Section A – Research

A Level English Literature

Transition Tasks

At A Level, and beyond at work and university, you are expected to be able to research independently. This is a very important skill to develop. Below are some of the

topics we will cover in the course and this is an opportunity to get a

head start!

Research Tasks

Research the following things and make a note of what you find:

1. Research tragic conventions in literature

2. Research the difference between classical tragedy, Renaissance tragedy and modern domestic tragedy.

3. Research the similarities between classical tragedy, Renaissance tragedy and modern domestic tragedy.

4. Research crime conventions in literature

5. Research what a feminist reading is and what feminism is

6. Research what a Marxist reading is and what Marxism is

7. Research what an ecocritical reading is and what Ecocriticism is

Section B – Reading

When applying to universities, it is useful to be able to talk about wider

reading beyond the A Level course. This list gives you the opportunity to show

off at your interviews!

Reading Task 1Read 2 articles (attached separately) and bullet

point down a summary, in your own words of what each article is about.

Articles: Reading List 1. Bloodlust, Savagery, Obsession and Excess Gothic Macbeth 2. Navigating Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’s London 3. Openings in Contemporary Fiction – Questions, Challenges and Surprises 4. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – A Question of Trust 5. Excellent Foppery - Comedy in Shakespeare’s tragedies

Reading Task 2

You are going to use your research to annotate tragic/crime conventions on the extracts below.

Extract 1:Read through the extract below from ‘Macbeth’ and annotate any tragic conventions you can identify.

MACBETH Why should I play the Roman fool, and dieOn mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashesDo better upon them.

Enter MACDUFF

MACDUFF Turn, hell-hound, turn!MACBETH Of all men else I have avoided thee:But get thee back; my soul is too much chargedWith blood of thine already.MACDUFF I have no words:My voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villainThan terms can give thee out!

They fight

MACBETH Thou losest labour:As easy mayst thou the intrenchant airWith thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,To one of woman born.MACDUFF Despair thy charm;And let the angel whom thou still hast servedTell thee, Macduff was from his mother's wombUntimely ripp'd.MACBETH Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,For it hath cow'd my better part of man!And be these juggling fiends no more believed,That palter with us in a double sense;That keep the word of promise to our ear,And break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee.MACDUFF

Then yield thee, coward,And live to be the show and gaze o' the time:We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,Painted on a pole, and underwrit,'Here may you see the tyrant.'MACBETH I will not yield,To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,And to be baited with the rabble's curse.Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,And thou opposed, being of no woman born,Yet I will try the last. Before my bodyI throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'

Exeunt, fighting. Alarums

Extract 2:Read through the extract below from ‘The Strange Case

of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ and annotate any crime conventions you can identify.

Nearly a year later, in the month of October, 18—, London was startled by a crime of singular ferocity

and rendered all the more notable by the high position of the victim. The details were few and

startling. A maid servant living alone in a house not far from the river, had gone up-stairs to bed about

eleven. Although a fog rolled over the city in the small hours, the early part of the night was cloudless,

and the lane, which the maid’s window overlooked, was brilliantly lit by the full moon. It seems she

was romantically given, for she sat down upon her box, which stood immediately under the window,

and fell into a dream of musing. Never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated that

experience), never had she felt more at peace with all men or thought more kindly of the world. And

as she so sat she became aware of an aged and beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near

along the lane; and advancing to meet him, another and very small gentleman, to whom at first she

paid less attention. When they had come within speech (which was just under the maid’s eyes) the

older man bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness. It did not seem as if

the subject of his address were of great importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared

as if he were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was

pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet

with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content. Presently her eye wandered to the other,

and she was surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once visited her master and

for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling;

but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of

a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and

carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air

of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed

him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and

hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped

upon the roadway. At the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted.

Extract 3:Read through the extract below from ‘The Snowman’ and annotate any crime conventions you can identify.

Jonas was awoken by a sound and lifted the duvet off his face. At least he thought it had been a

sound. A crunching sound, like sticky snow underfoot in the silence between the houses on a Sunday

morning. He must have been dreaming. But sleep would not return even when he closed his eyes.

Instead fragments of the dream came back to him. Dad had been standing motionless and silent in

front of him with a reflection in his glasses that lent them an impenetrable ice-like surface.

        It must have been a nightmare, because Jonas was scared. He opened his eyes again and saw

that the chimes hanging from the ceiling were moving. Then he jumped out of bed, opened the door

and ran across the corridor. By the stairs to the ground floor he managed to stop himself looking down

into the darkness and didn’t pause until he was in front of his parents’ bedroom and pressing down

the handle with infinite caution. Then he remembered that his dad was away, and he would wake his

mum whatever he did. He slipped inside. A white square of moonlight extended across the floor to the

undisturbed double bed. The numbers on the digital alarm clock were lit up: 01.11. For a moment

Jonas stood there, bewildered.

