A Level English Literature

This paper has two sections:

• Section A: Drama
• Section B: Poetry

Learners will need to show a clear understanding of the set text they have studied and have an awareness of the context in which it was written. Analysing the text, you will need to understand the use of language and structure used to create meaning and effect. The ideas will be communicated through a well-structured essay.

This paper has two sections:

• Section A: Prose
• Section B: Unseen

An understanding of the prose text is required for this section along with historical, cultural or social contexts that are relevant. You will need to analyse characters, plot, narrative, perspective and language forming your own opinion on how this creates meaning and effect. Finally, you will communicate ideas and arguments about the text clearly.

This paper has two sections:

• Section A: Shakespeare
• Section B: Drama

Learners will need to show an understanding of the historical, cultural and social contexts relevant to the Shakespeare text studied. You will analyse Shakespeare’s choices such as:

• Language
• Dramatic structure
• Characterisation
• Imagery

Learners will also form their own opinions about the Shakespeare play communicating their ideas and evaluating different interpretations and viewpoints of the text.

This paper has two sections:

• Section A: Pre-1900 Poetry and Prose
• Section B: Post-1900 Poetry and Prose.

Learners will need to have an understanding of relevant historical, cultural and social contexts in relation to pre- or post-1900 poetry and prose texts. You will need to analyse language, structure, imagery and characterisation deciding how the writer shapes meaning and creates effect. Finally, you will evaluate different interpretations and viewpoints of the texts.

Section A: Post-2000 Poetry

Learners answer one essay question from a choice of two on the prescribed poems.

Section B: Post-2000 Prose

Learners answer one essay question from a choice of two on their chosen prose fiction text.

2 hours

Externally Assessed

25% of the total A Level

Section A: Pre-1900 Drama

Learners answer one essay question from a choice of two on their chosen drama text.

Section B: Post-1900 Drama

Learners answer one essay question from a choice of two on their chosen text.

2 hours

Externally Assessed

25% of the total A Level

Section A: Poetry

Learners answer one essay question on a post-1900 unseen poem.

Section B: Prose

Learners answer one comparative essay question, from a choice of two, on their two chosen texts from their chosen theme.

2 hours

Externally Assessed

25% of the total A Level

Section A: Shakespeare

Learners answer one essay question from a choice of two on their chosen text.

Section B: Pre-1900 Poetry

Learners answer one essay question from a choice of two on their chosen movement.

2 hours

Externally Assessed

25% of the total A Level

Paper 1

Section A: Post -2000 Poetry

Students study the following poems:

• Eat Me – Patience Agbabi
• Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass – Simon Armitage
• Material -Ros Barber
• History – John Burnside
• An Easy Passage – Julia Copus
• The Deliverer – Tishani Doshi
• The Map Woman – Carol Ann Duffy
• The Lammas Hireling – Ian Duhig
• To My Nine-Year-Old Self – Helen Dunmore
• A Minor Role – U A Fanthorpe
• The Gun – Vicki Feaver
• The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled – Leontia Flynn
• Giuseppe – Roderick Ford
• Out of the – Seamus Heaney
• Effects -Alan Jenkins
• Genetics – Sinéad Morrissey
• From the Journal of a Disappointed Man – Andrew Motion
• Look We Have Coming to Dover – Daljit Nagra
• Please Hold – Ciaran O’Driscoll
• On Her Blindness – Adam Thorpe
• Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn – Tim Turnbull

Section B: Post -2000 Prose

Students choose one of the following:

• Brooklyn – Colm Tóibín
• The Kite Runner -Khaled
• The Life of Pi – Yann Martel
• Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga

Paper 2

Section A: Pre- 1900 Drama

Students choose one of the following:

• Doctor Faustus – Christopher
• Othello – William Shakespeare
• The Rover – Aphra Behn
• She Stoops to Conquer – Oliver Goldsmith
• Twelfth Night – William Shakespeare

Section B: Post-2000 Drama

Students choose one of the following:

• A Streetcar Named Desire- Tennessee Williams
• Top Girls -Caryl Churchill
• Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett

Paper 3

Section A: Post – 1900 Unseen Poetry

Unseen Post-1900 Poetry text

Section B: Prose

Two prose fiction texts chosen from one of the following four themes:

Theme 1: Growing Up

• The Color Purple – Alice Walker
• Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

Theme 2: Colonisation and After

• Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad The
• Lonely Londoners – Samuel Selvon
• A Passage to India – E. M. Forster

Theme 3: Science and Society

• Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
• The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
• Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Theme 4: Women and Society

• Beloved – Toni Morrison
• Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
• Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë

Paper 4

Section A: Shakespeare

Students choose one of the following:

• Hamlet – William Shakespeare
• King Lear – William Shakespeare
• Measure for Measure – William Shakespeare The Taming of the Shrew – William Shakespeare

Section B: Pre-1900 Poetry

Students study a choice of poems from Metaphysical Poets: prescribed poems from Metaphysical Poetry, Editor Colin Burrow, (Penguin, 2006)

John Donne The Flea The Good Morrow Song (‘Go and catch a falling star’) Woman’s Constancy The Sun Rising A Valediction of Weeping A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day The Apparition Elegy: To his Mistress Going to Bed ‘At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners’ ‘Death be not Proud’ ‘Batter My Heart’ A Hymn to God the Father

George Herbert Redemption The Collar The Pulley Love III

Thomas Carew To My Mistress Sitting by a River’s Side: An Eddy To a Lady that Desired I Would Love Her A Song (‘Ask me no more where Jove bestows’)

Anne Bradstreet A Letter to her Husband, Absent upon Public Engagement

Richard Lovelace Song: To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

Andrew Marvell The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn To His Coy Mistress The Definition of Love

Henry Vaughan Unprofitableness The World

Katherine Phillips A Dialogue of Friendship Multiplied Orinda to Lucasia