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English Literature (XET01)
11 sections available · 64 chapters available
Free English Literature (XET01) study notes for Pearson Edexcel International AS Level students. Each chapter breaks down a key concept with examples and practice prompts you can turn into AI drills in the thinka app.
Prescribed poems listed from Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry 2002–2011
Prescribed poems listed from Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry 2002–2011
Unit 1 Section A: Post-2000 Poetry — Poems of the Decade
Eat Me, Patience Agbabi
Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass, Simon Armitage
Material, Ros Barber
History, John Burnside
An Easy Passage, Julia Copus
The Deliverer, Tishani Doshi
The Map Woman, Carol Ann Duffy
The Lammas Hireling, Ian Duhig
To My Nine-Year-Old Self, Helen Dunmore
A Minor Role, U A Fanthorpe
The Gun, Vicki Feaver
The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled, Leontia Flynn
Giuseppe, Roderick Ford
Out of the Bag, Seamus Heaney
Effects, Alan Jenkins
Genetics, Sinéad Morrissey
From the Journal of a Disappointed Man, Andrew Motion
Look We Have Coming to Dover, Daljit Nagra
Please Hold, Ciaran O’Driscoll
On Her Blindness, Adam Thorpe
Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn, Tim Turnbull
Prose
Pre-1900 and post-1900 Drama
Unit 1 Section B: Post-2000 Prose
Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
The Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
Unit 2 Section A: Pre-1900 Drama
Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
Othello, William Shakespeare
The Rover, Aphra Behn
She Stoops to Conquer, Oliver Goldsmith
Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare
Prose fiction
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
What Maisie Knew, Henry James
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The Lonely Londoners, Samuel Selvon
A Passage to India, E. M. Forster
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
Shakespeare
Hamlet
King Lear
Measure for Measure
The Taming of the Shrew
Unit 2 Section B: Post-1900 Drama
A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
Top Girls, Caryl Churchill
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
Skills: Essay & close reading
Comparative essay: connecting two poems (Unit 1 Section A)
Close reading of poetry: form, structure, language, voice
Close reading of prose: narrative, characterisation, setting
Close reading of drama: dramatic form and stagecraft
Responding to a statement-led essay question
Open-book practice: selecting and integrating quotation
Writing about context (AO3)
Writing about different interpretations (AO5)
Pre-1900 poems
Metaphysical Poets: prescribed poems from Metaphysical Poetry, Editor Colin Burrow, (Penguin, 2006)
The Victorians: prescribed poems from The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, Editor Christopher Ricks, (OUP, 2008)
The Romantics: prescribed poems from English Romantic Verse, Editor David Wright, (Penguin Classics, 1973)
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