English Literature paper 1 TRAGEDY

All of these tasks are to help you to have a wider understanding of the genre of tragedy that you will be working through. You will be familiar with this genre if you studied ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or ‘’ for GCSE.

MUST DO Get a folder(s) and dividers – you may want a lever-arch folder or two folders (one for tragedy and one for crime) Organise your GCSE Shakespeare notes – find any notes or work that you completed on the text being a tragedy and store these safely. These will go into your A level folder.

You must read at least one of the texts on the reading list below and complete the essay ready to hand in in September.

WIDER READING

Read at least one of these texts and complete the essay task. Have this work ready to hand in in September.

‘The Great Gatsby’ F. Scott Fitzgerald

‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ Thomas Hardy

‘The Virgin Suicides’ Jeffrey Eugenides

‘The Road’ Cormac McCarthy

‘The Remains of the Day’ Kazuo Ishiguro

‘The Duchess of Malfi’ (drama) John Webster

‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ Tennessee Williams

TASK - How does (writer) present features of tragedy in (title)?

COULD DO

Tragedy: Plays/Films

Have a look on here https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/series/national-theatre-collection-iid-190464

Username: 4Gz.9Uf-

Password: 1Mv'2Bq, Have a look at the productions of ‘’, ‘King Lear’, ‘Othello’, and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’.

‘The Great Gatsby’ is also available on Netflix.

Tragedy podcasts

You’re Dead to Me, all about Lord Byron, lots of other episodes available https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07r3cdy

University of Oxford: Approaching Shakespeare, lecture about ‘Othello’ https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/othello

FURTHER READING

‘This is Shakespeare’ Emma Smith

‘The best introduction to the plays I've read, perhaps the best book on Shakespeare, full stop’ Alex Preston, The Observer

So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant, deflecting us from investigating the challenges of his inconsistencies and flaws. This book thrives on revealing, not resolving, the ambiguities of Shakespeare's plays and their changing topicality. It introduces an intellectually, theatrically and ethically exciting writer who engages with economics as much as poetry: who writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity and sex. It takes us into a world of politicking and copy-catting, as we watch him emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day; flirting with and skirting round the cut-throat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval and technological change. The Shakespeare in this book poses awkward questions rather than offering bland answers.

‘The Shakespeare Miscellany’ , David Crystal

This compilation, in the tradition of the Victorian miscellany, gathers together essential facts and fascinating insights into the plays and poems, the man behind them (insofar as this is known), and the context in which he worked. Put together by an actor and a linguist it is quirky, illuminating and endlessly interesting. Topics covered include lost plays, what he would have studied at school, Shakespeare's pronunciation, why the Globe burned down and the difference between a Folio and a Quarto.