Extension English: Elective 4 - Literary Mindscapes

Before looking at each of the texts in close-up, here is a quick breakdown of representation:

• 2 novels, 1 short story suite, 1 suite of poetry, 1 play, 1 film.
• 4 female composers, 2 male composers.
• 3 American composers, 1 Australian, 1 English, and 1 New Zealander.
• Breakdown of eras: 1 text from the 1600s, 1 text written in the 1860s-1880s (but published much later), 1 text from the 1910s, 1 text from the 1930s, and 2 texts from the 2000s.
  

Prose Fiction Options

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
What is it: Addie Bundren, mother of five children and wife to Anse Bundren, lies on her deathbed as her family prepares to fulfill her final wish: to be buried in her birthplace of Jefferson, Mississippi. After Addie's death the family begins a long and arduous nine-day trek by wagon to deliver her to her grave. During this journey the children contend with their own crippling poverty, unwanted pregnancy, life-threatening injury, the class-based prejudices of those they meet, and the slowly increasing stench of their mother's corpse as it rots within her coffin in the subtropical heat of the Mississippi summer.

Scope for Study: Faulkner's groundbreaking multi-perspective rural odyssey is a seminal work in the 'Southern Gothic' genre and pioneered the use of stream-of-consciousness within American fiction. As I Lay Dying features no less than fifteen separate first-person perspectives of events, and uses unreliable narration and careful use of omission to deal with subject matter considered taboo at its time of publication (such as abortion, extramarital affairs, and flawed humanity within the church). Students will be able to examine how Faulkner has utilised each of the aforementioned narrative techniques to structure his writing and how he constructs characterisation through the lenses of multiple narrators.

NESA Annotations: Notes for As I Lay Dying can be found in the 2019-2023 Annotations document. These highlight the novel's cultural significance as a groundbreaking work from an author who won the prestigious Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes. Mention is also made of the text's subversion of the 'romantic quest' trope through the use of farce, black humour, irony and tragedy, the use of interior monologue to provide an insight into the psychology of the marginalised, and multiple narration as a means to present conflicting perceptions and invite students "to participate in the novel in the construction of meaning."

Verdict: I'd never read this before now and I absolutely loved it. It's dark and quirky, moving and evocative, and all of the characters are so finely crafted that their voices cut loud and clear through Faulkner's Gothic rendering of the Mississippi. As part of the Literary Mindscapes elective, I think this novel would provide a perfect segue-way into exploring psychological landscapes afforded by sophisticated characterisation and other deliberately-crafted narrative conceits.

Sixty Lights by Gail Jones
What is it: The reader peers into the life of Lucy Strange, a forthright and confident orphan from 19th century Australia with a love for the emerging new technology of photography. Lucy's relatively short life is revealed in sixty vignettes as she first sails to Victorian England to live with her ne'er-do-will uncle and then on to colonial India to meet a potential husband. Lucy's experiences are textured by light and observation, tragedy and innovation, and a relentless desire to capture the ephemeral and fleeting.

Scope for Study: There's so much to unpack in this relatively brief novel. First and foremost is the text's use of the motif of light and the way this metaphorically and literally links into its themes of memory and what the protagonist terms 'the maculate'. Students will also be able to view the text as a representation of an era on the cusp of change, with Lucy presciently remarking, "Everything that is seen... will one day somewhere be registered". Indeed, it is Lucy's obsession with photography that comes to work as sort of synecdoche for the Victorian world - a realm on the borderlands of the past, where the shadows of history open up to this new technology that captures and prompts and reinvents memory.

NESA Annotations: The 2009-2014 Annotation documents includes notes on Sixty Lights from when it was previously prescribed for Advanced English Module B: Critical Study of Text. Mention is made of the novel's use of metaphors and imagery and the cumulative fashion in which it builds an insight into photography and life in the Victorian era. The bildungsroman genre is also highlighted as a point of discussion in regard to its narrative structure.

Verdict: A wonderful and endearingly enigmatic work of literary beauty, Sixty Lights evokes both modernist and post-modernist sensibilities to tell a story at once tragic and uplifting. I think it functions perfectly as an English Extension text in that it's both sophisticated enough to cue intellectual discussion and short enough not to overwhelm Year 12 students who are already overworked. It's also a masterclass in the way that an author can use motif to reinforce and illuminate theme.

Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield

• Prelude
• Je ne Parle pas Francais
• Bliss
• Pyschology
• The Daughters of the Late Colonel

What is it: In this prescribed collection of short stories, Katherine Mansfield's enigmatic eye is cast over a range of scenarios. 'Prelude' presents a slice of life for a family in New Zealand, conveying the interactions of individuals, the role of women and servants, and the child's view of the world. 'Je ne Parle pas Francais' features a Parisian narrator who recounts a brief friendship with an English man and his almost-wife. In 'Bliss' a seemingly happy middle-class woman becomes increasingly aware of the bisexuality or homosexuality of others in her close circle and confronts (or fails to confront) the implications this has for her own existence and identity. 'Psychology' depicts two writers as they discuss the recent trend of the psychological novel. And finally, 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel' features two sisters in the aftermath of their father's death.

Scope for Study: This would be quite the rabbit hole for students. One key element necessary to understanding this suite would be an introduction to modernism in literature - the idea of a mode of storytelling that can eschew setting, closed-off-explanations, contextualisation, traditional concepts of plotting, the passage of time, etc., will be challenging for many students. An effective way of dealing with this is to undertake guided group reading; asking students what parts of the story the author is allowing the reader to focus on, what this says about the reading/writing process, what subtexts may be at play in this approach, and what might be suggested by particular motifs (EG. The pear tree in 'Bliss', or the interplay of what is said versus what isn't said in 'Psychology').

NESA Annotations: Thankfully there are some notes on this prescribed suite included in the recent 2019-2023 Annotations document. Attention is directed towards Mansfield's innovation as a writer in the 1910s and 1920s, particularly her use of stream-of-consciousness to explore the 'movement' in the minds of her characters, and the way in which she provided a much-needed counterpoint to male-dominated literature at the time. Other identified discussion points include the author's tendency to open her stories in media res, the motif of 'facades and role-playing' across the entire suite, and the use of the epiphany as a stream-of-consciousness device.

Verdict: I think modernism can be one of the most challenging genres of literature for a newcomer to adjust to. With that in mind, the success of this text will depend especially on the teacher's interest and passion regarding Mansfield. I think this particular quintet of stories provides a suitable range of ideas and themes for engagement and, although it would be challenging, I could see this text choice being rewarding if students are open-minded enough. There is a lot to discuss with Mansfield, whether it be her personal context, the reflexivity of the modernist genre, the intellectual construction of her ambiguous stories, or the author's relationship with bowdlerisation in her discussion of taboo topics such as sexuality.  

Poetry Options

The Complete Poems by Emily Dickinson

• I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
• This is my letter to the World
• I died for Beauty - but was scarce
• I had been hungry, all the Years
• Because I could not stop for Death
• My Life has stood - a Loaded Gun
• A word dropped careless on a Page

What is it: These seven poems chosen from Dickinson's rather large body of work are difficult to unify via genre or authorial intention (for Dickinson defies such categorisation). We have, however, the elective descriptor from the syllabus as a thesis from which to explore the prescribed text, and upon reading the poetry there are certain themes that emerge in relation to this. This is much existential angst in 'I died for Beauty...', 'I had been hungry...', and 'My Life has stood', and the use of extended metaphor in 'I felt a Funeral...' allows Dickinson to explore the pains and abstractions that pass within the mind. Some of the poetry selected here, such as 'This is my letter...', is among the shortest to be found in all the Prescribed Texts.

