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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:
PuppyMonkey · 20/04/2015 12:51

I did mine in 1985

King Lear
The Wasteland
The Grapes of Wrath
Great Expectations
Sons and Lovers
Richard II
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Chaucer (ish)

And then we had to choose a topic and do a long essay, so I did The Brontes.

Bloody loved it (got an A). Grin

Whitershadeofpale · 20/04/2015 12:52

My coursework was comparing 2 novels as well. I compared representations of class excess in The Great Gatsby and American Psycho.

PuppyMonkey · 20/04/2015 12:52

Oh yes, we did The Magus too - how could I forget? Confused

balletgirlmum · 20/04/2015 12:56

1990-92

King Lear
Troilus & Cressida
Jude the Obscure
The Grapes of Wrath
Poetry of Emily Dickinson

LittleBoxes · 20/04/2015 12:56

Decline and Fall
Emma
Wilfred Owen poetry
The Reeve's Tale
Richard II
Hamlet

That's all I can remember!

iseenodust · 20/04/2015 12:56

Chaucer - General Prologue & The Wife of Bath's Tale
Shakespeare - Antony & Cleopatra, The Tempest
Grapes of Wrath
Glass Menagerie
Streetcar Named Desire
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Poetry by Philip Larkin

must have had a modern American slant.

CallingAllEngels · 20/04/2015 12:59

1997-1999

The Go Between - LP Hartley
The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy
The Remains of the Day - Kasuo Ishiguro
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Persuasion - Jane Austen

I know I did one more novel but can't remember what it was.

The Wife of Bath - Chaucer
The Tempest - Shakespeare
Poems of Christine Rossetti

GCSE was Much Ado About Nothing,A View from the Bridge, Of Mice and Men.

SonorousBip · 20/04/2015 12:59

I likewise am muddling up O level, A level and my degree a bit.

Hmmm. 1982.

Mayor of Casterbridge (I'm a fan of Hardy but that is one of his duller ones, I think. Can't remember very much - reversal of fortunes and someone gets sold?).
Mansfield Park (very drippy people in it - yes, you Fanny Price and that dreadful Edmund Bertram. But it introduced me tothe works of Jane austen and my beloved Henry Tilney Smile).
Hard Times (dullorama, but mercifully short).
Othello
Look Back in Anger (ooh, I liked that - we saw a version at a local university, which was all shouty and sexually charged)
The Pardoners' Tale (seem to remember my English teacher thought it was a bit rude, which sort of surprised me - I think he told people to kiss his butt several times, but that was about it).

For the life of me I cannot remember doing any poetry, but we must have done. Am now racking my brain.

CaptainAnkles · 20/04/2015 13:01

The Tempest and the Remains of the Day! I forgot those, they were in my A-level too.

CallingAllEngels · 20/04/2015 13:01

French Lieutenant's Woman!

Raahh · 20/04/2015 13:06

Richard II! I knew we did another Shakespeare. We went to London, to see a performance of it starring Derek Jacobi, iirc.

Macbeth must have been GCSE.

FadedRed123 · 20/04/2015 13:08

Mid 70's, joint E Lit/Lang. Night class 2x2hrs weekly for 1 academic year with F/T job - what a slog- used to doze off in class.....but passed!
Shakespeare - As you like it
Orwell - Brave New World
Dylan Thomas - Miscellanies 1 & 2
C P Snow - The New Men
Hemmingway - A Farewell to Arms
Should have done Duchess of Malfi but it was 'out of print' for much of the year, but looking at BIWI and Exit must have become available soon after.
Interesting we did more relatively 'modern' stuff than other 70's posters - maybe different Examining Board for HE College than school 6th forms? Or for joint Lit/Lang exam than pure Lit A level.

DonnaKebab66 · 20/04/2015 13:09

I did Language and Literature combined A Level.

I studied
Hamlet
Franklins Tale
Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead
Making History
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The Mill on The Floss.

I will never read Shakespeare or Chaucer for pleasure. They did my head in.

LooseAtTheSeams · 20/04/2015 13:10

Shakespeare - Hamlet and Measure for Measure
Chaucer - Prologue and Nun's. Priest's Tale
Poetry - Gerard Manley Hopkins and T.S. Eliot, Wordsworth Prelude (yuk!)
Plays - Schaffer Royal Hunt of the Sun, Beckett Waiting for Godot
Novels - George Eliot Mill on the Floss, Austen, Emma, Forster Howards End

This was in 1985 and the plays were about as modern as it got, although I am sure I have forgotten something! the Hopkins was pretty challenging but it has stayed with me.

textfan · 20/04/2015 13:10

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

LooseAtTheSeams · 20/04/2015 13:11

Aha! Yes I forgot Milton, Paradise Lost. Books 9 and 10!

aloysiusflyte · 20/04/2015 13:19

1998 -

The Remains of the Day - still one of my favourite books now
Pride and Prejudice
The Pardoners Tale
The Rape of the Lock
The Beau Stratagem
Othello
The Mayor of Casterbridge

I think that was it! Loved them all, it really inspired my love of literature.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 20/04/2015 13:19

1977-79

For O level we did Romeo and Juliet, Lord of the Flies, selection of Browning, including My Last Duchess, which remains a favourite poem.

A level (Joint Matriculation Board)

King Lear, Hamlet
A bit of the Canterbury Tales, can't honestly remember which bit
Wreck of the Deutschland (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
The Rape of the Lock (Pope)
Selection of T S Eliot, including The Waste Land
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
Emma, Jane Austen

We didn't have to answer on all of the above but we did more than the minimum so we could have a choice. Certainly it was either Pope or Hopkins and probably either Waugh or Austen.

Bumpsadaisie · 20/04/2015 13:51

Think I did

King Lear
Henry IV part 1
Far From the Madding
The Crucible
The Waste Land
John Donne

Plus a couple of others

Bumpsadaisie · 20/04/2015 13:51

Oh and The Knights Tale as well.

DuchessofMalfi · 20/04/2015 14:01

Iris. Murdoch - The Bell
Shakespeare - Richard II
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Malcontent - John Marston
Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
Translations - Brian Friel
Schindler's Ark - Thomas Kenneally

Saw same Richard II production with Derek Jacobi as you Raahh Smile Was very good iirc

ASAS · 20/04/2015 14:11

We read The Tempest, Othello, The Color Purple, the Chaucer one about the cheating wife (I know, so delicately put) and a collection of love poems.

Plus Sassoon et al. Our teacher also read us a poem in German by a German soldier. We also watching Blackadder as part of this topic.

songbird · 20/04/2015 14:14

I was 93-95 too.

Chaucer General Prologue (loved it)
Tess (meh)
Antony & Cleopatra (actually kindled my love of history more! must have been another Shakespeare but can't remember)
Equus (blinking amazing)
Poetry:
Seamus Heaney (ugh)
Emily Bronte (amazing!)
John Dunne (beautiful but I struggled with it)

I vaguely recall The Handmaid's tale and To Kill a Mockingbird but they may have been GCSE.

I was a solid low B /high C with my coursework, got a B in my set text exam but got a D in the end. Philip Larkin Wedding Day (never fucking forget it!) was the poetry element of the Practical Criticism exam and I got a fucking U!! 14 out of the 21 who took the exam (almost everyone who chose that poem) got a U, including a straight A student. The school appealed against my and her results (too expensive to appeal everyone's) and they upheld the grade saying we 'misinterpreted the text'. I was always under the impression that with Practical Criticism there were no 'wrong answers'. Obviously not. Still sticks in my throat 20 (20!!!) years later! Cost me a place at Newcastle Uni Angry

MarieJeanne · 20/04/2015 14:24

Coriolanus
Milton's Lycidas
Joseph Andrews
Middlemarch

This was in1983, it's a miracle I ever read another book again after that lot.

Enidblytonrules · 20/04/2015 14:30

I took O level English Literature in 1976!! Absolutely no Shakespeare or Chaucer!!

3 main books for exam were
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TL Lawrence
Journeys End by RC Sheriff
The Go-Between by LP Hartley

Books we read for course work included
To kill a mockingbird
A Kestrel for a Knave
The Long, the short and the tall
Poems from 1st World War Poets
Billy Liar
and some I cannot recall
quite an alternative syllabus based on war and social issues - our teacher was very left wing!!