This subject report is listed under English A in the 2004 examination archive. The catalogue session is May 2004. The information below helps you identify the document before opening the complete PDF. Subject, year and session labels come from the archive catalogue; the original cover remains the reference if a label differs. A file is not automatically suitable for your current syllabus simply because its subject name matches.
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EXTENDED ESSAY REPORTS – MAY 2004
English – Group 1
The range and suitability of the work submitted
The work ranged as widely as in recent years, from Chaucer, Shakespeare to contemporary writers
like Sebastian Faulks, Toni Morrison and Rohint on Mistry. Twentieth-century fiction proved, as
usual, the most popular field: Tolkien remained a favourite author and, although not all of the essays
on The Lord of the Rings rose above the routine, there was an inte resting feminist analysis of the role
of the female characters which made comparisons with the Harry Potter series. Some of the best work
came from candidates who had found unusual authors or topics: there were stimulating essays on Saki
and the sharp analysis of two wartime political speeches (by Churchill and Blair) which drew cleverly
on Orwell’s fiction and his critique of political rhet oric in ‘Politics and the English Language’. Well-
chosen and illuminating comparisons between tests produced some of the best work: there were good
essays on heroism in the Aeneid and Faulk’s Birdsong, and the handling of time in the The Secret
Agent and The Sound and the Fury . A fine analysis of metaphors of death in Alice in Wonderland
showed what can be achieved by a sensitive close r eading of a classic text in relation to a precisely
defined research question. There were far fewer essay s on poetry and drama, but here, too, the best
students could shine. Shakespeare was often approached in relation to film versions of the plays and,
although this is quite legitimate and can produce inte resting work, candidates interested in cinema
must be veered away from writing essays that discuss films without any reference to a literary text.
Essays devoted entirely to film with no textual or literary dimension are inappropriate and will receive
no marks for criteria J, K and L. One new development this year was a comparison of A Midsummer
Night’s Dream with a graphic novel about the play and its imagined first performance by
Shakespeare’s company. This proved lively and illumi nating since the candidate was able to write
interestingly about graphic devices as well as lite rary ones. Another new
File information
Subject
English A
Document type
Subject report
Year
2004
Session
May 2004
Level
Not labelled in the archive
Paper
Not labelled
Examination zone
Not labelled in the archive
Language
English
File size
116 KB
Pages
3
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