Students study the following texts for this paper: Othello by William Shakespeare, Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.

At the core of all the set texts is a tragic hero or heroine who is flawed in some way, who suffers and causes suffering to others and in all texts there is an interplay between what might be seen as villains and victims. Some tragic features will be more in evidence in some texts than in others and students will need to understand how particular aspects of the tragic genre are used and how they work in the three chosen texts. The absence of an ‘aspect’ can be as significant as its presence. There can be no exhaustive list of the ‘aspects’ of tragedy but areas that can usefully be explored include:

• the type of the tragic text itself, whether it is classical and about public figures, like Lear, or domestic and about representations of ordinary people, like Tess

• the settings for the tragedy, both places and times

• the journey towards death of the protagonists, their flaws, pride and folly, their blindness and insight, their discovery and learning, their being a mix of good and evil

• the role of the tragic villain or opponent, who directly affects the fortune of the hero, who engages in a contest of power and is partly responsible for the hero’s demise

• the presence of fate, how the hero’s end is inevitable

• how the behaviour of the hero affects the world around him, creating chaos and affecting the lives of others

• the significance of violence and revenge, humour and moments of happiness

• the structural pattern of the text as it moves through complication to catastrophe, from order to disorder, through climax to resolution, from the prosperity and happiness of the hero to the tragic end

• the use of plots and sub-plots

• the way that language is used to heighten the tragedy

• ultimately how the tragedy affects the audience, acting as a commentary on the real world, moving the audience through pity and fear to an understanding of the human condition.

Paper 2 -  Elements of political and social protest writing

Students study the following texts for this paper: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake.

Students also respond to an unseen passage in this exam. The unseen extract can come from any of the genres of poetry, prose or drama and can include literary non-fiction.

Although it could be claimed that all texts are political, what defines the texts here is that they have issues of power and powerlessness at their core, with political and social protest issues central to each text’s structure. The political and social protest genre covers representations of both public and private settings.

All set texts foreground oppression and domination and they all look at the cultures we live in and have lived in over time. A crucial word in the title of this option is ‘Elements’ and students need to consider the specific elements that exist in each of their texts. The elements that might be explored, depending on each individual text, include:

• the type of the text itself, whether it is a post-modern novel, science fiction, satirical poetry, historical and political drama

• the settings that are created as backdrops for political and social action and the power struggles that are played out on them. Both places (real and imagined) and time settings will also be significant here

• the specific nature of the power struggle, the behaviours of those with power and those without, those who have their hands on the levers of power

• the pursuit of power itself, rebellion against those with power, warfare

• the workings of the ruling political classes

• corruption, conspiracy, control

• the connection of the smaller world to the larger world

• the focus on human organisation: domestically, in the work place, in local and national governments

• gender politics and issues of social class

• the structural patterning of the text, how political tensions are heightened and perhaps resolved

• the way that language is used in the worlds that are created

• the way that political and social protest writing is used to comment on society, particularly the representation of society at particular historical periods

• ultimately how political and social protest writing affects audiences and readers, inviting reflection on our own world.

This component is designed to allow students to read widely, to choose their own texts (if appropriate) and to understand that contemporary study of literature needs to be informed by the fact that different theoretical and critical methods can be applied to the subject. This area of the course provides a challenging and wide-ranging opportunity for an introduction to different ways of reading texts and for independent study. The title 'Theory and independence' highlights the important idea that, within a literature course, students should have the opportunity to work as independently as possible.

This process is supported by the AQA Critical anthology, which has accessible extracts on the following critical methods and ideas:

• narrative theory

• feminist theory

• Marxist theory

• eco-critical theory

• post-colonial theory

• literary value and the canon.

In this component, students write about two different literary texts. One of the texts must be a poetry text and the other must be prose. Each text must be linked to a different section of the Critical anthology. Having explored their chosen text in the light of some critical ideas, students then demonstrate their understanding through their written work, comprising of two pieces of writing, one on each of the chosen texts. Students produce two essays of 1250-1500 words.