Scope for Study: Dickinson is a 19th century poet but, unlike the Romantic poets featured in the Advanced and Extension text lists, she has two key differences - geography and gender. Students will be able to use these differences to explore Dickinson's context, and to build connections to the obsessions evident within Dickinson's poetry; her preoccupations with death and anxiety and the obstacles of the mindscape. The poetry itself, while brief and of relatively accessible structure, deals with deceptively complex ideas that will need repeated reading and discussion. In terms of language and punctuation, Dickinson's ever-present use of the dash can be examined as a representation of the thinking process.

NESA Annotations: Alas, there are no annotations for Dickinson in any of the last three NESA Annotation documents.

Verdict: It's great. There's a lot to look at in Dickinson's poetry and the comparatively short length of each individual poem allows for discrete deconstruction and analysis without overwhelming the students. There should be ample scope for students to use this text to engage with the overall elective as well. I think this would be a very useful suite that would allow students to create connections with the other texts in a larger exploration of mortality, obsession, mental illness, and more.

Drama Options

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
What is it: Hamlet is the mopey son of the recently deceased Danish king. He is upset that his uncle, Claudius, has married his mother and usurped his father's place in both his family and the kingdom of Denmark. One chilly night, Hamlet investigates reports of a strange apparition on the castle's ramparts, and meets the ghost of his father. This ghost tells him that he was actually murdered by Claudius, setting into motion a series of events that will lead to a lot more moping from Hamlet and untold tragedy for the royal family and Denmark.

Scope for Study: Where do I start? Hamlet represents a major turning point in both Shakespeare's oeuvre and the wider trajectory of modern literature, presenting the inner life of a character in a way that no other text had ever done before. Hamlet's soliloquies (and, really, the entire play) convey a landscape of the mind - a literal literary mindscape, if such a thing can exist. From the protracted and extensive use of the obscure rhetorical device hendiadys, to the use of three distinct foils to refract and reflect the protagonist in subtly different ways, Shakespeare's Hamlet is a masterclass in textual integrity: a single-minded representation of the state of being human. 

NESA Annotations: There are no annotations for Hamlet found in the last three Annotations documents. 

Verdict: I reckon you'd be crazy to pass up an opportunity to teach Hamlet - arguably one of the greatest texts (if not THE greatest) composed in the English language. Doing Hamlet with an Advanced English class was one of the most rewarding and intellectually joyful experiences in my teaching career. Relegating it to the Extension syllabus is almost a crime, but I can imagine there would at least be some fantastic discussions with the smaller, more concentrated cohorts typical of the English Extension course.

Film Options

Lost in Translation, directed by Sofia Coppola
What is it: Bob, an American film star in his waning years, comes to Japan to film a whiskey commercial. While there he observes a culture of disconnection and, as he struggles with his own insomnia and boredom, he strikes up a friendship with Charlotte, a disillusioned young college graduate. The two connect over their shared discontent in life and their relationship begins to develop into something deeper, like two drifting entities that have fleetingly found one another in a strange and alien landscape. 

Scope for Study: Coppola's work as a filmmaker is characterised by a lot of silence, a motif that students will be able to examine in connection to the perspectives and themes offered by the film. Other elements to examine include the theme of communication and the ways in which characters do (or don't) connect, Coppola's decision to film in an analog format (rather than a digital one) to create a minimalist colour palette, and the co-opting of the 'male gaze' by a young female director to explore gender and identity. There's a lot of material floating around online in the film criticism blogosphere that covers a wide range of perspectives on the film, many of which will be useful to both the students and the teacher.

NESA Annotations: Lost in Translation can be found in the 2009-2014 Annotations document from when the text was part of English Extension 1 Module B: Texts and Ways of Thinking. Mention is made of connections between the narrative and themes of companionship, loneliness, consumerism, and cultural differences. Owing to the framing of the text within the 'Navigating the Global' Elective, the annotations hone in on Tokyo's cultural and technological differences and the efforts made by the filmmaker to highlight 'cultural dislocation' and alienation. 

Verdict: It seems kind of odd that a young female auteur like Sofia Coppola would choose to position her audience from the perspective of the older male character rather than the aloof young female object of his affections. It's a film that's perhaps very much of its time and now in the process of dating quite quickly. I suspect that Lost in Translation won't soon appear again on a Prescriptions List; it actually attracted quite a negative reception in Japan due to the way in which Japanese society was represented. It's a pretty film with an impressive body of paratext but, despite how nice it looks, I'm sure there's other films that would work much more effectively as part of the Literary Mindscapes Elective.

Discursive Writing

 

Since the arrival of the 2019-2023 NSW Senior English syllabus, the biggest point of contention (or confusion) has perhaps been the introduction of the 'discursive' writing genre for Module C: The Craft of Writing. There's a whole bunch of advice floating around on discursive writing and just about all of it is worth following, such is the flexibility of the term, and this is because the term has been partially invented to fill a 'gap' in the syllabus. I don't want to get too far into defining it but will say that it exists primarily as a useful label to cover a range of creative non-fiction writing styles. 

Getting students to understand this flexibility is one of the keys to building their level of comfort with writing in the discursive mode. In the case of my own classes, once we shook off the fear of tackling an unfamiliar term it became a preferred way of writing for quite a few students. It's really quite a freeing genre to write in.

Here's an activity that can be used for Year 11 Reading to Write or Year 12 Craft of Writing. 

Step 1: Read an example of discursive writing. I like to use a short extract from Judith Lucy's The Lucy Family Alphabet called 'B is for Bullshit' because it's funny, accessible, and can be used for either Standard or Advanced English. Lucy's book is out of print now but, honestly, it can be any piece of general non-fiction writing that fits our purpose - it doesn't have to be this particular extract. 

Step 2: Students annotate the text after reading and discussing briefly. This involves collecting together examples that reflect specific elements that are common to discursive writing. By doing this students will build up knowledge of the required metalanguage for analysing discursive texts and practise judicious selection of textual evidence. Students should look for the following:

• A thesis - what is the singular topic that the piece of writing focuses on?
• Conversational tone - give an example that reveals the author's personality.
• Use of humour.
• Evidence that wide reading or background knowledge has been called upon - find examples of allusions to other texts or historical events.
• Personal anecdotes - find an example that illustrates or adds detail to the thesis.
• Orientation - examine the opening sentence and explain how it encourages the reader to want to know more.
• Conclusion - is the ending reflective, open-ended, posing a question, or circular ('calling back' to an earlier joke, thread, or idea)?

An annotation sheet can be downloaded here.

Step 3: The best way for students to get an inside-out knowledge of discursive writing is to pen their own discursive pieces. After completing the above steps, students can practise writing their own discursive articles with the following thematic engagement activity. 

1. Select and highlight a line from 'B is for Bullshit' that stands out to you.
2. Use this line as the prompt for your own discursive piece of writing about dishonesty.
3. After you are finished, annotate your own piece in the same way that you annotated 'B is for Bullshit'.

Advanced Module A: Textual Conversations

Unlike other electives and modules in the Year 12 syllabus, the Prescribed Texts in Textual Conversations aren't organised in order of text type. This is due to the intertextual theme of the module, which can take a variety of forms and combines text types in different ways. A breakdown of these is as follows:

• 4 novels, 3 plays (2 of which are Shakespeare), 3 films, and 4 suites of poetry.
• 9 male composers, 5 female.
  
• 6 English composers, 3 American, 1 French, 1 Moroccan, 1 New Zealander, and 1 Canadian.
• 1 written in the 16th century, 2 in the 17th century, 1 in the 1920s, 1 in the 1940s, 1 in the 1960s, 2 in the 1990s, 2 in the 2000s, 2 in the 2010s.
• Pairs are as follows: 1 play and film, 1 book and film, 1 book and book, 1 poetry and play, 1 poetry and film, 1 poetry and poetry, 1 play and book.
  

