A-Level English Literature: critical lenses - ecocriticism, narrative theory and the canon

The A level assessment objectives ask you to explore texts informed by different interpretations, and some specifications set out a range of critical approaches for study - for example the critical anthology in AQA's English Literature B, which includes narrative theory, ecocriticism and literary value and the canon alongside Marxist, feminist and postcolonial theory. Materials on this site already cover the last group; this one works through the three approaches students meet least often, using out-of-copyright texts so that the lines can be printed in full.

Ecocriticism is practised on Gerard Manley Hopkins's 'Binsey Poplars', written about trees felled in 1879, and 'Inversnaid', with its plea for 'wildness and wet', and on the landscape of Emily Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights', where the north wind bends the firs and shapes the house. You learn to read nature as a subject and a force, not only as a mirror of human feeling.

Narrative theory is practised on the same novel and on 'Jane Eyre': the difference between story and discourse, analepsis and prolepsis, frame narrators and the narratee, Lockwood's comic misreading of Heathcliff in the first paragraph, the ironic calm of the ending, and the grammar of 'Reader, I married him'.

Literary value and the canon are approached through Matthew Arnold's 'the best which has been thought and said in the world', F. R. Leavis's narrow 'great tradition' (described, not quoted at length), and Virginia Woolf's argument in 'A Room of One's Own' about the conditions that kept women out of literary history. You consider how reputations rise and fall and who decides what is valuable.

Throughout, the emphasis is on using a lens as an argument tested against particular lines, which is what the assessment rewards, rather than as a label.

The material offers a quiz of twelve questions with one defensible answer each and an explanation after every answer, twelve flashcards on terms, critics and key lines, and a printable written work of eight open questions - ecocritical analysis of a printed poem, landscape in 'Wuthering Heights', Lockwood as narrator, narrative terms, the canon and its challengers, how to use a lens in an essay, the novel's ending and whether literary value is objective - each with a model answer and the key points a strong response should include.

  • Explain what ecocriticism looks for and apply it to poems and a novel
  • Distinguish story from discourse and use analepsis, prolepsis, narrator and narratee precisely
  • Analyse frame and unreliable narration in 'Wuthering Heights'
  • Explain how the literary canon is formed and why it has been challenged
  • Evaluate whether literary value is objective, using changing reputations
  • Use a critical lens as an argument tested against the text

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the DfE A level English Literature subject content (AO5: different interpretations) and the range of critical approaches studied at this level (for example ecocriticism, narrative theory, literary value and the canon). Quotations from public-domain texts on Project Gutenberg: Hopkins, Poems (#22403); Emily Brontë, 'Wuthering Heights' (#768); Charlotte Brontë, 'Jane Eyre' (#1260); Arnold, 'Culture and Anarchy' (#4212). Leavis and Woolf's essays are described, not quoted beyond a few words.

Sample question

Which statement best describes what an ecocritical reading of a literary text does?

See the answer

It studies nature in a text as a subject in its own right: how humans relate to the non-human world

Ecocriticism (a term in use since the late 1970s and developed in the 1990s) treats nature not merely as backdrop or as a mirror of human emotion (pathetic fallacy) but as a subject: how does the text value, exploit, fear or care for the non-human world? It questions anthropocentric readings that see landscape only in human terms.

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