Course map
Skills: assessment, interpretations, unseen texts and connections
How A-level Literature is assessed: papers, objectives and levels
AQA A 7712: Every paper; AQA B 7717: Every paper; OCR H472: Every component- Know each board's papers, sections and set-text choices
- Know the five assessment objectives and what each rewards
- Know how the level descriptors separate a straightforward answer from a perceptive one
Genre, critical lenses and interpretations
AQA A 7712: Every paper; AQA B 7717: Every paper; OCR H472: Every component- Use the terms of tragedy and comedy precisely: hamartia, anagnorisis, peripeteia, catharsis, comic resolution
- Apply feminist, Marxist, post-colonial, eco-critical and narrative readings to a text
- Weigh interpretations in an argument instead of listing critics
Unseen poetry and prose
AQA A 7712: Every paper; AQA B 7717: Every paper; OCR H472: Every component- Read an unseen poem or prose passage for voice, imagery, form and structure
- Compare two unseen poems' methods as well as their ideas
- Connect an unseen extract to the genre or period you have studied
Connecting texts and using context
AQA A 7712: Every paper; AQA B 7717: Every paper; OCR H472: Every component- Build a comparative argument across two texts, not two essays side by side
- Use contexts of writing and of reception to explain meaning
- Plan a 25 or 30-mark essay with a clear line of argument
Shakespeare
Othello, Acts 1 to 3: Venice, Cyprus and Iago's plot
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section A (Shakespeare); AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1A (Aspects of tragedy); OCR H472: Component 01, Section 1 (Shakespeare)- Know the plot of Acts 1 to 3, from Iago's grievance to the temptation scene
- Analyse how Shakespeare presents Iago's manipulation, Othello's love and Desdemona's choice
- Use context: Venice, race, the Ottoman threat and Jacobean attitudes to marriage
Othello, Acts 3 to 5: jealousy, murder and recognition
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section A (Shakespeare); AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1A (Aspects of tragedy); OCR H472: Component 01, Section 1 (Shakespeare)- Know the plot from the handkerchief to Othello's death
- Analyse Othello's changing language, Emilia's role and the tragic ending
- Judge readings of Othello as a tragic hero, and of Iago's motives
King Lear, Acts 1 to 3: division, folly and the storm
AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1A (Aspects of tragedy); OCR H472: Component 01, Section 1 (Shakespeare)- Know the plot from the love test to the blinding of Gloucester
- Analyse how Shakespeare presents power, nature and madness in the two plots
- Use context: kingship, inheritance and the Jacobean fear of a divided kingdom
King Lear, Acts 4 and 5: suffering, reunion and death
AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1A (Aspects of tragedy); OCR H472: Component 01, Section 1 (Shakespeare)- Know the plot from Dover to the deaths of Cordelia and Lear
- Analyse sight and blindness, justice and the gods, and the play's ending
- Weigh readings of the play as redemptive or nihilistic
Hamlet
AQA B 7717: Paper 2, Option 2A (Elements of crime writing); OCR H472: Component 01, Section 1 (Shakespeare)- Know the plot from the Ghost to the duel
- Analyse revenge, delay, madness and corruption, and Hamlet's soliloquies
- Use context: revenge tragedy, Elizabethan ideas of the soul and the state
The Taming of the Shrew
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section A (Shakespeare); AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1B (Aspects of comedy); OCR H472: Component 01, Section 1 (Shakespeare)- Know the induction, the two wooing plots and the wager
- Analyse how Shakespeare presents Katherina, Petruchio, marriage and money
- Weigh readings of the ending: submission, irony or performance
Twelfth Night
AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1B (Aspects of comedy)- Know the plot: the shipwreck, the disguise, the gulling of Malvolio and the resolution
- Analyse how Shakespeare presents love, identity, folly and festivity
- Judge the darker notes: Malvolio, Antonio and Feste's final song
The Tempest
OCR H472: Component 01, Section 1 (Shakespeare)- Know the plot from the storm to Prospero's epilogue
- Analyse power, freedom, forgiveness and theatre in Prospero, Caliban and Ariel
- Use context: colonial voyages, masques and readings of the play as Shakespeare's farewell
Measure for Measure
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section A (Shakespeare)- Know the plot: Angelo's rule, Isabella's plea, the bed trick and the Duke's return
- Analyse how Shakespeare presents law, mercy, desire and power
- Weigh readings of the Duke's proposal and Isabella's silence
The Winter's Tale
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section A (Shakespeare)- Know the plot from Leontes's jealousy to the statue scene
- Analyse the play's two worlds, time, loss and restoration
- Use context: the late plays, romance conventions and the Jacobean court
Prose
The Great Gatsby
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section C (comparing texts); AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1A (Aspects of tragedy); OCR H472: Component 02 (American Literature 1880 to 1940)- Know the plot and Nick's narration from West Egg to Gatsby's funeral