Richard III by William Shakespeare and Looking for Richard, directed by Al Pacino
What are they: Richard III chronicles the rise of King Richard III as he schemes and manipulates his way to the crown by having just about everyone in his family murdered. As a character piece, it's a fascinating look into the supposed mind of one of the England's most reviled monarchs, and a meditation on the means employed by despotic rulers to shape events around them. The 1990s documentary Looking for Richard works on two levels (three, if you also look it as an ego-project for Al Pacino in his personal quest for greatness); as a performance of the play by American actors and also as a 'behind-the-scenes' look at what makes the play and Shakespeare so enduringly significant.

Scope for Study: Arguably the most commonly studied of Shakespeare's 'History' plays, Richard III works best as a look into what makes a psychopathic would-be tyrant like Richard tick. If students can look past the cast of more than sixty characters, they'll find enough to talk about in regard to Richard's Machiavellian pursuit of power and the concept of a man entertained by the game of evil perhaps moreso than the ends it achieves. Al Pacino's documentary works as a living, breathing study guide to go alongside the play - with Pacino himself unpacking key scenes, character motivations, and the changing context of the play when performed in the 20th century and for overseas audiences such as those in America. 

NESA Annotations: Annotations for these paired texts can be found in the 2009-14 Annotations document from when they were included as part of the Exploring Connections elective. Note is made of Pacino 'celebrating hybridity of form' and the 'complex processes involved in the negotiation between Shakespearean text and performance', as well as the three 'narrative strands' of Looking for Richard - the story of Richard III, the story of the play's historical context, and story of Pacino adapting Richard III.

Verdict: The villainous Richard is a fascinating Shakespearean creation but, as I alluded to earlier, there are a lot of characters in this play so I'm personally a little unsure of how the complicated medieval politics would translate with a class (keen to hear how teachers approach this one as I haven't taught it before). By contrast, Looking for Richard is a relatively straightforward text, even if it does come across as a glorified DVD extra rather than as a film in its own right. Pacino is kind of pretentious throughout and I don't think he achieves what he sets out to do (IE. Make Shakespeare accessible for modern audiences in a new way) - the film poster featured here is a prime example of this, just look at that goofy picture of Pacino standing like Bart Simpson in front of a larger picture of himself. Makes me cringe. 

Mrs Dalloway by Virgina Woolf and The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry
What are they: The titular protagonist of Mrs Dalloway plans for a party in which the who's who of post-WWI London will be in attendance. She goes about her day, contemplating her past and the possibilities and regrets of a missed romance with her close friend Peter Walsh, and crosses paths briefly with Septimus Warren Smith, a man experiencing 'shell shock' as a result of his experiences in the war. The film The Hours revisits the subtexts of Woolf's novel in multiple, interconnected ways - exploring Woolf's own mental illness during the germination of her groundbreaking novel, the experience of a dissatisfied housewife in the 1950s as she contemplates suicide while reading the novel, and the contemporary relationship between a bisexual woman and her friend - a poet dying from AIDS.

Scope for Study: There's a lot to unpack in Mrs Dalloway. If you'll excuse the anachronism, it's essentially the literary equivalent of a single-shot film. Readers are dropped into the protagonist's life without context and left to figure things out as the narrative slowly moves forward. Students will need to examine the way that the novel is filtered to us through a series of exploratory stream-of-consciousness devices that blur the line between limited and omniscient third person perspectives, and the way that Woolf fugues between direct and indirect speech in order to 'blow up' the miniscule details of each moment. In comparing the novel to The Hours, students will be able to examine the wider context of Woolf's life in creating Mrs Dalloway and the way that its legacy is depicted on the screen across three different time periods (1923, 1951, 2001). The multiple time periods also allow for students to examine changing attitudes to suicide, mental health, and sexuality - all of which feature at different levels in Mrs Dalloway and The Hours.

NESA Annotations: Notes can be found in the 2015-20 Annotations, where these texts are both discussed within the framework of Advanced Module A: Comparative Study of Texts (from the last syllabus). The Hours is highlighted as an exploration of a single day in the lives of each of its characters, thus drawing parallels with Woolf's novel. Further similarities are identified through the way in which both texts examine the lives of women in varying social and cultural contexts, the way in which the past informs the present lives of these characters, and Daldry's postmodernist use of structure to add to Woolf's themes and ideas.

Verdict: I can see the merit of studying Mrs Dalloway but I struggle to imagine it 'landing' with some students - indeed, it would take a keen Advanced class to rise to the particular challenge offered by this pair of texts. Woolf's writing style is... well, it's something. There are so many semicolons, and the added dimension of the text as an exploration of post-fin de siecle Europe only serves to illustrate just how truly dense a work it is. The Hours, by contrast, is a fine film with a lot to say, and the way it handles its multiple plots - while non-linear - is relatively accessible for most viewers. There is definitely a textual conversation between the film and Woolf's book that would provide a lot of material for discussion, but I think it would need passion and hard work in order to do it justice. I could provide the latter, but I'm not confident in delivering the former.

The Stranger by Albert Camus and The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud
What are they: In The Stranger, Meursault, an average French-Algerian colonial of little note, recounts the immediate events leading up to his decision to shoot an Arab dead on a beach. He tells his story dispassionately, seeming not to care that his mother has just died or that his girlfriend Marie is in love with him, and then also recounts the resultant court case in which he is judged more for his oddly nondescript nature than for the fact that he has murdered someone. Many years later, in The Meursault Investigation, the reader is given a view of the same events through the eyes of Harun, the brother of the murdered Arab. Harun recounts the events of his life after the untimely death of Musa (unnamed in Camus' novel) to an unseen listener, recounting the impact of this senseless act of violence upon his mother and how this in turn shaped his own life during Algeria's tumultuous decolonisation period. Harun's life echoes that of Meursault's in a multitude of ironic and deliberate ways.

Scope for Study: Daoud's text works on multiple levels by coming at Camus' famous postmodernist narrative in seemingly contradictory ways - as both an 'in-universe' sequel about the brother of Meursault's victim, and as a metatextual deconstruction of The Stranger's inherent colonialism. There is a wealth of material in The Meursault Investigation that can be spun into a whole range of discussions in relation to Module A's descriptor. Angles include: a comparison of the protagonists within both texts and their relationships with their respective mothers, Daoud's use of a second person point of view and how this disrupts notions of the novel as an easily defined commentary on The Stranger, and Harun as a metonym for the decolonised Algeria. My favourite approach, however, would perhaps be the idea of viewing Harun's narrative as a postmodern erasure of Camus' profundity - a deserved intellectual bathos delivered by the subaltern. 

NESA Annotations: As one of the newer pairings in the Prescribed Texts, notes for The Stranger and The Meursault Investigation can be found in in the 2019-2023 Annotations document. Surprisingly, these annotations focus predominantly on the intellectual weight of The Stranger, with only one of the last five dot points of analysis even mentioning The Meursault Investigation (and, even then, the 'suggested opportunities' are fairly general and non-specific).  

Verdict: I got a lot out of reading this pair of novels over the course of just four days. The way Daoud's sequel envelopes and enfolds The Stranger is a breathtaking tour-de-force - and that's no mean feat when we consider the influence and significance of Camus' novel. I think teaching this as a Textual Conversations study would certainly be challenging but, if the class was up to the challenge and open to the contextual grounding that would be necessary, it would no doubt be a rewarding experience for both the students and the teacher.

