A2 Critical Coursework

Hello....lovely to have you on board.

I do hope you are well and enjoying our journey through the Wonderful World of English Literature. This section of the blog will support you in completing your critical piece of coursework.

TASK

You need to produce an analytical essay that looks at a text through the lens of a particular critical approach. Reading texts from feminist or Marxist perspectives can reveal a great deal about author's views, social/historical context and how the language is used to convey particular ideas.

BORING ADMIN STUFF

For the first last and only time, the word count is 1300 words. You will need to include a definition of marxism/feminism and then analyse how the language can convey a particular point of view. I will mark two drafts but can only give you limited assistance.

Click here for a link to the syllabus which includes the assessment criteria and mark schemes for this unit. SYLLABUS

CHOICE OF TEXTS

Choose something of literary merit. The more well known and often studied your text, the more resources there will be for you to make use of. Even better, if you choose something that I know reasonably well, my advice will be all the more accurate.

SOME RECOMMENDATIONS

Here are a few options

To His Coy Mistress - Andrew Marvel

A lovely poem to analyse from a gender perspective - think about the roles of the men and women. What points does the poet make? How do we view this poem from a C21st perspective?

The poem

Notes and analysis

London and The Chimney Sweeper - William Blake

William Blake detailed the suffering of the poor and dispossessed in London as industrialisation began to take hold. Examine how the poet portrays the poverty and suffering of the working class.

London

Chimney Sweeper

London notes

Chimney sweeper notes

Daddy - Sylvia Plath

Plath was a confessional poet who alluded to aspects of the Nazi extermination of the jews to describe her personal relationships. Many women found some truth in the way she presented relationships between women and men.

Poem

Analysis

The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock - TS Eliot

TS Eliot embarks on a cutting analysis of upper class pretensions and his own shortcomings in one of the most famous of English poems

Poem

Eliot and class and alienation etc

Anthem for Doomed Youth/Dulce Et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen

Owen's poetry catalogued his experiences of war. He was keen to stress its horrific aspects and speak against what he saw as the myth of heroism. Look at these two poems and think about them in terms of class, attitudes to religion and education.

Anthem

Anthem commentary

Dulce

Owen, Dulce class and education

Or, you could focus on longer texts.............

Miller's Death of a Salesman - a Marxist analysis

Bronte's Wuthering Heights - an exploration of class structure

Frankenstein - an exploration of gender roles or class structure in the text

Feel free to choose a text of your own but it MUST be of literary merit. Have a proposal ready before our first lesson on Thursday 3rd September

Beginning a Marxist Analysis - some pointers.

What Marxist literary critics do with texts in order to analyse them is always related to social classes. The main aim is to find if the text reveals any ideological oppression of a dominant economic class. Critics analyse whether the text reflects or resists a dominant ideology, if the main character of the literary work affirms or resists bourgeoisie values, which perspective is told the story told from and if the lower economic groups are devalued or the dominant ones given privilege.

But there are also more possible analyses. Here are some other questions to ask about the text:

What is natural, just and right in the text?

What are the power relations? What negative aspects are excluded?

Is there any opposition poor/rich, young/old?

Which term of the binary is privileged, what is repressed or devalued?

What people, classes, areas of life, experiences, are 'left out'?

Beginning a feminist reading

Feminist literary criticism recognises that since literature both reflects culture and shapes it, literary studies can either perpetuate the oppression of women or help to eliminate it.

Thus, feminist literary critics are motivated to raise questions about literature and literary criticism that are basic to women’s struggle for autonomy: How does literature represent women and define gender relations? Why has literary criticism ignored or devalued women’s writing? How does one’s gender alter the way in which one reads literature? Do women always fulfill specific roles in fiction? What kind of power, or powerlessness, do they have?

MARK SCHEMES

Below are the gradings from the new syllabus. Remember that they apply on a 'best fit' basis - you don't have to meet all of them to get the grade on a particular section. We start from Band 3 - everybody is capable of that grade or better.

Band 3 (11 – 15 marks)

AO1 use of some critical vocabulary and generally clear expression

AO1 some structured argument though not sustained/ relevant with focus on task

AO2 consideration of some features of form and structure and how these features shape meanings

AO2 consideration of some aspects of language and how these aspects shape meanings

AO3 consideration of connections between texts

AO3 consideration of different interpretations of texts, with general textual support

AO4 consideration of contexts of reception

AO4 consideration of possible contexts of production

Band 4 (16 – 20 marks)

AO1 use of accurate critical vocabulary and clear argument expressed accurately

AO1 relevant with clear focus on task/informed knowledge and understanding of texts

AO2 consideration of how specifi c features of form and structure shape meanings

AO2 consideration of how specifi c aspects of language shape meanings

AO3 detailed consideration of connections between texts

AO3 clear consideration of different interpretations of texts with apt supportive references

AO4 examination of contexts of reception

AO4 examination of possible contexts of production

Band 5 (21 – 25 marks)

AO1 use of appropriate critical vocabulary and well structured argument expressed accurately

AO1 relevant with sharp focus on task/ detailed knowledge and understanding of texts

AO2 exploration of several features of form and structure with evaluation of how they shape meanings

AO2 exploration of several aspects of language with evaluation of how they shape meanings

