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

French A Level - Manon des Sources and La Gloire de mon Père. Essay definitely in French!
English Language and Lit combined - Dubliners, Chaucer, Hamlet, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Short Stories by various women writers abd a short play about Ireland? Late 90s.

Scotland so not A Level but
Mon Oncle
Madame Bovary
Therese Desqueyroux
edit - 1983

1981

Therèse Desqueyroux
L'Etranger
La Symphonie Pastorale
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

French A level texts: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Molière, Andromache by Raçine & Le Grand Meaunes by Alain Fournier.

English A level texts: The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Chaucer, Hamlet by Shakespeare, Bleak House by Dickens, The Four Quartets by TS Eliot, The Rainbow by DH Lawrence, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons & Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

1979

I nearly forgot: Short stories by Guy de Maupassant also.

French I did L’Étranger, Les Fleurs du Mal, Le Noeud de Vipers and Colomba.
English I did a syllabus that no longer exists and did loads. Off the top of my head: Dubliners, Much Ado, The Rainbow, a 20th century poetry anthology, Hamlet, Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Go-Between…. Ummm starting to forget what else. 1988, so a bit late

Well, ChatGPT solved my mystery! Le Cycliste is a poignant novel by Louis Nucéra that follows the life of Bernard, a factory worker in Nice who dreams of becoming a professional cyclist. His aspirations are tragically cut short when he loses an arm in a workplace accident. The novel delves into themes of resilience, identity, and the human spirit, capturing Bernard's journey of adaptation and perseverance in the face of adversity.

However, I can’t find a copy for sale.

I only did English in 91 92. We did The colour purple. Sons and lovers.

Ooh some of these posts have reminded me what I read for Higher English now: Sons and Lovers, The Mayor of Casterbridge.

I did French at uni and remember loving Zola..L'Assommoir and Germinal. Didn't like Camus much. We also did Guy de Maupassant short stories and others.

Remember our tutor reading Les Trois Messes Basses to us just before Christmas and it was magical. We sat like little kids absolutely rapt.

English a level
king Lear, Emma, the crucible and songs of innocence and experience. Loved then all!

89 to 91 Eng lit A level
Rozencrantz and Gilderstern are dead, Stoppard
King Lear and A Winters Tale for Shakespeare
Heart of darkness, Conrad
John Donne and Keats poetry
19th Century fiction, Pride and prejudice, A tale of two Cities

1983, Cambridge board:

Moliere, L’avare
Mauriac, Therese Desqueyroux
Duhamel, Le notaire du Havre

King Lear and The Winter’s Tale
Chaucer, Knights Tale
Milton, Comus and Lycidas
Pope selected poems
Dickens, Little Dorrit
Hopkins, poems and prose
Browning poetry
GB Shaw Widowers Houses and Mrs Warrens Profession

As a current A Level French teacher, I'm sure you'll all be delighted to know that L'Étranger is still a firm favourite on the syllabus 😂 the essay paper was yesterday!

French A level in 1979: Therese Desquayroux, Les Femmes Savantes and some poets, the only two of which I can remember are Verlaine and Baudelaire.
English A level same year: Emma, McBeth, the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, The Rape of the Lock and Faustus.

94 - 94
French - Manon des source et la gloire de Mon Pere (although the exam might only have been one of them)

Eng Lit - also I can’t remember the actual set texts but we read a lot: Hamlet, A room with a view, John Fowles - The collector?, A streetcar named desire, A cat on a Hot Tin, Roof Heart of Darkness, The Age of Innocence, Washington Square, And that’s what I remember. My English Lit class was so important because of the breadth of literature we studied - we also used to read extra in our own time of authors that we were studying.

Do you know a lot of my lessons were just us sat in a circle reading. No starter, no plenary- probably no lesson plan. Absolutely gave us an incredible grounding - and I went to the pits of a comp school but had a great teacher.

My French A level 1987 I think was L'etranger, Albert Camus La Boule de Suif, Le Ble en Herbe and I think a play maybe?

I don’t care at all (what with me going on to study Economics, despite my mad argument with the external examiner and having to get his cigarettes from his car- did I miss a hint to get me an “A”?!), but surely it lessons a foreign lang “A level” if you can read a translation/whack it through a translation software and watch a film of the book? Maybe Youtube and TikTok has altered things by a country mile?

1989 Lit .. Hamlet, Coriolanus, Wuthering Heights, The Heart of the Matter, the Whitsun Weddings, The Pardoners Tale, The White Devil.

I did english lit and theatre studies 83-85. All i can remember studying are - Waiting for Godot, Mayor of Casterbridge, something by Brecht and The Odyssey. Oh and Larkin

Oh god, I don't remember.

There was a book called "Un Sac de Billes" for French.

For English I think we did The Tempest, Snow Falling on Cedars, and no doubt other stuff which I have long forgotten.

Possibly Blake "Songs of Innocence and Experience" and Philip Larkin.

A'Level French 1982:

Thérèse Desqueyroux - Mauriac
L'Ecole des Femmes - Molière
L'Etranger - Camus
Les Mouches - Sartre

At the same time some of my friends were doing Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope and Les Enfants Terribles among others. We were all at the same sixth form at the same time so I don't know why they were doing different books.

1984-1985
FRENCH.
La Cantratrice Chauve by Ionesco
Le Silence de la Mer by Vercors
something about a man who is buried alive.

SPANISH
Torquemada?

For me in 1986 for French it was:

Le Misanthrope
La Neige en Deuil
Therese Desqueyroux
Trois Contes (Flaubert)

I came across part of the exam paper while clearing some things out a month or so ago.

I then studied French at uni - lots of very boring books with only Sartre and Camus for light relief!

1983, The only one I absolutely remember is "Chiens perdu sans collier". I definitely read "Le blé en herbe" about that time but was it an A level text?

1989 - definitely Macbeth and Anthony and Cleopatra. Chaucer was the Franklin’s tale. Then I think it was:
Metaphysical poets, primarily Herbert/Donne
Dr Faustus
Murder in the Cathedral
Emma
Um - was that it?!