A Selection of His Poetry by John Donne and W;t by Margaret Edson
John Donne poetry

• The Sunne Rising
• The Apparition
• A Valediction: forbidding mourning
• This is my playes last scene
• At the round earths imagin'd corners
• If poysonous mineralls
• Death be not proud
• Hymne to God my God, in my sicknesse

What are they: John Donne, a contemporary of Shakespeare, wrote sonnets and other forms of poetry in the metaphysical mode and has been widely recognised as one of the key Baroque poets, who were known for an increased examination of the abstract. The poetry prescribed here explores love, death, and man's relationship with his maker when faced with these concepts. Margaret Edson's W;t is a one act play in which a dying literature professor named Vivian reflects on her life's devotion to Donne's poetry and the legacy of this single-mindedness as she approaches a painful death without human consolation. 

Scope for Study: Donne's poetry is highly metaphorical but also relatively accessible if students are walked through it carefully. The religious context of the poet will need some unpacking in order to reveal the depths of his various 'conversations' with God and the reader, and students will also be able to draw parallels to modern ideas of love and death in their own culture. Edson's play goes some way towards unpacking some of the selected pieces, specifically 'Death be Not Proud' and 'If Poysonous Mineralls', and adds further depth to the themes therein. In engaging with W;t, however, students will be able to look at larger questions relating to the meaning of life and the value we ascribe to the arts and their purpose. 

NESA Annotations: Annotations can be found in the 2009-2014 document, when W;t and Donne's poetry were part of the Advanced English Comparative Study elective Exploring Connections. Emphasis is placed on the way that both texts explore "challenging issues without providing definitive answers", specifically in relation to the nature of death. Mention is also made of the binary opposition between the emotional and the intellectual and how each text explores this opposition.

Verdict: I love Donne's poetry and think there's a lot of material within each poem that can be connected to the personal context of the student. I think an engaging lesson could be spent in particular on letting students lead discussion on 'The Apparition' in connection to notions of gender. Margaret Edson's play is a highly valuable flipside to Donne's conversation as critical analysis can reveal certain dichotomies at play - Edson and her protagonist both provide a feminine point of view and, unlike Donne, Vivien has rejected the pursuit of love altogether. There are also several other rich parallels that bear examination, such as Vivien's relationship with Donne vs. Donne's relationship with God. 

The Complete Poems by John Keats and Bright Star, directed by Jane Campion
John Keats poetry

• La Belle Dame sans Merci
• To Autumn
• Bright star! would that I were steadfast as thou art
• Ode to a Nightingale
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
• When I have fears that I may cease to be
• The Eve of St Agnes, XXIII

What are they: Keats, one of the key English poets of the early 19th century, embodied the intense emotional pathos of the Romantic movement and its obsessions. 'The Eve of St Agnes' is the epic of the selected suite of poems - longer than all the other poems put together, it tells a long-form narrative of secret lovers via a prism of Scottish/English folklore. Other poems reflect Keats' intensity in regard to love ('La Belle Dame sans Merci', 'Bright Star'), nature ('To Autumn') and death ('When I have fears that I may cease to be', 'Ode to a Nightingale'). The film Bright Star depicts the life of Keats during the writing of these poems, his creative struggles and love for Fanny Brawne, and his tragically untimely death.

Scope for Study: Students would perhaps benefit from starting with the film first rather than the poetry. Watching Bright Star would provide a strong contextual framework for Keats' poetry, as well as a 'way in' for many of the prescribed poems. Jane Campion's script and direction do a fine job of drawing out a 'thesis' from the work of Keats, synthesising key themes and presenting them in a more easily accessible and visual manner. Students might consider that poetry in the early 19th century existed as part of an aural culture, that there wasn't an assumption that people would automatically understand Keats' poetry, and the precarious balance between love and distraction that Keats drew upon as inspiration for his work. Each of these ideas exist as key components of Campion's film and will support the ability of students to engage with the suite of poetry in a variety of ways.

NESA Annotations: There are notes on Bright Star in the 2015-2020 Annotations document from when it was included as part of the Module B Texts and Ways of Thinking Elective for Extension English 1. Keats' poetry is also technically featured as the annotations outline the role of specific poems in forming the core of the film, the way in which a contemporary text such as Bright Star can 'embrace' the Romantic period, and the congruence between the film's visual metaphors and Keats' use of poetic techniques.

Verdict: Teaching Keats or any of the Romantic poets successfully would be highly dependent on the teacher's level of interest, however, that said, I think Bright Star provides an effective foundation for the 'textual conversation' angle of Module A. Students could look at the ways in which the prescribed poetry has been reflected in the film. I'm not privy to the design process behind this part of the curriculum but, on watching Bright Star, I wouldn't be surprised if the curation of the prescribed suite was backward-engineered from the film. One caveat I will mention here though is that Bright Star is a quiet and gentle piece of cinema, and I'd bear this in mind when choosing your pattern of study for your Advanced English class as some students may struggle with its pace.

Ariel by Sylvia Plath and Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
Sylvia Plath poetry

• Daddy
• Nick and the Candlestick
• A Birthday Present
• Lady Lazarus
• Fever 103
• The Arrival of the Bee Box

Ted Hughes poetry

• Fulbright Scholars
• The Shot
• A Picture of Otto
• Fever
• Red
• The Bee God

What are they: Plath's suite of poetry, published posthumously in 1965, is replete with biting anger and obsessive motifs - a series of folding perspectives encapsulating Holocaust and WWII allusions, events in the years preceding Plath's suicide, and the frustration felt by the poet in regard to her husband's unfaithfulness and a feeling of gender-based restriction. More than 30 years later, in 1998, Plath's one-time husband Ted Hughes released his own collection of poetry shortly before his death from cancer. The Hughes suite included here echoes and refracts the events and ideas alluded to in Plath's, offering a more direct view of the marriage, albeit from a subjective perspective.  

Scope for Study: Where do I start? The relationship between Plath and Hughes has been the subject of much controversy over the years and, within the context of the #MeToo movement, it continues to provoke a range of responses - the volatile and vitriolic, the cold and cautious, the invested and engaged. Both sets of poems are worthy of study in the most objective sense - shaped by robust, sharp, highly crafted, and/or superbly incisive language. Students will need to be careful when approaching the context and paratext that surrounds these interlinked bodies of work; careful that this element doesn't unduly weigh against their understanding of the texts from a technical standpoint. That said, a balance needs to be struck in regard to the contextual elements of the poetry - the writing doesn't exist in a vacuum. 

NESA Annotations: Surprisingly, unfortunately, there are no annotations on either Plath or Hughes in any of the last three annotation documents.

Verdict: Is the poetry meant to be read in the order given by the syllabus, or in the order presented by the books? Does it even matter? I would venture that they should be read in the order prescribed... Hughes' poetry in particular has been arranged above to follow a logical order that helps to construct a useful narrative that will assist students with framing their understanding of the relationship between the two poets. Teachers looking to teach this pair of texts might need to have an extra awareness of the wellbeing of their individual students first... I would be concerned that some students might be triggered or pulled off-course by the dark subject matter and the ongoing criticism of the Plath/Hughes relationship. The teacher would need to have sufficient experience. I'd tread lightly... to be honest, as much as I'm personally drawn to the poetry, I would probably just avoid teaching it altogether.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare and Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
What are they: The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's last plays and remains an enigmatic work that confounds the usual classification of his work into 'tragedy' or 'comedy' genres, being as it combines elements of both in its tale of exile, magic, revenge, love, and politics. Margaret Atwood''s 21st century novel Hag Seed tells the story of a disgraced director who re-stages the play as part of an education program in a prison, with Atwood portraying the text in its process of adaptation whilst simultaneously retelling Prospero's story through Felix, the director who uses the prisoners to execute his own elaborate plan of vengeance.

