English Literature

Course summary

This course focuses on encouraging students to develop their interest in literature and literary study through reading and analysing a variety of prose, drama and poetry texts. It looks at literature through a historicist lens and involves reading from various eras. It works from the belief that texts do not work in isolation but are intrinsically linked to the society in which they are produced. Students are encouraged to explore relationships between contexts, in both the examination components and in the independent study task. Studying texts in this way enables students to make connections, and draw out patterns. They will develop a wide range of reading skills and become more confident and competent readers who challenge the world around them. Texts studied across the two papers will be from authors as diverse as William Shakespeare, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sebastian Faulks, Richard Curtis and John Donne, among others. Genres studied may include Tragedy, Comedy, Satire, World War 1 Literature, Romantic and Gothic.