GCE English Literature

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GCE English Literature

• Support Events
• March 4 5

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Agenda

• 12.15pm Registration Lunch
• 1.15pm Introduction Majella Corrigan
• 1.20pm The requirements of the revised
  specification
• Chief Examiner Professor Elmer
  Kennedy-Andrews
• AS2 - Section B Prose -
• Using an Agenda for Study The Great Gatsby
• 2.00pm AS2 - Section A Poetry -
• Review of specimen questions mark schemes
• How to answer an AS2 poetry question
  exemplar questions for group discussion/response
  .
• - Heaney/Montague
• - Thomas/Frost

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Our support in print and online

• Specification Sept 2007
• Specimen papers and mark schemes Sept 2007
• Exemplification of standards
• AS September November 2009
• A2 September November 2010
• Chief Examiners reports with top tips for
  improving examination performance

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Our support online

• Student Guides Sept 2007
• Agendas for Study April 2008
• Student podcasts with top tips on how to prepare
  for the examination
• Jan 2008
• Top team podcasts with top tips on improving
  examination performance February 2008

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Ongoing support

• Internal assessment framework and guidance online
  April 2008
• Internal assessment will ensure rigour yet be
  flexible, (not just a GCSE write on) should be
  obvious that two plays have been studied
• Titles will be suggested which show the
  parameters within which you can work, and which
  target differing abilities
• Microsite available for teacher forum
• Candidate record sheet to include section for
  student commentary How did they get there?
• Title workshops/Agreement trials Sept 2008

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• Use of an Agenda for Study
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby

• In this Unit, there are 3 Assessment Objectives
  involved - AO1, AO3 and AO4.
• AO1 Communication
• In the examination, the candidate should be able
  to show good knowledge and understanding of the
  novel, and to write about it in an informed and
  relevant way, using appropriate terminology and
  concepts, and coherent, accurate written
  expression.

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The Great Gatsby AO3

• AO3 Response to other readers opinion
• In the examination, the candidate should
• offer opinion or judgment in response to the
  given reading of the text
• take account of key terms as the basis of the
  argument
• make an attempt at reasoning in support of
  his/her opinion
• provide textual referencing not generalisation
  - to illustrate her/his opinion

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The Great Gatsby AO3

• It is not essential for candidates in the
  examination to refer to the opinions of other
  critics and commentators even to obtain full
  marks. AO 3 can be satisfied by the candidates
  developing her/his reading in response to the
  given reading. If, however, critics are used,
  they must be
• used with understanding
• incorporated into the argument to reinforce or be
  seen as an alternative to the candidates opinion
• not used as a substitute for the development of
  the candidates own opinion
• properly acknowledged.

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The Great Gatsby - AO4 Context

• Candidates use of contextual material will
  depend on the focus of the stimulus
  statement/given reading.
• Candidates should note that
• questions may appear to be answerable from the
  text alone but that is not enough to satisfy
  AO4 candidates must go outside the novel
• the given reading in examination questions will
  always focus on a particular contextual aspect
  e.g. historical, social, political, biographical,
  or literary
• Examples of contextual areas on which questions
  may be based are ...

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The Great Gatsby - AO4 Context

• Biographical
• Links between Fitzgerald and Gatsby e.g.
• Fitzgeralds idealism mirrored in Gatsbys
• Fitzgeralds consciousness of poverty and sense
  of social inferiority projected into
  characterisation of Gatsby
• Fitzgeralds disappointment in love with Ginevra
  King and Zelda Sayre reflected in Gatsbys desire
  for Daisy
• Fitzgeralds experience of the army (1917-1919)
  repeated in Gatsbys life as a soldier
• Fitzgeralds hedonistic lifestyle mirrored in
  Gatsbys extravagance.

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The Great Gatsby - AO4 Context

• Links between Fitzgerald and Nick Carraway e.g.
• both Mid-Westerners,
• both from ordinary middle class backgrounds with
  little money,
• both aware of ruthlessness and carelessness of
  the wealthy classes,
• both capable of recognising the dangers of
  idealism

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The Great Gatsby - AO4 Context

• Social
• The Jazz Age the Roaring Twenties the age of
  jazz, parties, the motor car, advertising
• Prohibition Act (1920) criminal underworld
• Post-war disillusionment Gertrude Steins lost
  generation
• The Boom (increasing affluence) before the Bust
  (the Great Depression following the Wall Street
  Crash in 1929) which paralleled the course of
  Fitzgeralds own life
• The divided society gap between rich and poor
  the valley of ashes

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The Great Gatsby - AO4 Context

