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.