- Analyse how Fitzgerald presents love, wealth, class and the American Dream
- Use context: the 1920s, prohibition, old and new money and the First World War
Wuthering Heights
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section C (comparing texts)- Know the two generations' stories and the novel's frame narrators
- Analyse how Emily Brontë presents love, revenge, nature and the Gothic
- Use context: class, inheritance and women's position in the early nineteenth century
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section C (comparing texts); AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1A (Aspects of tragedy)- Know the seven phases of Tess's story
- Analyse how Hardy presents Tess, fate, nature and Victorian morality
- Read Tess as a domestic tragedy and weigh the subtitle, A Pure Woman
Jane Eyre
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section C (comparing texts)- Know Jane's five settings, from Gateshead to Ferndean
- Analyse how Charlotte Brontë presents love, independence, religion and Bertha
- Use feminist and post-colonial readings of the novel
Persuasion
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section C (comparing texts)- Know the plot from Kellynch to Anne and Wentworth's engagement
- Analyse how Austen presents constancy, persuasion, class and the navy
- Use context: the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the rise of a new gentry
Emma
AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1B (Aspects of comedy)- Know the plot: Emma's matchmaking, Frank Churchill's secret and Knightley's proposal
- Analyse how Austen presents Emma's errors, class in Highbury and comic resolution
- Use free indirect discourse and irony to explain the comedy
Dracula
OCR H472: Component 02 (The Gothic)- Know the plot from Jonathan Harker's journey to the Count's death
- Analyse how Stoker presents fear, desire, science and the foreign
- Use context: the fin de siecle, the New Woman and reverse colonisation
Drama before 1900
The Duchess of Malfi
OCR H472: Component 01, Section 2 (drama and poetry pre-1900)- Know the plot from the secret marriage to the deaths of the brothers
- Analyse how Webster presents power, corruption, women and Bosola
- Use context: Jacobean revenge tragedy and Italian settings
The Importance of Being Earnest
AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1B (Aspects of comedy)- Know the plot: Bunburying, the handbag and the double proposal
- Analyse how Wilde presents marriage, identity and Victorian seriousness
- Use the conventions of the comedy of manners and farce
She Stoops to Conquer
AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1B (Aspects of comedy); OCR H472: Component 01, Section 2 (drama and poetry pre-1900)- Know the plot: the mistaken inn, Kate's disguise and the jewels
- Analyse how Goldsmith presents class, courtship and town and country
- Use the contrast between laughing and sentimental comedy
Poetry
The pre-1900 love poetry anthology
AQA A 7712: Paper 1, Section C (comparing texts)- Know the poems of the pre-1900 love poetry set list, from Sonnet 116 to Hardy and Dowson
- Analyse how the poets present desire, loss, constancy and social convention
- Compare the poems with your prose text across time
Keats: Lamia, Isabella, La Belle Dame sans Merci and The Eve of St. Agnes
AQA B 7717: Paper 1, Option 1A (Aspects of tragedy)- Know the stories of the four narrative poems
- Analyse Keats's tragic lovers, enchantment and the cruelty of the real world
- Use context: Romanticism and Keats's sources
Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
AQA B 7717: Paper 2, Option 2B (Political and social protest writing)- Know the paired songs and the two contrary states
- Analyse how Blake protests against church, state and the treatment of children
- Use context: the 1790s, revolution and industrial London
Christina Rossetti: selected poems
OCR H472: Component 01, Section 2 (drama and poetry pre-1900)- Know the OCR selection, from Goblin Market to Up-hill
- Analyse how Rossetti presents love, death, faith and women's choices
- Use context: Pre-Raphaelites, Tractarian faith and the fallen woman
Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and selected poems
AQA B 7717: Paper 2, Option 2A (Elements of crime writing); OCR H472: Component 01, Section 2 (drama and poetry pre-1900)- Know the Mariner's crime and punishment, and the conversation poems
- Analyse guilt, nature, the supernatural and the imagination
- Use context: Romanticism and Lyrical Ballads
Crabbe, Browning and Wilde: the crime poems
AQA B 7717: Paper 2, Option 2A (Elements of crime writing)- Know Peter Grimes, The Laboratory, My Last Duchess, Porphyria's Lover and The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- Analyse the dramatic monologue, guilt and the voice of the criminal
- Connect the poems to the elements of crime writing
Wilfred Owen and the poets of the First World War
AQA A 7712: Paper 2, Option 2A (WW1 and its aftermath)- Know Owen's major poems and those of Rosenberg, Brooke and Edward Thomas
- Analyse how the poets present combat, pity, protest and memory
- Use context: recruitment, the front line and the home front