• The American Dream the promise of America new
  beginnings, fresh new starts social mobility
  opportunity for people to realise their dreams of
  freedom, happiness and success disappointment in
  the Dream increasing materialism in a spiritual
  wasteland
• A callous, careless society underlying despair
  sense of sterility
• Contrast between (small-town) Mid-Western values
  and those of East Egg
• Differences between values and expectations of
  Fitzgeralds contemporary readership and those of
  todays reader

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The Great Gatsby - AO4 Context

• Literary
• The novel of manners the novel as a
  representation of the typical styles and mores of
  the time
• Social satire targets of Fitzgeralds social
  criticism materialism, spiritual emptiness,
  unchecked idealism, the lack of any ideals, moral
  failure
• The Romance tendency of the novel towards
  symbolism, allegory, dream, imaginative excess
  concern with spiritual states rather than with
  ordinary events
• The concept of the hero is Gatsby a hero?

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The Great Gatsby - Examples of Themes on which
questions may be set

• Fitzgerald and the American Dream Fitzgeralds
  ambivalent view of the dream
• Difference between the world that Fitzgerald
  presents and that of todays readers
• The novel as the story of America the Mythic
  Novel use of coda and other devices to enlarge
  and generalise the Gatsby story
• The symbolic novel - symbolic settings West Egg,
  East Egg, the valley of ashes, the Midwest, the
  Plaza Suite, the fresh green breast of the New
  World key images and motifs e.g. cars, nature
  (flowers, nightingale, moonlight, golden sun),
  symbolic colour schemes, eyes/seeing, clocks, the
  sea

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The Great Gatsby - Examples of Themes on which
questions may be set

• The modernist novel unreliable narrator
  episodic, non-chronological narration coda
  symbolism themes of disillusionment,
  uncertainty, failure
• Representation of women in America in the 1920s -
  Emancipated women new social and sexual freedom
  e.g. Daisy, Jordan, Myrtle
• The idea of the hero the nature of Gatsbys
  dream is he a hero? Nicks ambivalent view
  of Gatsby
• The Novel of Social Criticism targets of
  Fitzgeralds social criticism
• Aspects of America represented by Tom Buchanan,
  George Wilson et.al.

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The Great Gatsby

• Web Resources
• www.homework-online.com/tgg/index.asp
• Includes Chapter summaries, character analyses,
  thematic discussion, symbolism, Important Quotes,
  Users Forum
• http//sparknotes.com/lit/gatsby
• Includes plot overview, character studies,
  Themes, Motifs and Symbols, Study Questions,
  Further Reading
• www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/index.html
• University of South Carolina F. Scott Fitzgerald
  Centenary Site
• http//www.areasearchguide.com/gatsby.html
• Includes analysis, reviews, general resources,
  study guides, lesson plans, links

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The Great Gatsby

• Bibliography
• Andrew J. Bruccoli (ed) New Essays on The Great
  Gatsby. New York Cambridge University Press,
  1985
• Kathleen Parkinson, The Great Gatsby, Penguin
  Critical Guides, 1988
• Andrew Turnbull, Scott Fitzgerald, The Bodley
  head, 1962.
• Robert H. Fossum and John K. Roth, The American
  Dream, British Association for American Studies,
  1982

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Heaney/Montague

• HEANEY OPENED GROUND
• MONTAGUE NEW SELECTED POEMS
• AO3 Comparing and contrasting
• Choosing appropriate poems to answer the question
  set.

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Heaney/Montague

• Examples of themes on which questions may be set,
  and suggestions of poems relating to these themes
• Childhood
• Heaney The Barn, Man and Boy
• Montague Like Dolmens Round my Childhood, The
  Water Carrier, The Locket, Time in Armagh
• The Past
• Heaney Bogland, The Settle Bed
• Montague A Lost Tradition, Cassandras
  Answer, The Errigal Road
• Rural life
• Heaney The Barn, The Forge, Bogland, The
  Wifes Tale, Man and Boy
• Montague Like Dolmens, The Wild Dog Rose,
  The Silver Flask, Forge

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Heaney/Montague

• Love
• Heaney The Skunk
• Montague All Legendary Obstacles
• Poems about Women
• Heaney The Wifes Tale, The Skunk, A Drink
  of Water
• Montague Cassandras Answer, Like Dolmens,
  The Wild Dog Rose
• Divided society/inheritance
• Heaney The Other Side, The Strand at Lough
  Beg, The Ministry of Fear
• Montague A Lost Tradition, A Grafted Tongue,
  The Errigal Road

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Heaney/Montague

• Authority
• Heaney The Ministry of Fear
• Montague Time in Armagh
• Death
• Heaney The Strand at Lough Beg, Man and Boy
• Montague The Locket,
• Poetry
• Heaney The Forge, Exposure
• Montague The Water Carrier, Like Dolmens