        Then he went out into the corridor. He walked towards the staircase. The darkness of the stairs

lay there waiting for him, like a vast open void. Not a sound could be heard from down below.

        ‘Mummy!’

        He regretted shouting the moment he heard his own terror in the brief, harsh echo. For now it

knew, too. The darkness.

        There was no answer.

        Jonas swallowed. Then he began to tiptoe down the stairs.

        On the third step he felt something wet under his feet. The same on the sixth. And the eighth. As

if someone had been walking with wet shoes. Or wet feet.

        In the living room the light was on, but there was no Mummy. He went to the window to look at

the Bendiksens’ house. Mummy occasionally went over to see Ebba. But all the windows were dark.

        He walked into the kitchen and over to the telephone, successfully keeping his thoughts at bay,

not letting the darkness in. He dialled his mother’s mobile phone number. And was jubilant to hear her

soft voice. But it was a message asking him to leave his name and wishing him a nice day.

        And it wasn’t day, it was night.

        In the porch he stuffed his feet into a pair of his father’s large shoes, put on a padded jacket over

his pyjamas and went outside. Mum had said the snow would be gone by tomorrow, but it was still

cold, and a light wind whispered and mumbled in the oak tree by the gate. It was no more than a

hundred metres to the Bendiksens’ house, and fortunately there were two street lamps on the way.

She had to be there. He glanced to the left and to the right to make sure there was no one who could

stop him. Then he caught sight of the snowman. It stood there as before, immovable, facing the

house, bathed in the cold moonlight. Yet there was something different about it, something almost

human, something familiar. Jonas looked at the Bendiksens’ house. He decided to run. But he didn’t.

Instead he stood feeling the tentative, ice-cold wind go right through him. He turned slowly back to the

snowman. Now he realised what it was that had made the snowman so familiar. It was wearing a

scarf. A pink scarf. The scarf Jonas had given his mother for Christmas.

Reading and Further Preparation Tasks These books are not all the texts that you are going to study - they are books that will help you to have a wider understanding of the genre that you will be working through. The texts you will be studying are at the bottom but you will read these in class next year, so it would be good to use this time to read more widely.

Books: 1. ‘Gimson’s Kings and Queens: Brief Lives of the Forty Monarchs since

1066’ by Andrew Gimson2. ‘This is Shakespeare’ by Emma Smith3. ‘Home Fire’ by Kamila Shamsie

Tragedy: Plays/FilmsGo to this link for free viewing of RSC productions during the social isolation period and watch the two plays suggested below https://www.marquee.tv/ (Each picture is a hyperlink direct to the production) If the link doesn’t work, enter the play name in the search engine on the site and you will find it.

Tragedy: Classical Tragedy documentaryGo to this link for free viewing of BBC’s documentary series about classical drama and tragedy. There are more episodes available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAkLTWQUbG8&feature=youtu.be

Year 12 Texts Othello William Shakespeare Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller Lamia, Isabella, St Agnes Eve and La Belle Dame Sans Merci Keats

Section C – Skills Transfer

Finally, whilst you will learn a lot of new skills and gain new knowledge at A

level, what you have done already at GCSE will help you greatly. In this

section, we are going to recap some of the things you already know that will

come in very handy at A Level and build on those things.

Skills Transfer Tasks Task 1 – Analysing the writer’s methods

You will study more texts at A-Level and build on the analytical skills you have already developed in your GCSE literature course. You will need to analyse the writer’s methods in A Level just like GCSE. A Level focuses more on the writer’s structural methods.

Fill out the table below. You will already know a lot of these methods from your GCSE course; any you don’t know you can research to find the definition.

Methods to analyse:

Definition: Example from a text you have studied/read:

Cyclical structure

Narrative voice

Narrative Gaps

Soliloquy

Aside

Stage Directions

Foreshadowing

Flashback

Climax

Dramatic Irony

Personification

Symbols

Motifs

Task 2 – Building on your understanding of textsIn A Level, just like GCSE, you need to have a deep understanding of the texts you study. You also need to able to apply critical readings to texts for your coursework element.

For this task you are going to use your research to apply a critical reading to one of the texts studied at GCSE and then a text of your choice (this could be a book you have read lower down in school/at home, or a film/TV series you have watched).

For example: you could apply a Marxist reading to the poem ‘London’ by William Blake as it explores how the poor are suppressed in London and the rich hold all the power.

Your turn:

Choose one of the texts you have studied at GCSE (play, poem or novel) and apply a critical reading to it (Feminism, Marxism or Ecocriticism). Include as much detail and textual evidence as possible.

GCSE Text: Critical reading applied:

Choose your own text and apply a critical reading to it (Marxism, Feminism, Ecocriticism). Include as much detail and textual evidence as possible.

Text of your choice: Critical reading applied: