What did you study for A Level FRENCH and ENGLISH LITERATURE?

[MsAdaLovelace]

Good Morning MN,

Following on from my thread yesterday re O and A Level Texts, Syllabus and Exam Papers ...

Do you remember what texts you studied for A Level FRENCH and ENGLISH LITERATURE as I cannot remember all of them!

I have nieces and nephews that need to know!

Especially, if you studied A Levels from '83 - 85 ...

Thank you MN.

x

I was literally just talking to DS about this as he is doing his last GCSE this morning (Spanish) and I was telling him how I was brilliant at French GCSE but found the A Level really difficult as we had to study two books - they were:

Therese Desqueyroux by Francois Mauriac - and
Manon des Sources by Marcel Pagnol

This was in 1989-1990 (first year of A Levels as I dropped out in the summer of 1990)

My A Levels were 05-07 so not in the time frame you particularly want. English Lit i remember doing King Lear, Emma and Keats. French we did L'etranger.

A-levels 95-97 French - L’Etranger and La Neige en Deuil

English - Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and I can’t remember the rest

I did my A Levels in 1990 and now teach languages including French. I studied L'Étranger and Le Blé En Herbe. I think that's all - I don't rember how many texts you had to do back then. I do recall that the literature wasn't just for the essay paper though, as I remember having to talk about L'Étranger in my speaking exam. Also I'm pretty sure we wrote the essays in English then (unlike now!).

Thank you @VivaDixie.

Keep them coming MN!

Le Misanthrope, Benjamin by Adolphe Constant and Le Noeud de Vipères by Mauriac. 1989

watching my sons A level film this year, La Haine, was an eye opener! Much more relevant.

In 1986-8 we were doing Tess of the D'Urbevilles, Othello, King Lear..L'Etranger and L'Avare I think.

I did A level French (1983, probably AEB or Cambridge board), which seemed to involve a lot of watching Truffaut/Goddard and Chabrol films. I remember doing a play about the trojan war “La Guerre du Troie n’aura pas lieu” and a fairly dark book set in rural Brittany (which I think might have involved smuggling/shipwrecking on one of the islands?).

Would there have been a third book? I really can’t remember.

Thank you!

@Lookingforwardto2025
@IchiNiSanShiGo
@AllProperTeaIsTheft
@Radiatorvalves
@maslinpan
@Madcats

x

My English was in '88 so little bit later but I can remember all the texts v well!!

Chancery - The Canterbury Tales
EM Forster - A Passage to India
John Fowles - The French Lieutenant's Woman's
The Metaphysical Poets

I still have all the books - and the exam pamphlet (mainly because I got an A and was told after my mocks that I'd be lucky to pass). Always meant to go back to my teacher who hated me (the feeling was mutual) and brag 😄.

Sorry for the ramble ..

French late 90s - toute ma vie sera mensonge (just had to google the plot, cannot remember at all), l’amant (very racy, painful doing that with the teacher, poor choice by them !), and pagnol’s La gloire de mon pere - wonderful.

Aah - predictive text didn't like CHAUCER not Chancery !!

I did French A Level in 1999.

We did La Place (Annie Ernaux)
Something called La Neige en Deuil which was some really dull piece of shit about shepherds
And the poems of Jacques Prevert

A level English Lit and Language 1992. Jane Eyre. The French Lieutenants Woman. The Malcontent. Richard II

Mine went until mid 90s but

English was Lear, Hamlet, Room with a View , streetcar named desire, John Donne and Pride and Prejudice

French was Cyrano de Bergerac, La Symphonie Pastorale and something by Albert camus

English lit mid 90's and we definitely did Chaucer which I quite liked. I know we did Anthony and cleopatra as i remember going to see a play where it was set in the first world war. Then i get a bit hazy between gcse and A Level but between them we did Persuasion and the mayor of casterbridge- never read Hardy again!!!

We did The Tempest, TS Eliot and Middlemarch in 1988. We also spent months reading North and South which I detest to this day. We also spent ages on some Chaucer which we had done for O level, plus Andrew Marvell and Donne which we never did in the exam.

The French was l'étranger and the bourgeois gentilhomme.

I did English lit in mid 00’s and did ww1 texts - birdsong and lots of poetry, Wilfred Owen, Sassoon etc.
Also enduring love by Ian McEwan.
I can’t remember the French book we did thought it may have been manon de sources as mentioned above, I remember a girl in the countryside hills but only did As level French so didn’t do the whole book!

Oh, and we also had to watch La Haine and write an essay about it even 25 years ago @Radiatorvalves. Agree though, much more interesting than some of the literature.

A levels 1982
French texts
Candide (Voltaire)
Tartuffe (Moliere)
La Porte Etroite (Gide)
La Guerre de Troie n’Aura pas Lieu (Giradoux)

Eng lit
King Lear
Much Ado About Nothing
A Passage to India
Metaphysical Poets Donne and Vaughan
Three Novellas by Lawrence
Chaucer The Millers tale I think
something else for sure can’t recall (I didn’t actually take English)

Can tell you my Greek texts if you like!

1991 - To The Lighthouse, Measure for Measure, Jane Eyre, Othello, some poetry? Christopher Isherwood…

In 1967 - 68: Othello. Paradise Lost Part 1. Little Dorrit.

Oh and Sons and Lovers DH Lawrence

86-88.
French: Jean de Florette, Manon des Sources and Therese Raquin
English Literature (bit more a challenge for me to remember as I did an English degree so they all get a bit muddled): King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Thomas Hardy's poems, Troubles, Streetcar Named Desire, Lear (Edward Bond)

Oh MUMSNET you do not disappoint!

Thank You. Thank You.

I am now on Ebay ordering and re-ordering books a plenty in both English and French!

I did study lots of CAMUS, GODARD and CHABROL at University though and still have most of the texts too.

Oh happy carefree days ... how I miss you!

x