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Heaney/Montague

• Exemplar question
• Montague and Heaney both write about the Irish
  past.
• Compare and contrast the two poets treatment of
  the Irish past in two poems you have studied.
• POEMS SELECTED Bogland (Heaney) and A Lost
  Tradition (Montague)

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Heaney/Montague

• Comparing and contrasting thematic development
• Bogland uncovering of Irelands past in terms
  of delving down through layers of bog
• A Lost Tradition the neglect of a past
  culture despite continuing physical and
  linguistic reminders
• - Both poems view landscape as repository of the
  past, of racial or tribal inheritance
• - Heaneys bogland more generalised than
  Montagues Clogher Valley
• - Both poems concede impossibility of recovering
  a pure source

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Heaney/Montague

• AO2 Structure, form and language (Methods)
• Comparing and contrasting the two poets
  treatment of theme
• Form and structure of Bogland
• - central image of the bog as symbol of passing
  time (see Heaneys comments on significance of
  the bog to him in the Mossbawn and Feeling
  into Words sections of Preoccupations)
• - series of images to suggest the ancient bogland
  heritage

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Heaney/Montague

• Form and structure of A Lost Tradition
• mingling of reflections on the past with
  personal experience
• adaptation of old Gaelic tribal lament see
  account of the defeat of the ONeills in final
  stanzas

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Heaney/Montague

• Language (including imagery) and tone in
  Bogland
• - Implied contrast between Irish depth and
  American expansiveness (see Theodore Roethkes
  poem In Praise of Prairies)
• - Use of we poet speaking on behalf of the
  Irish
• - Sensuous imagery evoking textures of bogland
  e.g. melting and opening under foot, the ground
  as kind, black butter
• - Use of short-lined artesian stanza structure
  an augur going down into the ground, history,
  culture, consciousness

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Heaney/Montague

• Language (including imagery) and tone in A Lost
  Tradition
• - Glorifying of place names (relate to Irish
  dinnseanchas tradition) uncultivated pearls,
  image-encrusted name
• - Use of names of heroes of Ireland Barnagh,
  ONiall, OHagan
• - Use of broken Irish language
• - Images of decay, fading, ghostliness, defeat
  rusty litany, ghostly tread, dying sun,
  founder in a Munster bog
• - Elegiac tone traditional Irish formula So
  breaks the heart, Brish-mo-Cree lament for the
  decline of the ONeills and the old Gaelic order

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Heaney/Montague

• Montagues poem more specific in its Irish
  references
• Deeper implications in Heaneys poem the space
  which opens up in his last line (the O)
  suggests infinite time stretching back into the
  past, the infinite possibilities for poetry, the
  notion that origins are unreachable.
• - Heaneys poem more static and emblematic than
  Montagues travelogue.

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Thomas/Frost

• THOMAS Selected Poems
• FROST Selected Poems
• The examination question primarily requires
  candidates to compare and contrast (AO3) the
  poetic methods employed by the selected pair of
  poets in two poems which are thematically and/or
  stylistically related.
• Candidates are therefore expected to articulate
  informed and relevant responses (AO1)
• that analyse the poetic methods such as form,
  structure, language and tone which these poets
  employ to achieve particular poetic effects
  (AO2).

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Thomas/Frost

• Edward Thomas Methods (AO2)
• Form and Structure variation on the lyric, the
  occasional use of narrative use of conventional
  forms eg couplets the structural movement
  towards personal introspection.
• Language His concern to the last was what it
  had always been, to touch earthly things and to
  come as near to them in words as words would
  come(Frost on Thomas) - adjectival sparseness
  use of language to encapsulate the spirit and
  psyche of traditional England e.g. country folk,
  flora rejection of late-Victorian poeticism in
  favour of a more spare diction to evoke place
  language conveys an awareness of Modernist
  bleakness, but his sensibilities are not
  ultimately nihilistic influence of colloquial
  speech on verse conversations with country
  people and dialogue with the self.
• Tone contemplative, reflective, introspective,
  melancholy, wistful, capacity for delight.

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Thomas/Frost

• Robert Frost Methods (AO2)
• Form and Structure comparison of free verse to
  playing tennis with the net down sonnet
  heroic couplet, blank verse, dramatic monologue,
  dialogue, eclogue movement from delight to
  wisdom development of metaphors.
• Language the sound of sense use of deceptive
  yet meaningful diction skilful use of
  traditional devices such as rhyme and metre
  synthesis of traditional conventions with the
  cadence of idiomatic, vernacular speech
  aphoristic and epigrammatic expression tension
  between traditionalism/Romantic influence of
  earlier works and more Modernist bleakness of
  particular later poems.
• Tone ironic, sceptical, detached, contemplative,
  reflective, philosophical.