Scope for Study: Hag-Seed exemplifies the brief of Textual Conversations as it metatextually comes at The Tempest from two completely separate directions. On one hand, the novel explicitly depicts the staging of the play and features the discussion of its characters and themes throughout in the form of the education program that Felix runs. On the other hand, the novel is also structured along the same lines as The Tempest, with characters, themes, events, and plot points all forming an analogous mirror for Shakespeare's play. Students will be able to examine the layers of Atwood's lightly-staged but heavily intertextual retelling whilst using the original play as a reference point.

NESA Annotations: The new 2019-2023 Annotations outline The Tempest as a text that deals with themes of ambition, authority, power, captivity, and loyalty, and Hag-Seed as "a complex conversation with The Tempest that takes the reader into the worlds of the play". The annotations highlight Atwood's clever use of Shakespearean language, the way that knowledge of The Tempest can enhance an understanding of the character of Felix in Hag-Seed, and the way students can use Atwood's epilogue as a jumping-off point for their own interpretations of Shakespeare's text.

Verdict: One thing that is implicit in this pairing is the concept that Hag-Seed demonstrates the way in which Shakespeare's texts are continuously adapted and re-adapted for new audiences, and how this can both highlight the relevance of his plays in the contemporary setting whilst also creating new meaning that reflects new contexts. I would venture that, with consideration of the way that the Advanced English course is structured and the requirements of the pattern of study, that the Tempest / Hag-Seed combo will end up being the go-to choice within Module A. Considering the accessibility of Atwood's text and its insightful, unambiguous relationship with The Tempest, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Teaching Context for Stage 4

One of the key components of understanding a text is consideration of its context. We can see this idea echoed over and over again in a range of material related to teaching English and literacy, consider:

• The NSW English K-10 Syllabus, which specifies in the Rationale for students to "examine the contexts of language to understand how meaning is shaped by a variety of social factors".
• Outcomes EN3-5B, EN4-3B, and EN5-3B across Stages 3, 4, and 5, which all mention a need for recognition of different language contexts.
• Content points in the syllabus, which take it a step further through requiring students to "develop and apply contextual" knowledge by describing and analysing the context of texts (EN4-3B). Or for students to "critically consider the ways in which meaning is shaped by context" (EN4-5C).
  
• The English Textual Concepts, which includes Context as one of the twelve concepts - specifying the way in which context changes meaning in the way we read things, the way texts are shaped by outside factors, and the way values can change over time.
  
• The Literacy Progressions, which map the need for contextual understanding of words in both the Understanding and Creating Texts sub-elements from Levels 5-10.
  

For NSW High School English we start with Stage 4, where context becomes an important factor in modifying meaning when writing, or when recognising the parameters of meaning while reading.

It's easy for English teachers to start looking at context by considering the cultural or personal factors of an author, or how texts are reinterpreted and adapted over time (think Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, or Clueless as an adaptation of Emma) but sometimes I find jumping straight into this can leave some students behind. It took me a couple of years of teaching before I realised that context wasn't something explicitly taught in Primary School English, at least certainly not to the extent that the metalanguage term of 'context' had become embedded in student thinking. I can say, "What's onomatopoeia?" to a Year 8 class and, without fail, students will start shouting things like "BANG!", "CRASH!", and "CRACKLE!" If I ask, "What's context?", I usually get blank looks from the same group.

A good starting point is to break the term down into four parts:

• Who wrote it and/or to what audience?
• When was it written?
• Where was it written?
• Why was it written?

I want to get students understanding the impact of these elements on a text and, as with learning vocabulary, it's more effective for students to do rather than copy. So the starting point is to consider a single sentence delivered identically in two very different contexts:

"Stop falling asleep"

Who: said to a student vs. to an airplane pilot.

When: in the daytime vs. during a flight.

Where: in a classroom vs. on a plane.

Why: they should be doing their work vs. they should be flying the plane!

Once students understand this, give them a series of sentences and have them devise their own contexts to go with each one. They should create two separate contexts per sentence with the challenge being that these contexts should be as different as possible. Once they've finished, discuss as a class and compare the responses students came up with, exploring the idea of just how much context can matter. Considering this for single sentences is the building block of considering larger extracts of text, to short stories or articles or films, to whole novels, to whole genres or literary movements. The advancement through the progression will depend on the sophistication of the student as they work their way through the stages and courses towards their final year in High School.

Here's a worksheet that lays out the above-described context activity for students to complete: Context Worksheet.

Extension English: Elective 3 - Reimagined Worlds

The Reimagined Worlds Elective features an eclectic range of text options, some of which are potentially the most 'out there' in the entire Year 12 Prescriptions list. That said, it also has a much narrower range of text types to select from - there are no non-fiction options, no plays, no short stories. Here is a quick breakdown of representation:

• 3 novels, 2 suites of poetry, 1 film.
  
• 4 male composers, 2 female composers.
• 4 texts written in English, 2 in other languages (Calvino's text was originally in Italian, del Toro's film is in Spanish)
• 1 Italian composer, 1 American, 2 English, 1 African-American, and 1 Mexican.
  
• Breakdown of eras: 1 text from the 1720s, 1 text from the 1790s, 2 texts from the 1970s, 1 text from the 2000s, and 1 text from the 2010s.
  

Prose Fiction Options

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller... by Italo Calvino
What is it: Ha! Where do I start with this one? One of the most slippery texts to pin down in the entire syllabus due to its extreme metatextuality, Calvino's novel features (checks book) no less than eleven separate narratives. The main narrative follows a reader who picks up a book in a bookstore, the reader (both the character and you) then read the opening chapter of a thriller novel but - just as it starts to get really good - a printing error breaks the spell and the reader is forced to return the book to the store. He picks up a new copy, meets another reader who has run into the same problem, and then goes home to read the new copy only to find it is a completely different book...

Scope for Study: The entire text, every sentence, every word, has a near-infinite scope for study. The first person and second person points of view play games with the reader - are we, the reader, also the reader in the novel? Questions like this will allow for discussions of metatextuality and reflexivity, the potential for postmodernism to break down all meaning beyond repair, and the way that each framing chapter works as a synecdoche for a different part of the reading process, EG. The role of the bookstore, the act of reading in the home, the act of reading as an academic activity, the act of reading from a publication standpoint, a translation standpoint, the writer's standpoint, a government's standpoint. And the constant starting of new narratives as deliberate disruptions designed to pull the responder out of the passivity of reading. And then there's the other characters in the framing narrative, each one symbolising a different kind of reader. There's a lot to unpack, even in a book that is constantly unpacking itself before out eyes.

NESA Annotations: Infuriatingly, there aren't any notes for this text in any of the last three annotation documents. It's a shame because I am intensely curious as to what would be the best approach in teaching If on a winter's night a traveller...

Verdict: Wow. What a mind-blowing, intellectually stimulating, exhausting, maddening read. I got a lot of this and I imagine it would be exponentially rewarding on a second, third, or fifteenth reading. But I don't know if I would want to teach it to students. It's suited to the Literary Worlds Common Module more than anything... I think I would want to see which students were in aclass and how their tastes and minds work before I tried to put this book in front of them. I think it could go either way, depending on the nature of your class.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

What is it: Genly Ai is in the second year of his diplomatic mission to the cold, inhabited planet of Winter, where he has worked slowly to establish contact with the king of one of the world's nations. Winter, like the other eighty-six known inhabited worlds, is populated by a human society who have long since forgotten their connection to Earth. It is Ai's goal to encourage the inhabitants of this world to join the Ekumen, a confederation of cooperating planets, but first he must gain an audience with one of their leaders. Ai's journey across Winter is not simple, however, as he finds himself fundamentally unable to fully grasp the nature of this alien society - a culture unique among all the worlds in that the people there are biologically androgynous.

