English Literature

Course summary

• Studying English Literature gives you a way with words – the ability to understand, analyse, explore ideas, create arguments and express yourself in speech and writing. • Over the two years, you will explore a range of pre-1900 and post-1900 texts, covering drama, poetry and prose. Themes/Units Component 1: Pre-1900 poetry and drama • Study a selection of poetry by Victorian poet Christina Rossetti and compare it to ‘A Doll’s House’ – a play by Henrik Ibsen • Study Twelfth Night – a play by William Shakespeare Component 2: The Gothic • Explore a range of unseen Gothic texts • Compare ‘The Bloody Chamber’, a collection of short stories by Angela Carter to the Gothic classic ‘Frankenstein’ Component 3: Coursework • Analyse Tennessee Williams’s play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ • Compare Brit Bennett’s ‘The Vanishing Half’ to Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry collection, ‘Rapture’