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Thomas/Frost

• Towards a consideration of comparable themes
• Acute perceptions of the natural world and
  natural phenomena as a means towards more
  abstract, universalised knowledge and wisdom.
• Epiphanic moments of delight at the aesthetic and
  sensual qualities of the natural world in tension
  with an intuitive, implicit recognition of
  darkness and fragility.
• Doubt, uncertainty and alienation.
• Human limitations and isolation in social and
  natural environments.
• The quest to understand the self and the
  essential nature of existence.
• Human endeavour and work.
• Human relationships and communication.
• The relationship between rural place and the
  psyche of the individual or group.

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Thomas/Frost

• Contemplation For Once, then Something Tuft
  of Flowers The Glory Beauty
• Rural work Out, Out Apple-Picking
  Haymaking
• Harshness of Life Out, Out The Owl
• Trees Aspens Birches Tree at My Window
• Birds The Owl The Oven-bird
• Old men Man and Dog An Old Mans Winter
  Night

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Thomas/Frost

• The natural world / man and nature / beauty of
  the natural world too many to list
• Place Adlestrop The Chalk Pit Stopping by
  Woods on a Snowy Evening The Wood-Pile
• People The New Year The Gypsy May 23
  An Old Mans Winter Night
• Encounters The New year As The Teams
  Headbrass The Chalk Pit Two look at Two
  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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Exemplar questions

• Q.1 Both Heaney and Montague write about
  encounters between Protestant and Catholic. (The
  Other Side The Errigal Road)
• Q.2 Both Frost and Thomas write about
  encounters between rural people.
• (Mending Wall As the Team's Head-Brass)

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COMPARING AND CONTRASTING HEANEYS THE OTHER
SIDE AND MONTAGUES THE ERRIGAL ROAD

• Similarity of basic situation encounter and
  conversation between two representative
  individuals in a context of natural landscape and
  colonial history.
• Heaney maintains focus on the two individuals to
  the end, but Montague shifts focus at the end of
  his poem away from the relationship between the
  two men to express concern about a possible
  future in which modern development will
  obliterate the historic landscape.
• Montagues perspective is wider than Heaneys
  Heaney concentrates mostly on the Protestant
  neighbour and his attention doesnt wander beyond
  the neighbouring farms in Montague there is less
  of a close-up on either of the human forms, less
  characterisation, and more interest in the wider
  landscape, the local place-names and townlands,
  the events of the past, present and future.

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COMPARING AND CONTRASTING HEANEYS THE OTHER
SIDE AND MONTAGUES THE ERRIGAL ROAD

• Heaney puts more emphasis on division and
  difference (in speech, farmland, religion)
  Montague speaks of shared landscape.
• The relationship in Heaney is more strained and
  hesitant but Montagues sharing is also
  guarded and qualified (but does not ask me in)
  both poets enforce traditional binary oppositions
  between Protestant and Catholic, Planter and
  Gael.
• Both use tercets, but more rhyming in Montague.

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COMPARING AND CONTRASTING FROSTS MENDING WALL
AND THOMASS AS THE TEAMS HEAD-BRASS

• Basic similarity of situation encounter between
  two countrymen while at work in a rural
  environment.
• Difference of thematic focus Ts is centrally a
  war poem, Fs a meditation on the nature and
  function of boundaries.
• Fs is a compact parable poem developed around a
  central symbol, Ts poem is a response to a
  specific historical situation, though opening
  onto larger considerations of the way life
  continues in the face of destruction and death.
• Both employ a loose, vernacular idiom both have
  a dramatic quality one is a monologue, the other
  a dialogue both are composed out of the
  interplay of loose, associative conversational
  rhythms and the strict iambic pentameter line.

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COMPARING AND CONTRASTING FROSTS MENDING WALL
AND THOMASS AS THE TEAMS HEAD-BRASS

• Focus of Fs poem remains fixed on the immediate
  situation and characters T s poem moves between
  the immediate scene in the English countryside
  and the war in France.
• F is more interested in characterisation than T
  F develops a contrast between the two farmers and
  presents an in-depth portrait of the speaker Ts
  two men are less strongly differentiated or
  defined.
• Both poems have open endings T does not draw any
  explicit moral or conclusion from the encounter
  he has dramatised F sits on the fence, the
  narrators viewpoint not being clearly superior
  to the neighbours (all truth is dialogue, RF).
• Both poems built on contrasts in T, the contrast
  between the peaceful, timeless English
  countryside and its rural rituals on one hand,
  and, on the other, the violent forces of change
  in both the human and natural worlds (war and
  blizzard) in F, the contrast between the speaker
  and neighbour, between walls-up and
  walls-down points of view.

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Poetry Anthologies

• Indicated interest in each anthology?