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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:
MrsHathaway · 20/04/2015 17:42

1999

Richard III
The Tempest
Marvell

The Mill on the Floss
Don Juan (Byron)

W B Yeats
Beloved

Two gaps, as I know there was more but am buggered if I can recall what.

Beloved deserved its accolades, but we were far too young to read it. Reading it as a mother was a completely different experience.

Dick Turd remains my favourite Shakespeare. We saw it live at the Barbican with Robert Lindsay in the title role. Out of this world. Have had a soft spot for the actor and the historical figure ever since.

The Mill on the Floss is a fucking travesty. I will remain angry about being forced to read it, until my dying day. The other set did P&P - how unfair.

EmilyAlice · 20/04/2015 17:43

Oh and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Are mine the longest ago?

Mrsboathook · 20/04/2015 17:44

I did mine1997-99.

We did Chaucer- Pardoners Tale and
Keats- but specifically not Ode to Autumn!
The scarlet letter and great gatsb for novels.
Shakespeare was the Winter'sTale and other play was Goldsmith'sShe Stoops to Conquer.

michelleblane · 20/04/2015 17:47

1972 when I did my A level

The Wife of Bath - Chaucer
Henry VI parts 1 and 2 Shakespeare
The Crucible Arthur Miller and St Joan G B Shaw
Brave New World and The Island Aldous Huxley
Middlemarch George Elliot
Probably some others long forgotten!

LikeABadSethRogenMovie · 20/04/2015 17:49

I'm a bit shocked as I can't really remember!
MacBeth, The Rivals and Tess of the Durbervilles for sure.
Other than that? God knows! And I got an A, although that was a bit of a miracle as I spent far too much time bunking off to snog my boyfriend. Ahhh, those were the days....

Maladicta · 20/04/2015 17:55

89-91 (ouch!!!) It was a vvv heavily coursework based course. From memory...

Shakespeare - Troilus and Cressida and Hamlet.
Larkin - Whitsun Weddings
Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Waugh - A Handful of Dust
Lawrence - Selected Tales
Manley Hopkins - Wreck of the Deutschland

MrsHathaway · 20/04/2015 17:55

Yes, aloysius, Beaux' Stratagem! I could have sworn there was a Restoration romp, and you reminded me.

Also L'Etranger for French (coursework) and I'm vaguely aware of something dystopian for German too.

I also did S-Level Eng Lit (for Oxbridge) and had to mug up laterally, eg rereading Henry V to support R3, other Metaphysical for Marvell, and other Romantic poets for byrob

BIWI · 20/04/2015 18:00

Oh yes! French 'A'-level.

Poems of Baudelaire, which I loved, and Therese Desqueyroux, by Mauriac.

Homemadeapplepie · 20/04/2015 18:02

1987, had 2 English teachers both male aged 35-40, one great with a real love of literature, one sexist homophobe who clearly didn't like English lit, consequently I loved the stuff we did with good teacher and hated the stuff with bad teacher. We studied:
King Lear
Twelfth Night
Mansfield Park
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (hated that with a passion and have never read any other Joyce)
Miller's Prologue and Tale
Whitsun Weddings
Must say I liked the "unseen paper" best of all, makes me think I should have done English Lang (not available at our school though)

Homemadeapplepie · 20/04/2015 18:02

And I forgot John Donne!

katienana · 20/04/2015 18:03

2000-2002
hamlet
emma & pride & prejudice
streetcar named desire
philip larkin poems
keats poetry
e.m forster Howards End.
I think it was ok for preparing me for uni I was gutted I got a B though! I was straight a's on all my papers except streetcar which I got a D for. I was robbed...

katienana · 20/04/2015 18:04

we also did duchess of malfi.

lavendersun · 20/04/2015 18:08

I can only remember Hamlet and Jude the Obscure at A level in the mid 80s.

I did Tess and Far From the Madding Crowd at O level - I hated all Hardy apart from Far From by the time I had finished. Dh recently bought himself a boxed Folio society set of Hardy, you won't find me reading it, ever.

MumofEandg · 20/04/2015 18:27

What a fab trip down memory lane!
1992-3.
Chaucer, Blake, Keats, Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar I think,
She Stooped to Conquer, Wuthering Heights (our trendy teacher made us listen to Kate Bush to get in the mood, there was dancing), some Virginia Woolf which baffled me beyond belief, some Hardy I think.
I loved every minute but went on to do a history degree. It felt frivolous to read novels when doing the History as there was so much 'proper' reading to do. I re-discovered reading when serving as an Army Officer some years later. Nothing made the time pass quicker when stuck somewhere far away than reading novels, I think it saved me from going bonkers...

1NicolaB · 20/04/2015 18:34

1995-97 for me

The Handmaids Tale - like everyone else here it seems! Loved it so much I wrote my eng lit degree dissertation on it as well
Shakespeare - Othello & Coriolanus
Poetry by UA Fanthorpe
Saint Joan - George Bernard Shaw
Samson Agonistes - Milton
General Prologue to Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
Juno and the Paycock - Sean O'Casey
There's probably some I've forgotten

I'm really missing the whole reading, thinking and discussing literature thing at the moment. Think it may be time for me to join a book group!

