All 13 English Literature topics for Cambridge International AS & A Level, grouped the way the exam is. Each topic has a few flashcards to test yourself; the full sets are free in Socrates AI.
AS
What is a stage direction?
An instruction in a play script about action, setting, or how lines are delivered.
What is a soliloquy?
A speech in which a character speaks their thoughts alone on stage.
What is an aside?
A short comment by a character heard by the audience but not the other characters.
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What is a stanza?
A group of lines forming a unit in a poem.
What is rhyme scheme?
The pattern of rhymes at the ends of lines, labelled with letters, e.g. ABAB.
What is iambic pentameter?
A line of ten syllables in five iambs (unstressed–stressed), e.g. 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?'.
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AS
What is narrative perspective?
The point of view from which a story is told.
What is a bildungsroman?
A novel about a character's growth from youth to maturity, e.g. 'Jane Eyre' or 'Great Expectations'.
What is an epistolary novel?
A novel told through letters, diaries or documents, e.g. 'Dracula'.
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What is an unseen text?
A poem, prose extract or drama extract you have not studied, analysed in the exam.
What is the first step when analysing an unseen poem?
Read it several times, identify its subject, speaker, tone and overall meaning.
What does SMILE or similar frameworks help you consider?
Structure, meaning, imagery, language and effect.
A Level
Name four Shakespearean tragedies.
'Hamlet', 'Macbeth', 'Othello', 'King Lear', 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Antony and Cleopatra'.
What is Macbeth's tragic flaw?
Vaulting ambition.
Who manipulates Othello and how?
Iago, by making him believe Desdemona is unfaithful with Cassio, using the handkerchief as 'proof'.
Name four Shakespearean comedies.
'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 'Twelfth Night', 'Much Ado About Nothing', 'As You Like It' and 'The Taming of the Shrew'.
What are common features of Shakespearean comedy?
Mistaken identity, disguise, love plots, witty wordplay, and an ending in marriage and reconciliation.
What is a 'green world' in Shakespearean comedy?
A natural setting away from the court where problems are resolved, e.g. the forest in 'As You Like It'.
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What is a stage direction?
An instruction in a play script about action, setting, or how lines are delivered.
What is a soliloquy?
A speech in which a character speaks their thoughts alone on stage.
What is an aside?
A short comment by a character heard by the audience but not the other characters.
Revise all 20 Drama: dramatic methods and staging flashcards free →
A Level
Name the six major English Romantic poets.
Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats.
What was 'Lyrical Ballads' (1798)?
A collection by Wordsworth and Coleridge that helped launch English Romanticism.
What is the role of nature in Romantic poetry?
Nature is a source of beauty, spiritual renewal, moral teaching and the sublime.
When was the Victorian period?
1837–1901, during Queen Victoria's reign.
Name four major Victorian novelists.
Charles Dickens, the Brontës, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Elizabeth Gaskell.
What is a 'condition of England' novel?
A novel exploring social problems caused by industrialisation, e.g. Gaskell's 'North and South' or Dickens' 'Hard Times'.
What is Gothic literature?
Literature featuring terror, mystery, the supernatural, decay and gloomy settings.
Name three typical Gothic settings.
Castles, ruined abbeys, graveyards, labyrinths and wild landscapes.
Name three classic Gothic novels.
'Frankenstein' (Mary Shelley), 'Dracula' (Bram Stoker), 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' (Stevenson) and 'The Castle of Otranto' (Walpole).
What is modernism?
An early-20th-century movement breaking with tradition through experimental form and subject matter.
Name three modernist writers.
T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Ezra Pound.
What is 'The Waste Land'?
T.S. Eliot's 1922 poem presenting a fragmented, spiritually barren post-war world.
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What is the Renaissance?
A cultural movement (c.14th–17th centuries) reviving classical learning, including Shakespeare's era in England.
What characterises Metaphysical poetry?
Intellectual wit, elaborate conceits, and exploration of love and religion, e.g. Donne and Marvell.
What is the Restoration period?
The period after 1660 when the monarchy returned, known for satirical comedy.
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What is literary criticism?
The analysis, interpretation and evaluation of literature.
What is a feminist reading?
Examining how texts represent women and gender, and challenge or reinforce patriarchy.
What is a Marxist reading?
Examining class, power, money and ideology in a text.
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