English Literature

Course summary

Throughout the course, you will develop your understanding of different genres – both the expectations and the ways in which these are subverted. You will gain confidence in developing detailed responses to varied texts considering the writers’ methods, the influence of context and wide ranging interpretations. • You will study the following texts for the comedy unit: Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, Small Island by Andrea Levy, and The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde. • You will also study the following texts for the social protest unit: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience by William Blake. This unit also requires you to study extracts from different crime texts ranging from Sherlock Holmes stories to contemporary novels like Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. • For the coursework unit, you will explore texts from different perspectives, including Marxist, Feminist and Post-Colonial. This unit gives you the opportunity to pick your own text to analyse in detail, giving you a sense of independence to your work.