An introduction to

English Literature at

Dereham 6th Form

Centre

You’ve probably realised by now, that simply attending classes and completing class and homework set by the

teacher is not sufficient in itself to achieve either top grades, maximum enjoyment or indeed to really develop

an understanding of Literature and its place in the grand scheme of human activity.

Below is a guide to specific things you can do is this subject to ensure that a) you reach your full potential and

do yourself proud in the examination and b) really come away with a sense of the genuine awesomeness of

grappling with the thoughts and ideas of some of the greatest creative and philosophical minds in history.

Should you take the challenge you will also, along the way, develop superb, transferable study skills and

become an excellent self-sufficient learner. And, – you’ll probably get a whole lot more enjoyment out of your

studies.

General

Get into a good habit of reading regularly: - find a slot in the day even if it’s just 15 minutes (before

you go to sleep, on the bus to college, at soon as you get home, during your lunch hour…). This will

guarantee an hour or two’s reading a week which will get you through your set texts and beyond,

widening your circle of literary knowledge, increasing your vocabulary and subtly feeding into your

own writing style. (see below for suggestions on what to read)

Anticipate what will be covered in class and get ahead by preparing for it. Look at the scheme of work, Edmodo, ask staff or use your common sense. Read ahead and have thoughts, ideas, questions

ready so that you can be fully engaged and get maximum benefit out of the hour’s lesson.(see below for

suggestions on ways to do this)

Engage with and actively participate in the hour’s lesson. Think, talk, discuss, share ideas – if you’ve formed a habit of being the ‘quiet’ one now’s the time to break it and discover the pleasures of saying

your thoughts out loud and having them discussed. Take risks!

Keep you folders in order and regularly revise and reread. If you can’t bring your entire folder then at the very minimum bring in all handouts etc relevant to current term’s work and use the handouts,

glossaries, feedback sheets etc.

Ensure that every piece of assessed work directly builds on the previous one. Before you begin an essay, look back at your previous ones and note targets for improvement and comments on strengths

and weaknesses, re-read ‘model’ essays and use any ‘scaffolding’ structures discussed before writing.

Use the Style Guide to ensure you are observing the proper conventions of academic writing

Use EPAX to improve upon any area of literacy, grammar, academic writing, structuring essays, referencing etc that you feel you are weak on

Ensure that you are familiar with the Aims and Objectives of each paper and the Assessment

Objectives associated with it. Know what knowledge and skills you are being examined on and

consciously seek to acquire, develop and then show them off.

Paper 1A – Aspects of Tragedy (40% of overall Grade) – closed book Othello by William Shakespeare (Sec A extract question – 25 marks, Sec B essay question – 25 marks) Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (Sec C essay

question linking two texts – 25 marks)

Know the texts really well – aim to have read ‘Othello’, ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ and ‘Death of a Salesman’ at least three times by the time you are examined on them

Undertake wider reading - read/ watch other tragedies by Shakespeare, read another Hardy novel and read / watch other plays by Miller – find the common threads

Watch Theatrical or Cinematic versions of the texts - as many as you possibly can. Different interpretations, good or bad, get you thinking about themes, characterisation, meaning…

Get hold of quality A Level Study Guides – read and engage with them:- highlight interesting points, make notes in the margins, supplement your class notes with them, bring them into class discussions

Read about and familiarise yourself with, the concept of ‘Tragedy’ - how has it developed from Aristotle’s ideas in classical times to Shakespearian interpretations and through into the concept of the modern tragic hero.

Read critical essays/ secondary literature by literary scholars – this not only increases your knowledge and understanding of the texts but helps develop your critical writing style and associated critical/ analytical vocabulary

Paper 2B – Aspects of Political and Social Protest Writing (40% of overall Grade)- open book The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (essay question

linking two texts – 25 marks)

Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake (essay question – 25 marks) Unseen Passage of a text (essay question – 25 marks)

As above: Know the texts really well by reading and re reading (having practised analysis of unseen texts) Undertake wider reading: - by same author or on similar topics, periods Watch Theatrical or Cinematic versions of the texts Get hold of quality A Level Study Guides Read about and familiarise yourself with, the concept of ‘Political and Social Protest Writing’ - what

other authors are associated with this genre? How far back does the history of such writing go? What are the typical genres used and what texts/authors are recognised as seminal?

