English Literature

Course summary

Study a wide range of texts from the 16th to the 21st century across the literary genres of drama, prose, and poetry. A Level of English Literature develops your textual analysis and critical writing skills and increases your understanding of texts through group discussion, close reading, and essay writing. It will appeal to you if you enjoy reading and exploring texts closely. An A Level in English Literature will allow you to study a broad range of humanities subjects at university since the analytical and conceptual skills that you will acquire are transferable. English is a subject valued by universities. Students studying English Literature at the City of Oxford College will be following AQA English Literature specification A. This specification approaches literary study through the exploration of texts that are thematically linked, in their different historical contexts. The course is structured around two units, taught over the two-year A-level course: - Love through the Ages: Shakespeare, poetry, and prose - Texts in Shared Contexts: Modern Times, English Literature post-1945 Studying English Literature, students will develop skills and confidence in their close reading of texts and in presenting their ideas in coherent, analytical writing. They will develop an understanding of literary texts in the contexts in which they were produced, and learn to think about the ways in which our contexts inform our responses to literature. At AS, students will study F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Shakespeare’s Othello, and a collection of poetry written before 1900, from the AQA Anthology for this specification. At A2, students will revisit these Love through the Ages texts, as well as study prose, poetry, and drama texts written since 1945: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams; and Skirrid Hill by Owen Sheers. In A2 students work independently on an ‘Independent Critical Study: Texts across time’ comparing two literary texts; this coursework assignment constitutes 20% of the final A-level grade.