AO3 detailed and evaluative discussion of connections between texts

AO3 clear consideration of different interpretations of texts with evaluation of their strengths and

weaknesses and with signifi cant supportive references

AO4 detailed exploration of contexts of reception

AO4 detailed exploration of possible contexts of production. Random use of the word 'halibut' to see if anyone ever uses this resource

Band 6 (26 – 30 marks)

AO1 use of appropriate critical vocabulary and technically fl uent style/ well structured and coherent

argument

AO1 always relevant with very sharp focus on task and confi dently ranging around texts

AO2 exploration and analysis of key features of form and structure with perceptive evaluation of how they

shape meanings

AO2 exploration and analysis of key aspects of form and structure with perceptive evaluation of how they

shape meanings

AO3 detailed and perceptive understanding of issues raised in connecting texts

AO3 perceptive consideration of different interpretations of texts with sharp evaluation of their strengths and

weaknesses and with excellent selection of supportive references

AO4 excellent understanding of contexts of reception with detailed links between context/text/task

AO4 excellent understanding of possible contexts of production with detailed links between context/text/

Questions and Answers

AS Coursework

The Kite Runner

Rossetti Poems

Enduring Love

Enduring Love has been turned into a film. Below is a German version of the opening. 

Here is the Enduring Love website:

http://www.ianmcewan.com/bib/books/enduring.html

Plot Summary

Joe Rose is a science journalist, in a long term relationship with Clarissa who is coming back from the US that fateful day when the story of 'Enduring Love' begins. Their welcome countryside picnic goes awry when Joe becomes involved in a ballooning accident in which one of the rescuers is killed. 

So we already have the set-up, when something - a tragedy - invades the seemingly comfortable and ordered lives of his characters. But it's not a mere tragedy, it's not the accident that turns Joe's life upside down, it's the fact that Jed Parry, a fellow rescuer seems to have developed an obsessive passion for Joe, a passion which only after a time Joe manages to identify as an instance of De Clerambault's Syndrome or erotomania. 

The bulk of the novel deals with Joe's experience of being stalked by Jed Parry, and the resulting fallout - the way it affects his relationship with Clarissa, makes him reconsider his work life, but also the way it affects his feelings and ideas about the nature of reality. The story is told from Joe's perspective and the reader tends to generally trust Joe's version of events to have some connection to reality. Despite that, most of the time I had a doubt - just a tiny one - as to the actual reality of the stalking. It took a lot to make me 100% sure it was really happening; the grotesque and out-of-different genre finale was almost necessary to reassure me of Joe's sanity. 

I read 'Enduring Love' in a day, like a thriller impossible to put down, even though it's classified as high-brow literature. McEwan knows how to create suspense: the breathless, scary kind; more scary because the sense of foreboding is realistic rather than taken from some ridiculous horror story. 

Apart from the suspense, Enduring Love has so much more, though. 

It's a meditation on the nature of love, with the relationship of Joe and Clarissa described in ultra realistic if somehow dry and subtle terms. The sequences of events leading to conflict, the inevitability of misunderstanding, the inscrutability of emotions, the birth of mistrust, and - of course - the fundamental and unavoidable self-centeredness of love. In many ways, the obsessive 'love' of the stalker who 'knows better than you what you feel' is a parody of our 'normal' romantic love, it's a monstrous mirror but a mirror nevertheless. How many times do we find ourselves believing that gestures mean more than words, that there is a deeper meaning in everything, that our beloved, or God for that matter can speak to us in signs? And how difficult it is, even for the most rational amongst us, to get rid of such delusions? 


I have seen interpretations of this novel that see it as some kind of affirmation of the spiritual but I couldn't see anything like that in it, to me such an interpretation would be wishful thinking. As does the more recent 'Saturday', 'Enduring Love' ends in a triumph of the rational, in fact the novel can be read as an affirmation of the rational, as a plea against the insanity of emotional and spiritual delusion. 

The religious angle of Parry's mania is supremely important here as is the fact that Joe is a science writer: after all the novel portrays not only erotic but also religious passion as madness, after all Jed Parry is not only a delusional stalker, he is also a (deluded) believer and despite all the cracks that appear on the smooth surface of Joe's rational personality, the last words (and the last bullet) belong to him, the atheist, the rationalist. In the final count, Parry is nothing more than a pathetic loony. This was very satisfactory to me, as many writers succumb to a temptation of showing a character in crisis turn to one or another kind of religious solace or experiencing doubt. 

I would say that of the two of McEwan's manifestos of rationalism I still preferred 'Saturday'; but this one was also an excellent book, concise, readable, definitely brilliant. 


I was not bothered by what some readers might see as over-researched character of the book as I have a childish liking for 'edutainment' elements even in literary works (that's why I like David Lodge too) which overrides any composition defects that might be caused by inclusion of long research quotations and explanations. 

Also, for people of passionate religious/spiritual persuasion and the ones for whom scientific angle on life is not a natural one the almost-triumphant rationalism of 'Enduring Love' might be an unacceptable simplification. 

Rime of The Ancient Mariner

The Rime Of......

The poem

Yes, published in 1798 and still with the power to shock with its horrific visions and consummate weirdness. Ace

The Gothic

A2 Comparative Coursework