Read critical essays/ secondary literature specifically about protest literature in general and these texts in particular

Non-exam Assessment (20% of Overall Grade) Here you are expected to study two texts; one poetry and one prose, informed by study of the Critical anthology. You will write two essays of 1,250-1,500 words, each responding to a different text and linking to a different aspect of the Critical anthology. One essay can be re-creative. The re-creative piece will be accompanied by a commentary.

Wider Reading this section depends upon you having read beyond the specification and having a clear idea of the texts that you would like to focus your essay on – join the book club!

Wider critical reading this section depends on you having an understanding of ‘critical theory’ – it requires you to recognise different critical ‘perspectives’ and different ‘readings’ of texts ie Feminist, Marxist, Eco-critical, Narrative Theory, Post-Colonial, and Literary Value.

All the wider reading undertaken for other parts of the course will be relevant here so it is doubly useful!

Paper Specific

Wider Reading / Listening / Seeing

General: Aristotle Poetics - essential reading to understand Tragedy and the tragic hero Ovid Metamorphoses - essential reading to understand most literary texts especially Shakespeare Robert Graves The Greek Myths Anthony Horowitz Myths and Legends – simple version of Metamorphoses New King James Version The Holy Bible:– dip in and out to help access many literary works

Novels Plays by Poetry by Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Purple Hibiscus, Americanah Monica Ali Brick Lane Kate Atkinson Behind the Scenes at the Museum Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake, The Blind Assassin Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility Louis de Bernieres Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights Antony Burgess A Clockwork Orange Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 AS Byatt Possession Angela Carter The Bloody Chamber, Nights at the Circus, Wilkie Collins The Woman in White Joseph Conrad The Secret Agent, The Heart of Darkness Charles Dickens Great Expectations, Hard Times, Bleak House Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca George Eliot The Mill on The Floss, Middlemarch Sebastian Faulks Birdsong, Charlotte Gray William Faulkner As I Lay Dying, Light in August F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night E.M. Forster A Room with a View, A Passage to India Elizabeth Gaskell North and South, Wives and Daughters Gabriel Garcia Marquez Love in the Time of Cholera William Golding Lord of the Flies Graham Greene Brighton Rock Kate Grenville The Secret River Thomas Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles L.P. Hartley The Go-Between Joseph Heller Catch-22 Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms Khaled Hosseini A Thousand Splendid Suns Aldous Huxley Brave New World Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go Henry James The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories James Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners D.H Lawrence Sons and Lovers, Women in Love Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird Andrea Levy Small Island Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall, Bring out the Bodies Ian McEwan Atonement, Enduring Love Toni Morrison Beloved Iris Murdoch The Bell, The sea, the sea George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar

Samuel Beckett Alan Bennett Bertolt Brecht Jez Butterworth Anton Chekhov Carol Churchill Shelagh Delaney Oliver Goldsmith Henrik Ibsen Ben Jonson Christopher Marlowe Arthur Miller Harold Pinter William Shakespeare George Bernard Shaw Richard Brinsley Sheridan Polly Stenham Sam Shephard Tom Stoppard John Webster Tennessee Williams Oscar Wilde

