St Edmund’s English department offers an intellectually stimulating approach to the OCR English Literature course. Students are encouraged to appreciate literature through the close, comparative study of the set texts, evaluating critical perspectives against them and forging links between the texts and their biographical, socio-historical and philosophical contexts.

The two-year A-level involves three components:

Paper 01 (closed text): 2 hours 30 minutes (40%)

Pupils are examined on Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, John Milton’s Paradise Lost Books IX and X and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. Milton and Webster form a comparative pair.

Paper 02 (closed text): 2 hours 30 minutes (40%)

Pupils are examined on an unseen extract, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Fitzgerald and Wharton form a comparative pair.

Coursework (20%):

Pupils study Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money, Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and other poems.

Sixth Formers are encouraged to read widely – and discuss what they read. Trips are made whenever possible to attend performances of set plays, both locally and to theatres such as The Globe in London. Pupils are prepared thoroughly for examinations through a comprehensive programme that includes individual tutorials in which all pupils are offered detailed advice based on their writing and during which they can expect to be stretched and challenged.