Scope for Study: A perfect text for the Reimagined Worlds Elective in that it presents a literary world designed to challenge the way the reader thinks about gender and biological sex, especially the ways in which gendered identity can be constructed. Le Guin's work can be examined by students in terms of its use of the science fiction genre, the way it refracts through a prism of second-wave feminism, and the author's intensive world-building. Students will be able to analyse Le Guin's combination of a first-person perspective with an invented lexicon, in particular the way that it shifts from italicised usage, denoting unfamiliar words, to unitalicised, which reveals the enculturation of Ai. The use of first-person narration to reveal characterisation and to explore theme can also be examined, one example being the initial inability of Ai to trust some of the other characters.

NESA Annotations: You'll find annotations for The Left Hand of Darkness in the 2015-2020 Annotations document, from when the text was included as part of the Module A: Genre 'Science Fiction' Elective. The dot points help to contextualise Le Guin's classic as a 'landmark' for both the science fiction genre and modern feminist literature. Highlighted elements also include the interrelationship between the setting and the narrative, the use of multiple points of view, and the novel's 'anthropological and sociological' exploration of gender, sexuality, politics, pacifism, loyalty, sacrifice, mythology, and morality.

Verdict: A wonderful science fiction classic that manages to avoid many of the genre's cliches (laser battles, bug-eyed aliens, glitzy technology) whilst maturely examining complex ideas. Students may need to have some patience and an open mind when they start reading as Le Guin isn't one to weigh her text down with unnecessary exposition - in this case she prefers to start the novel in media res and let the reader's learning happen more gradually and gently. I think I'd love the chance to develop some resources for this text and would probably teach it if the opportunity arose.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

What is it: In the great age of British sail, one Lemuel Gulliver sets out travelling and is shipwrecked in lands hitherto unknown. He becomes caught up in the wars between the miniature Lilliputians and Blefuscudians and becomes a kind of pet in a land of giants known as Brobdingnag. Upon escaping these disproportionate realms, Gulliver visits Laputa, an island in the sky, and the Grand Academy of Lagado, where bizarre forms of research are being undertaken. In other lands he encounters immortals and ghosts and - finally - he spends time in the strangest land of all, the country of the Houyhnhnms, a nation of intelligent talking horses and devolved brutish humans.

Scope for Study: A strong understanding of Gulliver's Travels will need to be heavily framed by context. Coming at the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment, when the intellectuals of Europe were increasingly gripped by a desire to know all that could be known, Swift's novel works as a satirical travelogue. Students should examine the historical, social, and political context of the times in order to better understand the objects of mockery that the narrative takes aim at. In many ways, Swift's novel can be viewed as ahead of its time - a humanist work that critiques the unkind nature of European society. Students will also be able increase their understanding of Swift's context through the way in which he represents his own world through the imaginary realms to which Gulliver travels.  

NESA Annotations: Annotations for Gulliver's Travels can be found in the 2015-2020 document, where it appears as part of the now retired Extension English Genre study. In these notes the focus is on the way the text functions as a comedy. Mention is made of the way in which Swift examines various aspects of human nature and how humour can be used as a tool for social criticism. Opportunities for challenging teaching and learning include: comparing the structure and language of the novel to modern-day comedies, the use of irony and parody, and the other genres this early text can be read as fitting into (science fiction, fantasy, early travel literature, the modern narrative novel, etc.)

Verdict: I love Gulliver's Travels. It's such a hugely influential work on so many texts that it's hard not to read it and join up the dots as you go. That said, it still stands on its own as an entertaining 18th century adventure full of wonder and sharp humour. It's a wonderful view into another time, and hopefully Extension students will appreciate Swift's lively imagination and ability to create a seemingly endless series of curiosities. 

Poetry Options

The Complete Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• The Eolian Harp
• Kubla Khan
• Christabel

What is it: Whilst only comprising of four texts, this suite of selected poetry includes two of the  longest poems to be found in the entire list of Prescribed Texts. Coleridge was instrumental in the popularising of the Romantic genre, with this poetry reimagining his world through a prism of belief in what he called 'One Life' - the idea that all humanity and nature is connected through a relationship with God. The poetry covers such disparate visions as fantastic fever dreams induced by opium ('Kubla Khan'), an unfinished proto-Gothic tale of a mysterious, supernatural woman ('Christabel'), an upcoming marriage as a catalyst for re-assessing one's connection with the world around them ('The Eolian Harp'), and a caution against the folly of man in violating the natural world ('The Rime of the Ancient Mariner').

Scope for Study: Students will need to make extensive consideration of Coleridge's context - his history of anxiety, depression, and drug addiction, and his role as a poet within the Romantic movement. Each of the individual poems will need to be looked at also in terms of how they fit within the poetry genres and subgenres of the era, with texts such as 'The Eolian Harp' figuring as part of a themed series created by Coleridge, 'Kubla Khan' attracting an 'outlier' status of sorts through virtue of its difference within Coleridge's body of work, and 'Christabel' eventually becoming known as one of the poet's greatest works despite its unfinished nature. Students will also benefit from examining the complicated rhyming schemes of the era, the way in which canonical responses to the poetry have been shaped through criticism over time, and Coleridge's choice to frame his thematic explorations through the use of symbolism or deliberately archaic language.

NESA Annotations: Like several of the older texts in the Prescriptions list, Coleridge is not featured in any of the annotations documents. The Wordsworth entry in the 2015-2020 Annotations features a few cursory mentions of the poet for his part in the growth of the Romantic genre.

Verdict: Coleridge is cool. I remember being a 16 year-old student studying him in Advanced English back in the 1990s and thinking, wow, this old guy smoked heroin and wrote massive poems about cursed albatrosses so Iron Maiden could turn them into epic metal songs... what a rock star! I guess I'm biased as Coleridge is one of the few poets I enjoyed reading back in high school but, that said, I get even more out of his work now that I'm an adult so I think this suite still has a lot of merit. It's placement within the Extension syllabus works fairly well as part of the Reimagined Worlds Elective.

Life on Mars by Tracy K Smith

• Sci-Fi
• My God, It's Full of Stars
• Don't You Wonder, Sometimes?
• The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
• The Universe as Primal Scream

What is it: Tracy K Smith's poetry defies easy definition... it explores so much; the legacy of a parent, the stars as metaphor for our need and/or inability to understand, the divisions and connections between each of us, and the future shape that humanity will take as a collective. It's hard to do justice to Smith's work in a summary (or any poet, for that matter) while trying to remain objective. There are some long poems that take a multiplicity of forms and tones on their journey from start to finish, and there are some shorter poems that are economic and precise.

Scope for Study: Students will be able to engage with Smith's poetry by drawing out the intertextual and philosophical connections prompted by each piece. Breaking each poem down into its component elements will allow for structural understanding and the identification of theme but, perhaps, it will be discussion afterwards as a group that provides a more rewarding experience for students. Smith is also a useful focal point for discussing the context of now, being that the poetry is both of our current times and also looks forward to the times that are yet to come.

NESA Annotations: As one of the newer texts on the syllabus, annotations for this suite can be found in the 2019-2023 version of the document. Attention is called to the diversity of form and tone found throughout the selected poetry. There is also, perhaps to the relief of many a teacher looking at teaching this text, an articulation of a potential synthesis behind the selected poetry - with the annotations connecting the five poems together as a body of work that 'addresses universal questions' regarding the meaning of life. There are some other useful pointers too, making these annotations particularly essential. 

Verdict: Sci-fi poetry! How could you not be interested in that? The problem with reading through all these texts for the Extension English electives is that it makes me want to teach more of them then I could ever possibly manage. I'd love to explore this poetry with a class of curious students. I think if I were to undertake the Reimagined Worlds Elective it would very difficult to narrow my choices down to just three texts.