Simon Armitage WH Auden William Blake Elizabeth Barrett Browning Lord Byron Geoffrey Chaucer Gillian Clarke ST Coleridge Emily Dickinson Carol Ann Duffy TS Eliot Seamus Heaney Ted Hughes John Keats Philip Larkin John Milton Wilfred Owen Sylvia Plath Christina Rossetti Siegfried Sassoon Percy Shelley Stevie Smith Alfred Lord Tennyson William Wordsworth

www.universalteacher.org.uk This website contains comprehensive and interesting guidance about how best to read and discuss a wide range of texts, both individual and paired. A brief but helpful history of English literature, from Middle English to the late 20th Century, is also included. www.sparknotes.com This site has basic, but very useful notes on a huge range of commonly studied texts, with chapter synopses, character analyses, themes and motifs, essay ideas, and suggestions for further reading. It is a very useful site indeed. www.bibliomania.com Study notes on a very wide range of texts, with notes, suggested essay titles, and guidance on further reading (you need to register to access the material, but at the time of access there appeared to be no charge). www.novelguide.com The site contains detailed discussion of a wide range of novels old and new, with relevant background material.

Annie Proulx Postcards, The Shipping News Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea Henry Roth Call it sleep Philip Roth Goodbye Columbus J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye Mary Shelley Frankenstein Zadie Smith White Teeth, NW, On Beauty Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden Bram Stoker Dracula Patrick Suskind Perfume Donna Tartt The Secret History W.M. Thackeray Vanity Fair Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Alice Walker The Colour Purple Sarah Waters The Little Stranger Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited HG Wells The Time Machine Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray Jeanette Winterson Oranges are not the only Fruit Tom Wolfe The Bonfire of the Vanities Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse Language and Literary Criticism Literature, Criticism, and Style: A Practical Guide to Advanced Level English Literature by Steven Croft Beginning Theory by Peter Barry Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A.C. Bradley Shakespeare: Othello (Casebooks Series) by John Wain (Editor), or at least the essay Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Hero -A Note on Othello by F.R. Leavis Shakespeare's Division of Experience by Marilyn French Female Gothic by Ellen Moers (essay) Monsters in the Garden: Mary Shelley and the Bourgeois Family by Kate Ellis (essay) Sisters of The Revolution : A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology by Ann VanderMeer Montgomery/Durant/Fabb/Furniss/Mills – Ways of Reading, Routledge (978 0415346344) Malcolm Peet and David Robinson – Leading Questions: a Course in Literary Appreciation, Magazines and newspapers Times Literary Supplement The English Review The Review – weekend Guardian Literary Review Useful Websites

www.s-cool.co.uk/topic_index.asp?subject_id=4&d=0 Some quite basic, but very helpful and reassuring advice on how best to approach the study of literature, notes on how to study poetry, and on a few individual texts. www.shakespearehelp.com A very detailed listing of resource material on Shakespeare, his life, times and plays, particularly useful for advanced learners. www.englishbiz.co.uk A site geared towards pre-A-Level learners, but it does contain good and practical advice on planning, organising and writing critical and other sorts of essays. http://www.litcharts.com/ Comprehensive guide on lots of texts with detailed study notes. www.palgrave.com/skills4study/html/index.asp This site is designed for university learners, but also helpful at A Level. Discusses a range of study skills, including how to structure and write good literature essays. www.literaryhistory.com The material here is advanced, but useful and thought-provoking. A wealth of resource material is offered on a huge range of writers, old and modern. www.victorianweb.org This site contains very detailed and advanced material – mostly resource-based – on writers from the 19th and very early 20th centuries. Well worth a visit if you are studying a text from this period. https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/ They publish a great magazine called e-magazine – Ask your teacher if your school has a subscription.

Non Examination Assessment (NEA) Theory and independence

This component is designed to allow students to read widely, to choose their own texts (if appropriate) and to understand that contemporary study of literature needs to be informed by the fact that different theoretical and critical methods can be applied to the subject. This area of the course provides a challenging and wide-ranging opportunity for an introduction to different ways of reading texts and for independent study. The title ‘Theory and independence’ highlights the important idea that, within a literature course, students should have the opportunity to work as independently as possible. A range of differentiated texts and tasks will ideally be seen across a school’s or college’s non-exam assessment submission for this component. This process is supported by the AQA Critical anthology, which has accessible extracts on the following critical methods and ideas:

narrative theory feminist theory Marxist theory eco-critical theory post-colonial theory literary value and the canon.

