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

This is fun!

English Lit 1992-94:

Hamlet and Richard II
Pride & Prejudice
The Great Gatsby
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
John Donne's love poetry
Philip Larkin
Death of a Salesman

I've probably forgotten something.

French 1978-80: Camus - La Peste, Sartre - Les Mouches and Beaumarchais - Le Barbier du Séville

English Lit: Chaucer - The Pardonner's Tale, Shakespeare - Measure for Measure and King Lear, Yeats - Collected Poetry, TS Eliot - The Waste Land, Hardy - Tess of the d'Urbervilles, L.P. Hartley - The Go Between

English early 80 s : The Winters Tale, Antony and Cleopatra, The Waste Land (which I loved and can recite chunks of ...l I’m a real hoot at parties), John Donne. I presume we must have done a novel but I can’t remember it. Possibly The Virgin and the Gypsy.
French: Le Notaire du Havre, Knock ou le triomphe de le medicin by Jules Romaine, and I think possibly some poetry.

Late 80s English A level
Tess of the d'Urvervilles
Emma
Chaucer (can't remember which)
Auden
Miller- All my sons
The Tempest
Antony and Cleopatra

French A level
Pagnol - La Gloire de mon Pere
Anouilh - L'Alouette
Troyat - Viou

It was hard work, but it did feel like proper learning.

The Pardoners tale Chaucer
Measure for Measure
Coriolanus
Pride and Predjudice
Bleak house.
Loved doing my A level Eng lit.

Can’t remember everything but in late 90s we did
Guy de Maupassant short stories
Huis clos - Sartre
Camus but can’t remember which one

Mill on the Floss
Streetcar Named Desire
Bleak House
Mayor of Casterbridge (unless that was GCSE)
Canterbury Tales
The Wasteland
A bunch of Keats (unless that was also GCSE)
Othello
Anthony & Cleopatra

V early 90s. I did English Lit but not French.
I don't remember it all but do recall
Jane Eyre
Othello
Henry IV pt i
Chaucer's Miller's Tale

I'm sure we must have done another novel, and a modern play, and maybe some poetry, but it's lost in the mists of time.

Oh, we might have done The Ancient Mariner actually.

Also, pre-A levels I did 'work experience' aka attended/sat in on A-level classes at a nearby school with a sixth form (my school didn't have one and we had a choice of a couple to go to) and I remember they were doing The Return of the Native and The Crucible.

We only did one A level French text - which might explain why I ( and the rest of the class!) failed it! Teachers could just get away with being crap back then.

Emma, the Tempest, Hamlet, Chaucer, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Wordsworth, Paradise Lost

MN you are so making my day!

This is indeed much fun!

Off to do a happy dance ...

x

I did A level French 83-85. London board. Lit was one third of the marks. The texts we did were:
Quinze contes by Maupassant
Courrier sud by Saint-Exupéry
Something by Balzac (title escapes me)
Les Mains sales by Sartre

I did A level English in 1982 (Oxford Board).

Paper 1 was compulsory for everyone.

Hamlet
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
Paradise Lost
Bleak House

we had to do two context questions and three essays. Shakespeare was compulsory in both sections.

Paper 2 had various options. We did the Romantics. We studied Persuasion and various poems by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats. Byron and Peacock (Nightmare Abbey) must also have been on the syllabus as there were questions on them on the exam paper, but we never knew about that!

Here (I hope) are the essay questions.

Took mine 1995:
Les mains sales, Sartre
L'Etranger, Camus
Maupassant short stories - Quinze contes (definitely struggled with this one but was pretty enamoured with the existential angst above!)

Edited to add in the Maupassant title thanks to someone posting above!

French A level in 1993, we did Thérèse Desqueyroux by Mauriac, Le Barbier de Seville and Camus’ L’Étranger.

There was a choice of 2 questions for each text, and you had to write 4 essays in either English or French. I remember memorising quotes - what a waste of time! Think it was a 3-hour exam. Same for Spanish (different texts of course, lol)

I did A levels in 1982, northern grammar school, board was JMB.

French: short stories of Guy de Maupassant. Loved those. Le Grand Meaulnes - hated it. Le Malade Imaginaire, loved that too.

English: Coriolanus and Antony & Cleopatra; Persuasion; Keats; Chaucer but can't remember which. We did some metaphysical poets too.

I'm enjoying this thread!

This is taxing my memory as it was <<cough>> a long time ago but, as I recall it, we studied Thérèse Desqueyroux, Hernani and La Peste. Hernani in particular made me abandon my plans to study French at university.

English, taken in 82 -
Shakespeare - Coriolanus, Much Ado About Nothing
Keats
John Donne
Milton - Lycidas
Books - Sons & Lovers
Emma
The Knight’s Tale

Oh, and Tartuffe.

The Franklin's Tale - Chaucer.
The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles.
Either Macbeth or Hamlet (one was for O level) - Shakespeare.
Some poetry but all I remember is the John Donne bits.

English 1987:
Hamlet
The Bell by Iris Murdoch
Chaucer- some Canterbury Tales, but don't remember which
Emma
The Great Gatsby
WW1 poetry

Maybe something else but I'm not sure.

The Brittany book sounds ace; would love to know what it was if you remember!

A level English Lit 1990 included

The Rainbow
Lady Chattersley’s Lover
Down and Out in Paris and London
A Winters Tale
Lord of the Flies
The Collector (horribly dark)
Death of a Salesman
Mrs Dalloway

Took English A level in 1990. Studied Wuthering Heights, To the Lighthouse, The Duchess of Malfie, The Wasteland, Hamlet and Richard III.

English Lit 1991, our set texts were
The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Othello
Pride & Prejudice
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

We also did King Lear, Hard Times, The Great Gatsby, Death of A Salesman & the Metaphysical poets, that I can remember.

I did A level French too but there was no literature requirement & my school didn't include it, which was a shame.