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 did both subjects at A Level in 1996. For French, we did l'Etranger and Bonjour Tristesse. For A Level English, we did the poetry of RS Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pride and Prejudice, Troilus and Cressida, something dreary by Doris Lessing, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the Nun's Priest's Tale. It was such a dull syllabus and I hated A Level English!

Also Portrait of a Lady... HATED it!

Oh - and A Midsummer Night's Dream - absolute piffle!

We also did Le Blé en Herbe in French. Can't remember anything at all about it!

@Madcats I have just checked my Diary from 1978 which lives in a plastic box in my walk-in-wardrobe and I am really pleased to find that I was right about the main 3 novels: Pagnol, Cocteau, Duhamel) but I was completely wrong on the 4th. I did not read Bonjour Tristesse at all, it was Grandeur Nature by Henri Troyat and a quick plot search shows I was right about the child actor.
It's bugged me for a while.I don't know why I didn't think to check my old diary sooner.

Off topic: German A'Level also AEB 1980 was:
Short Stories called 'Deutsche erleben Ihre Zeit'
Das Broet der Fruehen Jahre by Heinrich Boell
Kleiner Mann was nun? by Hans Fallada and
Die Kapuzinergruft by Joseph Roth.

In 1999, I read L’Etranger and Bonjour Tristesse in French and Hamlet, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Wuthering Heights and Return Of The Native in year 13 (I think!)

English in 1995

king Lear
Lear by Edward Bond
tess of the D’Urbervilles
metaphysical poets
death of a salesman
grapes of wrath
independent choice i did another Hardy

cant remember any others. Prob some WW1 poetry!

English A-level - The Winter's Tale, The Alchemist (Ben Jonson), Mansfield Park, The Way of the World (Congreve), Wordsworth, Waiting for Godot. May have been more.
French A-level - Germinal (loved it!!!!), a horribly depressing book about a girl who got addicted to heroin. Weirdly, I think it was translated from German. Veronica F or something. Some Maigret.
This was 1990 - 1992.

Also Wuthering Heights!

Oh and French poetry - Jacques someone. Really nice easy poems.

Long days journey into night.
merchant of Venice
persuasion
the dubliners
Canterbury tales
vaguely trying to remember the literature that was destroyed by studying them

I’m seeing two of those in the next few months.

just remembered Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon figured - but that may have been gcse - I got A’s at gcse and eng lit A’level. God knows how?

Chaucer- Prologue and Pardoner’s Tale
Metaphysical poets
Larkin - Whitsun Weddings and High Windows
Much Ado About Nothing
North and South
Mansfield Park

Jacques pervert? Paroles?

Jacques Prevert! Of course!

We also watched a lot of New Wave Films - Truffaut, Godard mostly. Not sure what were set texts and what was set by the teacher.