LITERARY CANON PROJECT YEAR 12 A-Level English Literature July/September 2018 NAME:
Project Aims and Outcomes: (All help towards the unseen element of the A-level Literature exams) Gain a greater understanding of the literary canon. Gain contextual understanding of how the presentation of love/themes relating to love change over the last three centuries. Develop your ability to independently interpret texts across the three literary modes: poetry, drama and prose. Develop academic reading skills. Get to grips with a wider reading list, you will be set wider reading as an undergraduate in advance of the module s start date. Develop an understanding of historicism how texts from different literary ages/movements are comparable. Develop an interest in areas of the literary canon. What do you need to do? 1. Year 12s must choose a classic and one other text to compare from either the poetry or contemporary reading lists. You are free to approach the task by reading one text from each list if you would like to push yourself. 2. Research each of your texts. 3. Prepare a research booklet on any related theme between your chosen texts where you consider how your chosen theme has changed/developed over time. 4. Your research will be discussed in the first lesson back, with prizes available for students who ve excelled. 5. We are trying to ascertain how committed and interested you are in our subject. Show off and be interesting!
Title Author Year Published A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 Agnes Gray Anne Bronte 1847 Cranford Elizabeth Gaskell 1853 Daniel Deronda George Eliot 1876 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1850 Emma Jane Austen 1815 Far from the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy 1874 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte 1847 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy 1895 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1869 Mansfield Park Jane Austen 1814 Middlemarch* George Eliot 1832 Mrs Dalloway* Virginia Woolf 1925 North and South Elizabeth Gaskell 1855 Persuasion Jane Austen 1818 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen 1811 Shirley Charlotte Bronte 1849 Silas Marner George Eliot 1861 Tess of the D Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 1891 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881 The Return of the Native Thomas Hardy 1878 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Anne Bronte 1848 The Waves* Virginia Woolf 1931 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins 1860 The Woodlanders Thomas Hardy 1887 To the Lighthouse* Virginia Woolf 1927 Villete Charlotte Bronte 1853 Where Angels Fear to Tread E.M Forster 1905 Wives and Daughters Elizabeth Gaskell 1865 Women in Love D.H Laurence 1920 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte 1847 Classics : The novels listed here are all written between 1810 and 1930. You will need to choose one of these novels to read over summer. Research your potential choices carefully before making your choice. Novels marked with an asterisk (*) are very challenging. Most of these are available on Kindles/tablets free of charge as they are out of copyright.
Contemporary Novels: Title Author Year Published A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini 2009 As I Lay Dying* William Faulkner 1930 Atonement Ian McEwan 2001 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks 1993 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 Do Not Say We Have Nothing Madelaine Thien 2016 Grief is the Thing with Feathers Max Porter 2015 How to be Both Ali Smith 2015 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro 2005 NW Zadie Smith 2012 On Beauty Zadie Smith 2005 Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Jeanette Winterson 1985 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier 1938 Revolutionary Road Richard Yates 1961 Room Emma Donoghue 2010 Solar Ian McEwan 2010 The Accidental Ali Smith 2006 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 1963 The French Lieutenant s Woman John Fowles 1969 The God of Small Things* Arundhati Roy 1997 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold 2002 The Notebook Nicholas Sparks 1996 The Robber Bride Margaret Atwood 1993 The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes 2011 The Time Traveller s Wife Audrey Niffenegger 2003 The Virgin Suicides Jeffery Eugenides 1993 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks 1984 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 1966 This list includes novels written from 1930 onwards. Research the titles that interest you carefully and ensure that you can see links with your chosen classic. Novels marked with an * are particularly challenging.
Poetry: Collection Title Poet Year of Publication 40 Sonnets Don Paterson 2015 Another Time W.H Auden 1939 Ariel* Sylvia Plath 1965 Astrophil and Stella* Philip Sidney 1580 Birthday Letters Ted Hughes 1998 Crow Ted Hughes 1970 Harmonium Wallace Stevens 2001 High Windows Philip Larkin 1974 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 Let Them Eat Chaos Kate Tempest 2016 Lyrical Ballads William Wordsworth with 1798 Samuel Taylor Coleridge Milk and Honey Rupi Kaur 2014 Paradise Lost* John Milton 1667 Selected Poems John Keats 1821 Selected Poems 1923-1958* ee cummings 1977 Shakespeare s Sonnets William Shakespeare 1609 Songs of Innocence and William Blake 1789 Experience Stranger, Baby Emily Berry 2017 Teaching My Mother How to Warsan Shire 2011 Give Birth The Colossus* Sylvia Plath 1965 The Dream of a Common Adrienne Rich 1978 Language The Tower* W.B Yeats 1923 The Waste Land and Other T.S Eliot 1923 Poems* Wessex Poems Thomas Hardy 1898 This list includes poetry collections from the early modern age, 19 th century and contemporary collections. Research the period you are interested in and choose a poetry collection accordingly. Asterisks denote particularly challenging texts.
Examples of potential presentation topics: Feminism in Jane Eyre, On Beauty and The Dream of a Common Language Love and Loss in Wuthering Heights, Grief is a Thing with Feathers and Crow. Motherhood in Pride and Prejudice, Beloved and Stranger, Baby. Oppression of Women in Tess of the D Urbervilles, Lolita and Ariel The Other in Silas Marner, The Lovely Bones and The Tower Sexuality in Women in Love, Oranges are not the Only Fruit and The Dream of a Common Language Booklet guidance: Should total a minimum of 1500 words of research. Should be printed and ready for the first lesson of Lit that you have.
Choice of Classic: Why? Include links to your other texts: Choice of second text: Why? Include links to your other texts:
Texts to be studied in class Year 12 2018/19 Editions recommended below have useful notes and space for annotations. Before Christmas: *Othello William Shakespeare (Recommended edition Arden Shakespeare) *The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald (Recommended edition Penguin Modern Classics) After Christmas: Feminine Gospels Carol Ann Duffy (Recommended edition Picador) A Picture of Dorian Grey Oscar Wilde (Recommended edition - Penguin Classics) *denotes texts that will be needed in September and should be read in advance of the course start date. Optional secondary texts that may support your learning: The Great Gatsby: York Notes for A-Level Othello: York Notes for A-Level Study and Revise for AS/A-level: AQA Anthology: Love Poetry Through the Ages A/AS Level English Literature A for AQA Student Book Cambridge Russell Carey, Anne Fairhall, Tom Rank