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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:
Mintyy · 20/04/2015 12:17

Heh heh! I did mine in 1981 Smile

We did some Chaucer (can't remember what/which)

Henry IV Part II (or maybe I did that in Drama and King Lear in English)

Poems of T S Eliot

The Return of The Native

The Secret Agent

Where Angels Fear to Tread ... can't remember the rest!

Mintyy · 20/04/2015 12:18

NOT Return of the Native - Tess of The D'Urbevilles.

lastlines · 20/04/2015 12:19

Oh just remembered- hated it so much I blotted it from my memory: Joseph bloody Andrews by Henry Fielding. What a bore. Like being cornered by your uncle's golf club mates snorkelling away about smutty laydeeze while gazing at your bosoms at a Christmas drinks party.

PercyGherkin · 20/04/2015 12:22

Tess of the D'Urbervilles - that was a long slog. I remember the teacher looking very disapproving at the relief that swept round the room when we read the last chapter.

Antony and Cleopatra
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Yeats' poetry

Everything else - a blur.

MisguidedAngel · 20/04/2015 12:22

Very old gimmer here, I did A level English as a mature student in the seventies. Hamlet, Much Ado, Wordsworth, Keats, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, not a single anywhere near modern text. I studied along with the sixth form in a very progressive comprehensive school, the teaching was excellent but in contrast to pp's experiences, the curriculum was very old-fashioned and not likely to encourage a passion for reading. OK for me, because I already loved it and still do ("there's more to life than books you know, but not much more").

ParkingFred · 20/04/2015 12:24

I get mixed up between GCSE, a level & degree.

I remember the Color Purple, Mansfield Park, Silas Marner, under the Greenwood Tree, masses of Shakespeare.

Poetry, I remember Plath, Manley Hopkins, war poets & Tennyson.

TranquilityofSolitude · 20/04/2015 12:26

1987
Milton, Paradise Lost
King Lear & Othello
Great Gatsby
Tess of the d'Urbevilles
A collection of modern poetry - Ted Hughes, Stevie Smith, John Betjeman
Merchant's Tale (I think!)

I'm envious of the Handmaid's Tale - I would have loved to have studied that. As it was I thought Tess of the d'Urbevilles the best of them, espeically as I was at boarding school in Dorset at the time, so it all felt quite local.

ThursdayLast · 20/04/2015 12:26

I remember...

Notes From A Small Island
Measure for Measure
Dubliners
The Metaphysical poets, John Donne etc

Gosh there must have been loads more but I can't remember!
This was 99-01 by the way

ShadowsShadowsEverywhere · 20/04/2015 12:31

2006-08

Poetry was Sylvia Plath
Othello
Captain Corellis Mandolin
I'm struggling to remember any more!
There was an Irish play, very heavy going set in the times of the potato famine.
The Return of the Native - Hardy
I know we studied Wuthering Heights but can't remember if that was GCSE or A Level.
There must have been more but it's gone.

CoodleMoodle · 20/04/2015 12:31

Yep, in 2005-06.

First year I did:
Shakespeare - The Tempest
Michael Frayne - Spies
(Can't remember anything else but I'm sure we did more!)

Second year:
Shakespeare - Hamlet
Romantic poets, mostly William Blake's Songs of Innocence/Experience
WW1/2 Literature (loads and loads of different stuff, novels, short stories, plays, poetry, films)

And we had to do a comparison essay on any two novels. I did mine on One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and A Clockwork Orange.

Archfarchnad · 20/04/2015 12:32

1986-1988, so the same period as Takver and WordFactory. It was one of the final year groups to have done O-Levels, and nobody had heard of AS-Levels back then. I remember I did something called S-Level English, though, in addition to the A-Level, which was only language based.

King Lear
Much Ado
A few books of Paradise Lost
Sons and Lovers
Merchant's Tale from Canterbury Tales
The Waste Land
French Lieutenant's Lover

So, no female writers.
Nothing between Milton and Lawrence.
No non-fiction.
No short poetry.
Only white English authors (if you want to count old Toilets as an honorary Englishman).
I think the selection very much reflected the (male) Head of English's world view. Shockingly narrow vision of literature really.

Why do I only remember seven set texts? Was that all we did? Thurlow a decade later has 11 set texts, but Takver also only has 7. But we did those 7 in huge detail.

