A Level English Literature

[lemonsorbet1]

Hello. I’d be very grateful for thoughts from any teachers of English Literature A Level or parents of those of who have recently studied it. Dd has chosen A Level English Literature as one of her subjects next year. She really enjoyed English Lit GCSE (particularly the plays and poetry) and did well in the assessments and class work. Hopefully she should receive a decent grade in August. She’s keen to do A Level but I am concerned that she doesn’t do much ‘reading around’ the subject. Clearly A Level is a huge step up and she is aware she will have to do much more than just read the set texts. So, in order to start this process, which books would you recommend she read (or listen to on audible) before the start of the course? Exam board is Edexcel. Thank you for any suggestions.

My daughter did A-Level English Lit and is hoping to begin a degree in it in the Autumn. For context, her course consisted of:

Pre-1800 Literature: 'Hamlet', 'The Duchess of Malfi', 'The Merchant's Prologue and Tale'

Comparative and Contextual study - American Literature: 'The Great Gatsby', 'The Grapes of Wrath', Unseen American Lit passages 1880-1940

Coursework: T.S.Eliot's poetry (1,500 words), an extended essay comparing 'Translations' to 'Atonement' (3,000 words).

She found the most useful wider reading she did was reading critical interpretations of her set texts by academics and reviews of different stage productions of the drama texts. For some questions, the mark scheme rewards you for engaging with critical ideas, but she also found that reading criticism gave her inspiration and helped her adapt to the standard of essay-writing expected at A-Level. She found the criticism on websites like JSTOR and the British Library and also used Google Scholar as a search engine to locate articles.

Additionally, for some texts marks are awarded for discussing context (for my daughter's syllabus, this was for the essay question where she compared 'The Duchess of Malfi' to 'The Merchant's Tale', all American Lit essays and her extended piece of coursework). For these texts, part of her wider reading aimed to understand the time period in which they were written better. For example, for 'The Merchant's Tale' she read 'A Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England' and for unseen American Lit, she read numerous non-fiction and literary non-fiction texts about the Jazz Age, the Dust Bowl, civil rights, feminism etc.

All of this secondary reading isn't useful without an understanding of the primary, set texts. The best thing for your daughter to do would be to email the Head of English at the school that she's planning to go to for Sixth Form to find out what the set texts are. If she reads the set texts over the summer holidays and gets a sense of the plot and characters, when she comes to study them she'll be in a better position to dive straight into analysis and secondary reading which facilitates thinking critically about the texts, rather than having to first grasp what is going on in each book.

The most important thing to identify is if your daughter's course has a

Excuse the last paragraph, I had meant to delete that sentence

If she fancies a challenge and will be studying any Shakespeare or Renaissance plays, she could give 'The Illiad' and 'The Odyssey' a go - I really enjoyed Emily Wilson's translation of the latter. An understanding of Homer's two epic poems might help her decode the classical references which Shakespeare and his contemporaries are so fond of.

@lemonsorbet1 how is you DD finding it? My DS is taking it and while he found the GCSE 'easy' I think he's struggling with the step uo to A level a bit. I think he is having problems with properly understanding what he is being asked for in his essays and so tending not to answer the question fully.

Having done English at University, I think the key thing is to enjoy your reading, find a classic author you like and read up about them and explore!

@lemonsorbet1 I think some of the books which talk about the texts can be helpful - so e.g. York notes (advanced) . Not to be taken verbatim but helpful to give a pointer as to what to look for. Can be v cheap 2nd hand on Amazon - Best of wishes. Oh and there are some points of reference between A Street Car named Desire and the Glass Menagerie. Might be worth a read of the Glass Menagerie - not very long or onerous .