English Literature

Course summary

English Literature comprises of Drama, Poetry and the Novel – and also a good helping of Shakespeare. We study any literature for pleasure, but also to widen our emotional sympathies by entering into the lives of other people. As we read we are forced to take sides and pass moral judgement, as supposedly real characters grapple with the most important issues of life. Moreover, the chief new requirement of English Literature is that we study ‘Literature in History’, working from the belief that “no text exists in isolation but is the product of the time in which it was produced”. A level Literature requires us to see how writers are using their work to bring out the crucial issues of their own day and their own lives e.g. the role of women, love and marriage, the plight of the poor, death, slavery and so on. This is literature in History, or, as the specification states, ‘A historicist approach’.