MrsDumbledore · 20/04/2015 18:38

1998 - Hamlet, a winter's tale, Pride and Prejudice, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the Wife of Bath, something else but can't think what. ...

Taught it in 2003ish as well -taught Dr Faustus, the Handmaids Tale and 1984, Emma, Othello.

LittleIda · 20/04/2015 18:39

French I did La Porte Etroite and Le Grand Meaulnes

barmygirl · 20/04/2015 19:23

1990-92 (can't believe it!)

Voss by Patrick White (depressing as hell!)
Rites of Passage by William Golding
Ted Hughes' poetry
John Donne's poetry
Shakespeare - Anthony and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet
Chaucer - Prologue to Canterbury Tales etc
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (no teacher for this as she'd left to have a baby and no other teacher had read it, so I had to teach myself from York Notes etc, and is now one of my favourite ever books)
Playboy of the Western World by J M Synge
1984 (or that was possibly GCSE)
Portrait of the Artist (possibly?)

Only two of us got an A; not surprising given the random nature of these texts. I did get to submit a creative writing bit, too, which was some insanely awful, juvenile poetry that I cannot believe I actually handed in! I have barely any memory of the 3 hour long exams we had or what was in them. Loved it all, though, and went on to study English Lit at Uni.

Lizzylou · 20/04/2015 19:29

Ooh Littleboxes, I did almost the same as you, 89-91.

The Reeves Tale
Decline and Fall
Hamlet
Emma
Wilfred Owen
Seamus Heaney

French Lit

Le Ble en herbe - Colette
L'Avare - Moliere

3littlefrogs · 20/04/2015 19:38

73 - 74
King Lear
Emma
The Mayor of Casterbridge
TS Eliot
Wilfred Owen
The Miller's Tale
The Tempest?
A Voyage Round my Father?

I went to an amateur dramatics production of Wilfred Owen's poetry last year and was surprised at how much I could remember off by heart.

1inamillion · 20/04/2015 19:38

I did A level in 1973 and it was called just English then. I'm ancient but not a gran yet so hope I still qualify!
I did:
Antony and Cleopatra and the Tempest.
Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and the Franklins Tale.
Mill on the Floss.
Paradise Lost.
Sean O' Casey's The Plough and the Stars,
Four Milton poems, Lycidas. L'Allegro. On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, Il Pensaroso.
Lots of Keats's poems especially loved On the Eve of St Agnes, Ode to a Nightingale and La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
There was a lot of unseen poetry too.
Funnily enough I remember the course vividly and our teacher Mair Williams, yet I can't remember where I've left my glasses or keys these days.
Thoroughly enjoyed doing English, we went to Stratford to see Antony and Cleopatra ( and they were actually dressed as Romans and Egyptians, that's how long ago it was!) Richard Johnson was Antony, Janet Suzman Cleopatra and think Corin Redgrave was Octavius. Loved every minute.
Makes me sound very highbrow but I'm not, going to see Grumpy Old Women and Fifty Shades of Beige in our local Pavilion next week.
And yes I've read that too.

Galaxymum · 20/04/2015 19:40

I took mine in 1990. I think a few people did the same syllabus!

Keats
Wife of Bath by Chaucer
Wuthering Heights
Persuasion
Richard II
Hamlet
Wilfred Owen's Poems

RitaCrudgington · 20/04/2015 19:47

Late 80s, pretty old school compared to some on here:
Franklin's Tale
Book 2 of Paradise Lost
Wuthering Heights
Richard II
Othello
Possibly Much Ado??? Or maybe Troilus and Cressida - I mix O and A level up.
A Dickens - Little Dorrit I think
The Waste Land
Coleridge

So nothing more modern than Eliot, who was largely referring back to stuff written centuries before.

I enjoyed most of it though - even the Milton was the least appalling bit of Paradise Lost. Franklin's Tale made zero impression on me though.

hv35 · 20/04/2015 19:49

I did mine about 30 years ago and remember some of the books:
Shakespeare was Othello and Winter's Tale.
Sylvia Plath poetry.
7 Victorian Poets (can't remember which 7 but still have the book on my bookcase!)
Return of the Native Thomas Hardy
Bleak House Charles Dickens (never did finish reading this one!!)
Sergeant Musgrave's Dance - a play that we also saw at The Old Vic.
The Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
Some of these were enjoyable but I don't think I'd read them again now.

ElectricalBanana · 20/04/2015 20:01

For those who have asked

EA300 is children's literature

It's a level three ( so third year equiv level in full time Uni)

Books

Harry Potter and the philosophers stone
Swallows and amazons
Peter rabbit
Voices in the park
The other side of truth
Coral boy
Junk
Little women
Treasure island
Bunker diary
Toms midnight garden
Roll of thunder hear me cry