CaptainAnkles · 20/04/2015 12:32

1998
Hamlet
The Nun's Priest's Tale
Shelley/Byron
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Cat's Eye

I can't remember the rest, but there was definitely more than that.

CoodleMoodle · 20/04/2015 12:33

Just came to me! We did Chaucer in the first year as well, The Miller's Tale.

theconstantvacuumer · 20/04/2015 12:33

Yes, 1991 to 1993.

Paper I: Othello, Henry IV Part One, Keats - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Paper II: Jane Eyre, The Miller's Tale, The Crucible and one more that I can't remember.

CoodleMoodle · 20/04/2015 12:34

And it was 2005-07, not six. Feels a very long time ago now!

emwithme · 20/04/2015 12:35

Also did it in 93 - 95 (and no, it's not allowed to be 20 years ago)

Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood (very strange choice for our first A Level text - got far more out of it reading it a couple of years ago when I rediscovered it in a box)
Equus - Peter Shaffer
Sons & Lovers - D H Lawrence
Songs of Innocence and Experience - William Blake (do NOT get me started on why "Jerusalem" is a bad choice for an English National Anthem...)
Hamlet - Shakespeare
One other Shakespeare that I think was Midsummer Night's Dream but I can't for the life of me remember
Wasteland - T S Eliot (I didn't actually read this all the way through until AFTER the exam Blush )

Plus a "literary criticism" paper on unseen texts.

A Level English Lit put me off "proper" reading for years.

ShadowsShadowsEverywhere · 20/04/2015 12:37

Oh yeah! Romantic poets. I'd forgotten that one. Lots of Blake.

I've just tried seeing if I could find the sylabbus online but I only got hits for the past few years.

BIWI · 20/04/2015 12:39

1975-77 - I think I can be forgiven for not remembering! (Or getting the texts muddled up with my 'O'-levels!)

Some of the texts that you lot have studied weren't even written by the time I'd taken mine!

Shakespeare:
Othello
The Winter's Tale

John Webster - Duchess of Malfi

Chaucer:
The Canterbury Tales (can't remember which one(s))

Wordsworth:
The Prelude

Wilfred Owen first world war poetry (can't remember if we studied a particular one/several)

Emma and/or Persuasion - Jane Austen

Middlemarch - George Elliot

An interesting list - I have no idea/recollection of doing anything modern!

Bexicles · 20/04/2015 12:40

Envy at everyone studying Magaret Atwood.

Othello
The Tempest
Wuthering Heights
Tess of the D'ubervilles
The Dubliners

Poetry was Carol Ann Duffy and Robert Frost.

ShadowsShadowsEverywhere · 20/04/2015 12:41

Carol Ann Duffy! Yes we studied a book of her poetry as well.
I'm certain there was another novel but I just can't remember. I don't even have the excuse of it being a long time ago! Blush

BringMeTea · 20/04/2015 12:42

85-87

Alexander Pope - The Rape of the Lock
Shakespeare - Measure for Measure
Shakespeare - Antony and Cleopatra
Chaucer - The Miller's Tale
VS Naipaul - A House for Mr Biswas
Philip Larkin - The Whitsun Weddings

Pretty sure there is one more escaping me!!

ExitPursuedByABear · 20/04/2015 12:44

1977

What BIWI said apart from Middlemarch and the Duchess of Malfi. I can't remember what I did instead as I did an English Degree as well and it is all mixed up with that.

BringMeTea · 20/04/2015 12:45

Got it!!
William Congreve - The Way of the World

Phew, that was driving me mad...

Lilymaid · 20/04/2015 12:49

Hem! 1971:
Troilus & Criseyde
Hamlet
Henry IV Part II
Under Milkwood
Joseph Andrews
Wordsworth poems
The White Devil
must have done others but brain cells are rapidly disappearing with advancing age ...
We had to read around everything, so Hamlet meant doing all the tragedies; Henry IV Part II meant reading Richard II through to Henry V
Joseph Andrews meant reading Tom Jones (more fun!)
White Devil meant reading Duchess of Malfi
And then reading loads of lit crit on all the authors ...
Hated English but knew I could get a good mark.

AlbrechtDurer · 20/04/2015 12:50

1991-93

King Lear
Much Ado
Vanity Fair
Beloved
Dr Faustus
The Glass Menagerie
Paradise Lost, Book IV
Canterbury Tales, Prologue
Philip Larkin poems
Thomas Hardy poems

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