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

At a boys Grammar school, late 80s/early 90s, we studied precisely zero female writers for Eng Lit GCSE and A level.

Oh yeah and The Great Gatsby and The Importance of Being Ernest of which there was stunningly little to say beyond Epigram and Paradox iirc. At least it was fun and short. Always an advantage for a set text

French A Level, 1984. We studied Les Enfants Terribles (Jean Cocteau), Le Blé en Herbe (Colette), L’Étranger (Albert Camus) and there may have been another one but I can’t remember! Funnily enough we studied L’Étranger in the first term at University too - all the NI students had an advantage!

Thérèse , l’étranger … bonjour tristesse at some point. 2004.

does anyone know what they’re studying now? Apologies if someone has already said

I did Elise ou la vrai vie for French A level and French love poetry ( Baudelaire ) - there were only 2 of us in the literature class, I loved it.

Me too ... would so love to know ...

There was a post from a French Teacher who confirmed that CAMUS is still on the syllabus.

I also did a whole unit on CAMUS at University / Modern Languages - French / 90s ...

My nephew who’s doing French A-level doesn’t actually seem to be studying any literature texts! 🙁

They can study a film but my lot are definitely studying a book as well!

Scottish 5th and 6th year, 2000 and 2001.

Higher English: Romeo and Juliet, Sunset Song and poems by Norman McCaig.
SYS English: Othello, Measure for Measure, A Winter’s Tale, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Far From the Madding Crowd, Robert Henryson’s The Testament of Cresseid and poetry, A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler and Wild Duck.

Higher French: Le Petit Prince
SYS French: L’Etranger, I think - or maybe it was La Peste. I did one Camus at school and one at uni and I can’t remember which way around it was.

Oh, and the less sweary bits of Philip Larkin must have been part of Higher - Whitsun Weddings, An Arundel Tomb and I can’t remember what else.

Boule De Suif
L’etranger

1986 - some French poetry (the only one I recall was La Tzigane by Apollinaire; Le Château de ma Mère by Marcel Pagnol; can't remember anything else. Possibly Le Blé en Herbe.

For English all I remember was a book of short stories which included The Machine Stops (Forster) and The Destructors (Greene). There was definitely some Shakespeare.

that's what i'd heard. I asked some German A-level students what texts they were reading a couple of months ago and they looked at me as though i had two heads.

I did Russian A-level in '82. We really put in the hard yards with a collection of Chekhov Short stories, a play - Chekhov again with The Cherry Orchard, Fathers and Sons by Turgenev, Zima Junction by Yevtushenko (got to love Russian epic poems). In fact we had to get to love Russian epic poems because we had to study Pushkin's Bronze Horseman too.

The youth of today - they have it easy!

Le petit prince, Bonjour Tristesse.

Sunset song, bleak house and great expectations!

French A level:

Moderato Cantibile by Marguerite Duras
Le Misanthrope by Moliere
Book of poetry that was so bad I don't recall the name!

English A level:

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad (seriously struggled with this one)
Canterbury Tales
Othello (loved this)
The importance of being Earnest
The resistable rise of Arturo Ui (saw the play too)

The Go Between - LP Hartley - a strangely compelling read.
I agree.

@Brefugee was your edition of The Miller’s Tale censored? We had the scene ending in “for well he knew, a woman hath no beard” removed.

English Lit 2001ish
Dr Faustus
Emma
Hamlet
Handmaids Tale- changed my viewpoint on the world massively
Return of the Native
Poems

Loved it and wish I had taken English Lit on to uni level

I took A-Level English Lit in 1993. From what I remember studied the following:

Measure for Measure
Othello
The Changeling
School for Scandal
Return of the Native
To the Lighthouse

I don't remember doing any poetry but I feel like we must have!

Les Justes, Camus
La Symphonie Pastorale, Gide
Les Jeux Sont Faits, Sartre

Ok so far I think we have x 12 Female Writers ... have I forgotten any ...

Jane AUSTEN
Anne BRONTE
Charlotte BRONTE
Emily BRONTE
Sidonie-Gabrielle COLETTE
Margeurite DURAS
George ELIOT
Sylvia PLATH
Françoise SAGAN
George SAND
Mary SHELLEY
Virginia WOOLF

Did anyone study Anais NIN for A LEVEL?

French A
L'étranger - Camus
Les Femmes Savantes - Molière
Trois Contes - Flaubert
Madame Bovary - Flaubert
Le Grand Meaulnes - Alain-Fournier

I seem to recall we had a lot of discussions about existentialism. My favourite was Le Grand Meaulnes, very relatable as a teen, although Camus came a close second as The Cure was the soundtrack to my teenage angst.

Nope - all in there!

AQA they study one book and one film. Books were between L'Etranger (still), No et Moi, Boule de Suif and Un Sac de Billes. Films were La Haine, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Les 400 Coups.

Only one book. Wow. What else do they do then?

None in French and none in Spanish 🤔