English Department
An outline of the course:
Exam board: OCR
Course: English Literature AS level - course code H072; English Literature A level – course
code H472
The full specification can be viewed at www.ocr.org.uk/alevelenglishliterature
AS Level
Unit
Name
Mode of Assessment
Weighting
AS
Weighting
A level
Component
1
Shakespeare
and
poetry pre-1900
50%
0
Component
2
Drama and prose
post-1900
1 hour 30 mins
Closed text
Section 1: Shakespeare
whole text question
Section 2: Extract from
poetry
1 hour 45 mins
Closed text
Section 1: Drama whole
text question
Section 2: Prose – set text
and unseen
Entry
code
H072/01
50%
0
H072/02
A level
Component
1
Drama and poetry
pre-1900
Component
2
Comparative
and
Contextual Study
Component
3
Non-examined
assessment
2 hours 30 mins
Closed text
Section 1: Shakespeare
a. passage analysis
b. whole text
Section 2:
Drama
and
poetry
comparative essay
2 hours 30 mins
Closed text
Section 1: Unseen synoptic
Section 2: Comparison of
two texts
One drama, one poetry, one
prose
All post 1900; one post 2000
Task 1: Close reading OR Recreative with commentary
One text, 1000 words
Task 2: Comparative essay
Two texts, 2000 words
Set texts:
Drama post 1900 (AS only) - one of:



Noel Coward: Private Lives
Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire
Harold Pinter: The Homecoming
40%
H472/01
40%
H472/02
20%
H472/03



Alan Bennett: The History Boys
Polly Stenham: That Face
Jez Butterworth: Jerusalem
Shakespeare (AS and A level) – one of:






Coriolanus
Hamlet
Measure for Measure
Richard III
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
Poetry pre-1900 (AS and A level) – one of:

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Merchant’s Prologue and Tale

John Milton: Paradise Lost Books 9 & 10

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Selected Poems (selection can be found in Appendix
A/specifications)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Maud

Christina Rossetti: Selected Poems (selection can be found in Appendix A/specifications)
Drama pre-1900 (A level only)- one of:





Christopher Marlowe: Edward II
John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi
Oliver Goldsmith: She Stoops to Conquer
Henrik Ibsen: A Doll’s House
Oscar Wilde: An Ideal Husband
Prose (AS and A level) – for AS one of:
Gothic AS Set text:
Angela Carter—The Bloody Chamber
Gothic A level set text (optional*)
Bram Stoker – Dracula
Dystopia AS Set text:

George Orwell – Nineteen Eighty-Four
For A level additional texts in same topic area from choices on bridging task 2:
Bridging Tasks year 11-12 2015
1. Research project: Literature through time.
Aim: to gain an overview of English Literature through history from 1300 to the present day.
Brief: students should research two of the periods of literature detailed below, one from group A
and one from group B using a range of sources so that they can
i.
ii.
iii.
Understand the evolution of different genres in light of historical, social and
technological change
Understand some of the characteristics of literature from different periods
Relate texts to their historical context
Group A
Medieval
poetry e.g. Chaucer and drama Mystery plays
Group B
Victorian
prose e.g. Oscar Wilde, Henry James,
Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, the
Brontes and poetry Tennyson,
Christina Rossetti and drama Oscar Wilde
Renaissance/Elizabethan poetry Shakespeare,
Spenser, Sidney and drama Shakespeare,
Marlowe, Webster
Modernism (early 20th century) poetry
e.g. T.S. Eliot, and prose James Joyce
Virginia Woolf, Scott Fitzgerald and
drama Noel Coward, Tennesse Williams
Seventeenth century poetry e.g. Milton,
Blake, Pope and drama e.g. Oliver Goldsmith,
William Wycherly, William Congreve
A selection of post 1940 poetry e.g.,
Sylvia Plath, Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus
Heaney and prose George Orwell, Angela
Carter, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood
and drama Harold Pinter, Alan Bennett,
Tom Stoppard
Eighteenth/early nineteenth century
prose e.g. Samuel Richardson, Jane
Austen and Romantic poetry e.g. William
Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
John Keats
Format: Research should be presented as a guide to literary history suitable for year 10 and 11 to
read. It can be a combination of written and visual material and should be suitable for a display.
Students might produce a pamphlet or a poster or choose another suitable format to present their
findings. They should not copy and paste information from the Internet. Sources of information
should be cited on the guide.
2. Reading
Aim: to experience a range of modern fiction.
Brief:
a. Read the three of set texts in preparation to start the course in September plus one from
the wider reading lists.
b. Produce a creative response to one of the texts you have read. This could be a 2D or 3D
image or artefact, or a written piece. You should engage with the ideas, themes, genre and
language of the text in your response.
NB: your reading of these texts will form the basis of at least one initial task in September.
Set texts:
American Literature 1880-1940:

F Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
Dystopia:

George Orwell – Nineteen Eighty-Four
Gothic:

The Bloody Chamber, Carter
Wider reading American Literature 1880–1940
 John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
 Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady
 Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
 Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie
 Willa Cather: My Ántonia
 Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence
 William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury
 Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
 Richard Wright: Native Son
Wider reading The Gothic
 Bram Stoker – Dracula
 William Beckford: Vathek
 Ann Radcliffe: The Italian
 Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
 Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
 William Faulkner: Light in August
 Cormac McCarthy: Outer Dark
 Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory
 Toni Morrison: Beloved
Dystopia other set text (optional)
 Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale
 H G Wells: The Time Machine
 Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
 Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
 Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange
 J G Ballard: The Drowned World
 Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor
 P.D. James: The Children of Men
 Cormac McCarthy: The Road