Film Options

Pan's Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo del Toro
What is it: It is 1944, in the the dark days of post-Civil War Spain, and a young girl named Ofelia finds herself living with a new stepfather. This man, Vidal, is revealed to be a brutal fanatic in opposition to the rebels in the area who still fight on for freedom. Ofelia finds herself navigating a world increasingly filled with tragedy while she is simultaneously drawn into another, more fantastical world by a mythical faun. The Faun charges Ofelia with three magical quests, the reward for which will be immortality and passage to a magical kingdom, and the two worlds begin to bleed into one another.

Scope for Study: There's so much to get stuck into with this film in terms of director Guillermo del Toro's auteur status, with Pan's Labyrinth both functioning as an ongoing exploration of the fantasy and horror genres and as a serious artistic meditation on issues relating to Spanish history, nationalism, and identity politics. Students will be able to examine the use of dual narratives, advanced editing techniques, and the often devastating juxtaposition of reality and fantasy throughout the film. If paired with, say The Left Hand of Darkness, there is also suitable scope for the exploration of gender and the use of speculative fiction to examine divisions between the masculine and feminine.

NESA Annotations: Found in the latest version of the Annotations for the 2019-2023 syllabus. Space is given to the text's function as a parable, its exploration of fascism and the human condition in the face of hardship, and del Toro's highly textured allusions to fairytales. Identified challenges include the way the film fits and reflects the magical realism genre, and its use of allusion and intertextuality. 

Verdict: A wonderfully dark and evocative fantasy firmly grounded in a piece of history generally unknown to most people outside of Spain. I think this would be a rewarding film to teach, especially in connection to any of the other texts prescribed here - either as supporting material or a counterpoint. It's also the sort of film that will challenge students in a variety of welcome ways, be it the use of subtitles, its foreign context, or the adult treatment of the fantasy genre by one of its cinematic masters (I know this is off-topic, but if you're interested in this sort of thing then check out one of del Toro's earliest films, Cronos, for its unusual depiction of the vampire myth). Caution though - Pan's Labyrinth is rated MA15+ in Australia, which can be tricky in relation to the Code of Conduct and individual schooling contexts.

Literary Homelands Essay Response

I sat the Trial HSC Exam.

I'd seen other English teachers talk about doing this, and I'd done it earlier on in my career with Standard English to 'test' myself for reassurance, so the idea to undertake an Extension English 1 examination wasn't completely foreign to me. I won't lie and say it was a piece of cake; I have to admit that I felt kind of nervous walking into an examination with no notes to rely on and having to write a response legibly enough by hand.

I also feel nervous sharing my responses here on the blog... going into that big cold school hall and having to adhere to those time limits was surprisingly intimidating, but maybe the writing will be useful to someone's students. Hopefully.

Anyway, I wanted to do this for a few very important reasons.

1. There doesn't seem to be a textbook out there filled with Extension English 1 essay responses. I inquired about this with a publisher that I've previously contributed Standard and Advanced essays to and the response was, understandably, that the market was too small. I decided that starting to write my own essays might be the way to go about it.
2. I wanted an essay that was written in as close to student conditions as possible. I sometimes think that the 'Band 6' (or in the case of Extension, Band E4) responses provided by teachers (myself included) are slightly disingenuous as they often aren't written by hand, in timed conditions, or isolated from revision notes.
3. Understanding how the examination works feels like a really important thing that I should know. The only way for me to get a fair summation of this is to do it myself, otherwise I'd forever be an observer looking in.
4. I often feel like I shouldn't ask my students to do anything that I wouldn't do. I want to be able to perform well in exam scenarios... teaching students how to write essays for exams without being able to do it myself has made me feel in the past like I was missing something.
   

I was lucky this year as the examination had been set and finalised several terms ago so I was able to go into the examination without remembering what the questions were. As I said earlier, it was kind of nerve-wracking, and I found myself wandering around mumbling quotes to myself in the preceding days in an effort to memorise some appropriate textual evidence.

The Experience

In the past I've given my Extension students the advice that they should do their Elective essay first, and that they should devote 1 hour to each of the two papers. I tried to follow this advice and I was mostly successful, but here's what I learned:

• I ended up needing at least 70 minutes to write an essay with four properly supported body paragraphs.
  
• The Literary Worlds section, even with its two separate parts, only ended up taking me about 30 minutes. The more organic nature of imaginative writing meant that I wasn't constantly needing to stop and keep track of what I was doing in quite the same way that I needed to for an essay.
• I planned out my essay fairly carefully. This burnt up valuable time but it was entirely necessary to ensure that I didn't stray too far from the question or my thesis. I kept having to stop myself mid-paragraph to go back and check on the question, the thesis, and my plan - this is part of why this section took me so long.
• My planning involved quickly writing down my 12 quotes/textual examples, brainstorming a thesis statement of sorts, and then calling upon four different talking points that our study of Literary Homelands is built around in class. I then matched up each of the textual examples to each of the talking points before I started writing my response.
  
• In writing the Literary Worlds imaginative response I had to be careful to remember I was writing for the purpose of reflecting. To this end, I ensured that I consciously used a couple of techniques that I could discuss in reference to the way we had studied the module in class - this meant crafting a piece of writing that allowed for some implied discussion of reader-response theory, demonstrated how I had both mirrored and subverted the stimulus text, and indicated an understanding of the question that had been posed in the examination.
  
• Side Note: I was conscious of writing something that was of benefit to my current students, so I resisted writing too academically. That is to say, I wrote within the constraints of what I hope my students will be able to write. If I'm being honest and self-critical then I think that my elective essay may be too formulaic and that my imaginative piece could have leaned a bit more on the Joyce stimulus.
  

The best aspect of all of this is that I can now safely say I have a much better appreciation of what Extension students need to keep in mind while doing their exam. In concise terms: it's a lot.

The Exam Questions

The exam used is from the practise responses that can be easily found online at the NESA website. I wanted to try and make sure that the Trial HSC matched the HSC as much as possible, so I've relied on this exam for the first two times I've taught this course.

In light of this, if my students went looking for these practise papers and did them all in advance then they'd have a big advantage going into the trial exam. But, really, I think I'd be so overjoyed that they did this much preparation that I wouldn't mind them having this 'advantage' (I say 'advantage' but really, it's just assessment as learning). Suffice to say, I aim to write a new, original paper next time I teach the course - whenever that may be.

The Responses

Section 1, Part A

She sat outside watching the morning sun embrace her backyard. Eveline had never felt more awake than she did now.

This was a new world of action and desire and excitement and endless opportunities. Her memories of home were fading, in fact - 'home' was starting to disappear altogether. Home? But Australia was now home. That place in the past, Ireland, was something that happened to someone else. Not home.

"Mrs. Jones, when do you expect your husband will be arriving?"

It took a moment for Eveline to register that the butler was talking to her. She turned and caught his raised eyebrow before he re-composed himself.

"Oh, I don't know - he's always traveling. I shan't be surprised if you never get to see him."

The butler sniffed, clearly unimpressed. What did Eveline care? This was the other side of the world. If she wanted to say she was Mrs. Jones, that she had an ersatz husband off fighting wars or exploring jungles, that she was educated and upwardly mobile... If she wanted to say these things then how could this snooty, ridiculous butler challenge her? In Australia, she could be anything.

Yes. The morning sun was radiant as it glinted off the river over yonder, as it reflected off the greenhouse, and breathed life into everything it touched. Eveline? Who was Eveline? She was Sabrina Jones now. She must think of herself as Sabrina, not Eveline.

"Pass me that, would you, James?" she said in her best, most haughty voice.

The butler reluctantly gave it to her and she held it high in the sunlight.

Beautiful.

