Sixth Form Options Booklet

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M G Hilton-Dennis Head of English mhilton-dennis@mtsn.org.uk The English Department at MTS offers two A Level English courses and it is worth remembering that you can choose both as A Level options:

A Level English Literature (OCR Exam Board) A Level English Language (AQA Exam Board)

English Literature

One of the most traditional and sought-after A Levels, English Literature widens immeasurably the scope of literature that you will have studied at GCSE. You will be given an in-depth training in critical analysis and written communication and an unequalled insight into the human psyche – exactly what the modern workplace is looking for in new graduates. The depth in which you explore your A Level texts is unprecedented and they will stay with you for life. Another richly satisfying aspect of the course is the way that it explores the historical and social contexts behind works of literature, and how critical and creative interpretations of a text have evolved over time. We start with Shakespeare and an in-depth study of Hamlet, a play which ranks as one of the greatest works of literature of all time. It is arguably his most famous tragedy, and few other texts reach so deep into philosophy and the existentialism of a young man, while at the same time offering a story of revenge and a heightened theatrical experience. The breadth of literature you will cover is impressive. As part of the pre-1800 side of the course, you may study Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th Century human comedy, The Canterbury Tales, alongside Oliver Goldsmith’s clever satire on 18th Century manners in She Stoops to Conquer. Alternatively, you might find yourself studying Milton’s visionary epic, Paradise Lost, twinned with the blood and revenge of Webster’s Jacobean tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi. We then head into post-20th Century texts for coursework, with past choices including the poetry of W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, D. H. Lawrence, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney and Simon Armitage; prose that covers writers such as Martin Amis, Katzuo Ishiguro, J.M. Coetzee and John le Carré; and plays that might include Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, Laura Wade’s Posh, Tom Stoppard’s absurdist comedy, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and Jez Butterworth’s defiant state-of-the-nation play, Jerusalem. You have a genuine say in what you would like to study for coursework. On the other side of the course, you will study a whole module devoted to American Literature written between 1880 and 1940. The period spans America’s emergence from civil war and the years of formative development as a nation. The seminal texts you get to study are Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, an exquisitely written meditation on the destructive effects of The American Dream in the 1920s, and John Steinbeck’s finest work, The Grapes of Wrath, an angry polemic on the impact of privatization and unchecked Capitalism on poor migrant farmers in the 1930s. Surrounding these two core novels are a number of satellite texts, written by some of the greats of American Literature: Mark Twain, Henry James, Edith Wharton, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, Theodore Dreiser and Willa Cather.