-run activities, and when the ticket release for the May Ball came around I could get a ticket without having to pick between that and paying my student bill on time. I can also afford to stress about the English Society’s finances because I don’t have my own to worry about!
