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Did you do A-Level English Literature?

349 replies

BrilliantineMortality · 20/04/2015 10:57

When did you study it?
Can you remember what books you read?

For me, I did it between 1993-95. Can't believe I sat my exams 20 years ago Shock. I found some of my set texts recently which jogged my memory as to the other books I studied:

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Have the men had enough - Margaret Forster
Oranges are not the only fruit - Jeanette Winterson
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan
The man who mistook his wife for a hat - Oliver Sacks (non-fiction component to the course)
King Lear
The Merchant of Venice
Ted Hughes' animal poems
John Keats' poems
The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
The Revenger's Tragedy - Tourneur/Middleton (A Jacobean play)

The thing that immediately strikes me is that the novels were all relatively contemporary with a (mostly) feminist slant. Probably because both my teachers were female and in their late twenties/early thirties, so these were probably the books that they had read in the preceding decade or so.

Only the John Keats' poetry from the 19th Century, which is pretty shocking, come to think of it now. Everything was either late 20th Century or much, much earlier. I loved doing my English Lit A Level, but reading this list back I can see that it didn't do me many favours when it came to study it for my degree.

OP posts:
marshmallowpies · 22/04/2015 23:47

Oh and for French I studied Waiting for Godot and Le Roi se Meurt by Ionesco. And I attempted to read L'Etranger by Camus...hmmm...

I also remember that for the English unseen paper (where you had to write an essay on a text you were seeing for the first time) I had to compare poems by Edward Thomas and RS Thomas - helped that I was already quite familiar with both!

RitaCrudgington · 23/04/2015 00:31

I did Anouilh and Pagnol for French and Catullus and Caesar for Latin. They were pretty good, and memorable unlike Conrad's Secret Agent and Jonson's Volpone, which I forgot completely when I posted my list earlier Blush. Actually they might have been O level texts; not a Scooby.

mamapants · 23/04/2015 08:51

I did
Dylan Thomas
Dr Faustus
Gillian Clarke and another female Welsh poet but can't remember who
Jane Eyre
the Handmaids Tale and 1984
Othello

mamapants · 23/04/2015 08:55

Oh and Christina Rossetti

Provencalroseparadox · 23/04/2015 09:08

Same year as Khara but we didn't do The Secret Agent. Will try and remember what out second novel was

hackmum · 24/04/2015 08:27

Was it maybe Sheenagh Pugh, mamapants?

HappydaysArehere · 24/04/2015 09:32

I did a B.ed degre with English as my main subject in 1975. I studied Henry James (Golden Bowl, Portrait of a Lady, What Maisie Knew, Daisy Miller). George Eliot ( Middlemarch, Adam Bede, Silas Marner). Poems of Yeats and T.S. Eliot. Shakespeare, Macbeth and Twelth Night. We were expected to read and select choices. I was of an age where the opportunity to have sat A levels had been limited and I was 32 when I sat the B.ed exams.

mamapants · 25/04/2015 08:50

No hack I have remembered now it was Liz Something Lockhead maybe, she obviously didn't make that much of an impression. Oops

hackmum · 25/04/2015 12:19

So, Scottish, then, mama. Smile

mamapants · 25/04/2015 15:40

Ha ha hack yes she is Scottish. Honestly I did pay attention in class.

jennymac · 25/04/2015 23:36

1991-1993
Anthony and Cleopatra
The Tempest
The Jew of Malta
Joan of Arc
Philip Larkin
Chaucer
Wuthering Heights
The Great Gatsby

squareheadcut · 25/04/2015 23:51

1993
Othello
Measure for measure
Wh Auden
Hand maids tale
Jane eyre
Return of the native Thomas hardy

Lynnm63 · 27/04/2015 20:32

We did Chaucer wife of bath
Graham Greene our man in Havana
Wilfred Owen I think for poetry
Can't remember the Shakespeare as we read one every year from the first year I have a feeling it was A winters tale as Id always planned to call dd Hermione luckily Ms Rowling wrote her books before my daughter was born.
VS Naipaul A house for Mr Biswas. Im sorry to say that was probably the worst book I've ever read. Im pretty sure I didn't finish it. I suppose I should try and read it now as a adult but the thought of it brings me out in a cold sweat!