Let them try and take it away from Sabrina. Just let them try.

Section 1, Part B

In order to invite the reader into my continuation of Joyce's 'Eveline' I took the opening sentence of the writer's original text and mirrored its structure while subverting its intentions. Where Joyce wrote of the character looking out from an interior world through a window, I decided to place her outside to symbolise a difference in place. Where he wrote 'evening', I have used 'morning sun'. This is intended to suggest a new, positive beginning for the character through the use of pathetic fallacy, and Eveline is no longer 'tired' (as described in Joyce's opening lines) but now "had never felt more awake".

To give the impression of this being a more energetic setting and frame of mind for Eveline, I used polysyndeton, "action and desire and excitement and..." The character is clearly open to new possibilities now that she has left Ireland for Australia. A stream-of-consciousness approach is used in the second paragraph with fragmentary and truncated sentences, as well as rhetorical questions, to show the process whereby Eveline constructs a new identity for herself - Sabrina Jones. This acts as a symbol for the embracing of new opportunities.

Needing to generate a potential for conflict, I have made some suggestion that the butler is suspicious by having him ask after her "ersatz husband". The reader is encouraged to engage with further mystery through my choice to have the object at the end remain unnamed. By referring to it obliquely as just 'it' and using an enigmatic, one-word paragraph of "Beautiful" (which could refer to anything - the object, this new situation Eveline is in, the view of the backyard), I hope to unsettle the reader enough to provoke their own reader-response: a deliberate choice with no intended meaning at this point, as I want to convey how reader-response theory can work.

Download Section 1 Response.

Essay Plan

Section 2

Composers use their texts as a platform from which character voices are employed to illustrate the changing world. As a result of processes of modernity such as marginalisation, hybridisation, colonialism, and the instability of language, these characters become representative of the formation of complex identities that result from shifting homelands in the 20th and 21st centuries. The creation of these identities can be observed in texts such as Eileen Chong's suite of poetry, Burning Rice, the play The Secret River by Andrew Bovell, and Ding Xiaoqi's short story, 'The Angry Kettle', each of which provide a forum in which authors can explore the aforementioned ideas.

With the impact of diasporic migration, communities and individuals often find themselves marginalised within Australia's constantly changing society. Eileen Chong explores this idea in her homage to her Chinese ancestry, 'My Hakka Grandmother', with the line "Wild birds in search of a new place to call home" illustrating the lack of power inherent in migrating peoples. The Hakka people are a nomadic group lacking in a fixed homeland, as evidence by the use of the adjective 'wild' in a metaphor designed to evoke images of a group forced to 'fly' from place to place. The connotation of the word 'new' further conveys the idea that the persona's people have lost their previous homeland: they lack the security afforded by a fixed community. This process of disempowerment in similarly expressed in Xiaoqi's short story 'The Angry Kettle', wherein the Chinese protagonist faced with a symbol of white Australian dominance, the titular kettle, remarks that she "barely had the guts to look straight at it". This allusion to the kettle's power lends the object a sense of personification as if it were an intimidating force to be reckoned with - an item that symbolises historical English superiority in Australian society. The process of marginalisation that results from unequal relationships of power is further explored in Bovell's adaptation of 'The Secret River', in which the play's events reach an appalling climax whereby the increasingly dominant white settlers massacre the Dharug people while singing a song of home, 'London Bridge'. The contrast between the tragedy that befalls the Dharug and the image of grown men singing a song so well-known to children provides a tonal dissonance that illustrates the way British power has disrupted the natural balance of the Dharug people - a process of violence that pushes them to the margins of their own world, so to speak.

The ability of migrant identities to find a foothold in their new homeland may also inevitability lead to a process in which new, hybrid identities are formed. Against their best wishes, the people of the Dharug in 'The Secret River' find themselves subjected to the influence of their European invaders. This is perhaps best exemplified by the ex-convict Thornhill giving Ngalamalum the anglicised name of 'Jack'. Despite the insistence of his son Willy that the Dharug man's name is easy to pronounce with practice, Thornhill's self-assurance in his own culture results in his own choice of name being imposed on Ngalamalum, a metonym for the process of re-naming that has seen Aboriginal culture develop accordingly in times since. This process is explored in other ways by Chinese-Australian migrants too, with Chong's poem 'Chinese Ginseng' labelling the taste of the eponymous Chinese medicinal herb as 'bitter-sweet' - a paradoxical description that showcases her mixed emotions about the traditions of her mother and illustrates the complex ambiguity of being Chinese in the Western world. Conversely, the Chinese protagonist of 'The Angry Kettle' resists the attempt of her housemate Michael to subsume her traditional identity completely. When Michael racistly asks her if Chinese people have to eat 'fried food' she hyperbolically retorts with a question of whether all Australians have to "treat their kettles like sweethearts," a simile that subverts his discriminatory question by turning it back on him. In considering each of these texts it becomes clear that the ongoing development of cultural identities is something that happens in connection to opposing identities that exist in the same space.

The creation of shared spaces is, in the case of Australia, a result of the 18th and 19th century practice of colonialism. In 'The Secret River', the settler Thornhill makes the claim that "dug-over dirt" is as "good as planting a flag." This simile references a belief that the British way of using land is the only true proof of ownership, and is used by Thornhill to discount the validity of Dharug pre-existence along the Hawkesbury River. This event is representative of larger historical events that impacted on Australia's Indigenous peoples and would have an ongoing ramification on their concept of identity in years to come. The violent impact of colonialism is also felt in more subtle ways, with Chong's persona in 'Burning Rice' sadly looking at her burnt rice and metaphorically describing it as "my ancestors' ashes in a bowl", an observation that illustrates the loss of connection to her previous homeland that has result from living in a nation still characterised by British cultural dominance. This dominance is also evident in 'The Angry Kettle', with the ever-present kitchen implement signifying the living spectre of British colonialism that still sits, 'shiny' and important, in the average Australian home. The narrator of this short story demonstrates this through the juxtaposition cause by her dirty 'fingerprint' on the gleaming kettle - an act that symbolises the intrusion of Asian identity into the homogenously white world that had grown from British colonisation of Australia. Each of these texts convey how composers use the voices and presence of these characters to explore the way identities change through experience.

The instability of language is another key component of literary texts that embody changing cultural identity. In Chong's poem, 'Winter Meeting', the persona describes a meeting with an older Chinese poet in Melbourne. As a suggested for her depression, Kim Booey Cheng tells the persona to read the famous traditional Chinese poets. She is, however, unable to, reflecting, "But where you go / I cannot follow... I lost the language years ago." This metaphor reveals the way in which a Chinese-Australian's changing command of Chinese language can affect one's sense of cultural connection. In contrast, the Chinese protagonist of 'The Angry Kettle' is unable to grasp the finer nuances of Australian English, describing her housemates words as "pouring out", a verb choice that carries a connotation of natural force, of hot water from a kettle, of something that cannot be stopped so that understanding can be checked. It is at this point in the story that the reader first gets a sense that a division is appearing between the protagonist and her housemate, and it is a division created by a difference of language. The power of language is utilised in a different way by Andrew Bovell in 'The Secret River'. The Aboriginal characters speak in the Dharug dialect, which is used to allow the audience to experience the cultural barriers between the British and the Indigenous. At various points in the text there are moments of misunderstanding that result from Thornhill's ignorance of the language, and his unwillingness to learn it foreshadows that it is a language doomed to extinction.

Through examining 'The Angry Kettle', 'Burning Rice' and 'The Secret River', readers can get a sense of how cultural identity is fluidic, flexible process that happens in interaction the development of new 'homeland' spaces. Through a process of self experience, characters shift and resist and hybridise in the modern world, and authors present their voices so this can be better illustrated.

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