In this component, students write about two different literary texts. One of the texts must be a poetry text and the other must be prose. Each text must be linked to a different section of the Critical anthology. Students cannot choose texts from any of the A-Level exam set text lists. Texts chosen for study may include texts in translation that have been influential and significant in the development of literature in English. The translated text should be treated as the original writer’s own words for assessment purposes. Therefore, schools and colleges should ensure that they use a version recognised by academia as being a high quality translation which supports the original author’s writing appropriately. Texts chosen for study must allow access to a range of critical views and interpretations, including over time, and must maximise opportunities for writing with reference to the AQA Critical anthology.

The study of the Critical anthology supports the exploration of different meanings in literary texts and offers different ways of reading. Having explored their chosen text in the light of some critical ideas, students then demonstrate their understanding through their written work, comprising of two pieces of writing, one on each of the chosen texts. Students produce two essays of 1,250-1,500 words. One response will be a conventional essay; the second can be re-creative. It is possible to submit two conventional responses. A conventional essay will focus on debate and explore potential meanings in a literary text using critical theories and ideas. A conventional task drawing on the post-colonial section might be: Forster has written ‘A Passage to India’ in such a way that it is impossible to sympathise with any of the English characters as there is so little to redeem them. Using ideas from the Critical anthology to inform your argument, to what extent do you agree with this view? A re-creative response allows students to explore aspects of a text and its potential meanings and at the same time show enjoyment in the creative aspects of their task. The purpose of a re-creative response is to offer a critical reading of the base text that has been informed by working with the Critical anthology. Re-creative work can find the ‘narrative gaps’ or ‘absence’ in a base text and by filling some of these gaps students offer a critical reading of the text. New light can be shed on a text and its potential ambiguities by re-creating part of it through a new voice and genre. New light can also be shed on a conventional reading of a text by offering a reading from a different critical and/or contextual starting point. There is no requirement for students to replicate the form and language of the chosen base text, but the selection of narrative voice matters. It is often far more effective and interesting to present the point of view of a character who is at times marginalised as a voice in the base text. The re-creative piece is accompanied by a commentary which needs to establish a clear connection between the re-creative piece, the base text and the relevant section of the Critical anthology. The commentary should illustrate the significant choices that have been made in the production of the recreative piece and explain how those choices led to a critical reading. A re-creative task drawing from the sections on feminist theory and/or Marxist theory might be: Write a series of journal entries by Miss Kenton written at different points in the narrative of The Remains of the Day in which she reflects on her treatment by Stevens and others at Darlington Hall. Use ideas from the Critical anthology to inform your work and include a commentary explaining how you have explored ideas from feminism and/or Marxism in your re-creative piece.

List of texts you are expected to buy: Margret Atwood ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ - Paperback: 320 pages, Vintage (1998), ASIN: B005Q95VXG William Shakespeare ‘Othello’ - Paperback: 264 pages, Cambridge University Press; 3rd Revised ed. edition (23 Jan. 2014)

ISBN-10: 1107615593 ISBN-13: 978-1107615595

Khaled Housseini ‘The Kite Runner’ - Paperback: 336 pages, Bloomsbury Paperbacks; UK open market ed edition (21 Sept.

2011) ISBN-10: 140882485X ISBN-13: 978-1408824856

Arthur Miller ‘Death of a Salesman’ - Paperback: 128 pages; Publisher: Penguin Classics; New Ed edition (30 Mar. 2000)

ISBN-10: 9780141182742 ISBN-13: 978-0141182742

Thomas Hardy ‘Tess of the D’Urberville - Paperback: 592 pages; Publisher: Penguin Classics; Rev Ed edition (30 Jan. 2003)

ISBN-10: 9780141439594 ISBN-13: 978-0141439594 ASIN: 0141439599