PrincessFiorimonde · 27/04/2015 20:40

1978 Shock

Wife of Bath's Tale
Othello
Passage to India
Sergeant Musgrave's Dance
Selected poems by Yeats
And by Auden

Umm, I think that was it.

Now going back to read the thread.

Lovelydiscusfish · 27/04/2015 20:55

1994-96
Coriolanus and Winter's Tale were the Shakespeare we were examined on.
I seem to remember we also studied Othello, just for a laugh.
Middlemarch
Pride and Prejuduce and Mansfield Park
Death of a Salesman
Gatsby
I can't remember actually being examined on any poetry, but there was a student teacher in who was allowed to do a few lessons with us on what she described as feminist poetry. There was some Sylvia Plath in that ("You're", "Lady Lazarus", and the one comparing her father to a Nazi), and some poems by other poets about periods. I'm not sure it was the most comprehensive introduction to feminist poetry ever, but hey, it was clearly memorable!

PrincessFiorimonde · 27/04/2015 20:55

Oh God, forgot:
Paradise Lost, Prologue and Book 1
Bleak House

Bet there's something else too!

guilianna · 27/04/2015 20:59

feeling ancient.... mid 80s!
Mansfield Park was on the list and luckily it was also on the telly

ShirleyYoureNotSerious · 27/04/2015 21:14

I took mine a very long time ago. I seem to recall Othello, Canterbury Tales, Bradbury's The History Man, The Mayor of Casterbridge, various war poets (Wilfred Owen in particular), The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Keats, Ancient Mariner and The Merchant of Venice.

There was more but it was such a long, long time ago I can't remember it.

bathshebaeverbusy · 27/04/2015 21:26

1987
paradise lost - Milton
the rape of the lock

anthony and cleo
the merchant of venice

Mansfield Park
The Millers Tale

Sean O Casey - Three Plays

woodhill · 27/04/2015 21:36

another one

Howards End - E M Forster - 1984

Clawdy · 27/04/2015 22:11

Late 1960s!
Hamlet
Winter's Tale
Wuthering Heights
Mayor of Casterbridge
The Prelude
Elizabethan Poetry

mummins · 28/04/2015 14:20

1983
Othello
Tender is the night- Scott Fitzgerald
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
A Passage to India - E M Forster
Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy
And the hardest poetry in the world (I think) TS Eliot - The Wasteland
Those are the ones I can remember. It was my best subject and I got a B which in those days was truly excellent!!

OrangeVase · 29/04/2015 10:21

1978
Chaucer - General Prologue and Nun's Priests Tale (Canterbury Tales) (Still think of the opening lines when we get rain in April!

Shakespeare - Anthony and Cleo - still my favourite - and a comedy = probably Twelfth Night

Poetry - The Metaphysical poets - fell in love with them, and an anthology of verse

Don't remember anything else - it was so long ago and I did literature at university so there were many, many set texts.

Stokey · 29/04/2015 21:18

Funny how often Othello crops up through the ages

1992 I did
Othello
Henry IV pt 2 (still wanted to call a son Hal 20 years later!)
Wyf of Bath
Emma
Bleak House (put me off Dickens for life)
Great Gatsby
Volpone
Samson Agonistes - Milton
Metaphysical poets - John Donne, George Herbert and others I can't remember
TS Eliot - the Wasteland

To The Lighthouse
Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?

Looking back it's a reasonable precis of 600 or so years of English Lit!

UsedToBeAPaxmanFan · 02/05/2015 05:50

I sat mine in 1985.

Portrait of a Lady
The Wife of Bath
Blakes Somgs of Innocence and Experience
Hardys poems
Portrait of an Artistvas a Young Man
Julius Caesar
Othello
Anthony and Cleopatra

Im sure there must have been at least one more novel, and probably a modern play as well, but I can't think what they were. I also did "S" level English, but there weren't any set texts for that.