Edward Thomas and His Poetry

Edward Thomas is one of our most highly regarded war poets and yet in the popular imagination is perhaps less well-known; his work has attracted the highest critical acclaim.

Here are some comments:

Because all of his poetry was written after the outbreak of war, it is all, in an important sense, war poetry. Behind every line, whether mentioned or not, lies imminent danger and disruption. Andrew Motion

And from the foreword to the Collected Poems of Edward Thomas (1920)

His face was fair, long and rather...

• March.ppt
• Old Man.ppt
• Tears.ppt
• The Glory.ppt
• Words.ppt
• As The Teams Head Brass.ppt
• But These Things Also.ppt
• Gone, Gone Again.ppt
• Lights Out.ppt
• Melancholy.ppt
• The Sun Used To Shine.ppt

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• Part 1 - AWONI Teaching Guide.doc
• Part 2 - AWONI Annotated Guide.doc
• Part 3 - AWONI Teaching Guide.doc

Why you might like to teach this text!

A Woman of No Importance is a wonderful text to teach and your students will enjoy studying it.

It is short, it has an absorbing and convincing plot and its themes are easily recognised, interestingly explored and persuasively presented.

On top of this, Wilde is a fine and witty dramatist who uses his chosen form in fascinating ways not only, at the level of plot, to entertain but...

Although analysing a text at the level of narrative is a direct requirement of some English Literature courses, such as AQA’s LITB1, it is an analytical technique that can be quite generally applied across many texts – even non-fictional and media texts.

Associated Resources

A Guide to Teaching Othello

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Othello Guide Part 2 EnglishEdu.doc

Othello Guide Part 2 EnglishEdu.docx

Associated Resources

How to improve grades when writing for Othello

This EnglishEdu guide on Shakespeare’s popular A Level play, Othello, aims to supplement rather than replace other readily available Internet and printed material for the teaching of the play.

The guide explores the issues, themes and characters in the play that are particularly relevant to the current (2010) A Level Literature specifications. To add to the usefulness, and with an eye to the central AO requirement of close textual analysis of form, structure and...

Introduction

The tenth in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to analyse narrative viewpoint in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Narrative viewpoint: Atonement by Ian McEwan

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to analyse a text closely in terms of narrative viewpoint is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using carefully...

Introduction

The fifteenth in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to analyse the genre of novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Genre: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (gothic); Hamlet by William Shakespeare (tragedy); As You Like It by William Shakespeare (pastoral)

NB Whilst the EnglishEdu Literature Frameworks generally analyse novels, short stories or prose extracts, the specific nature of the tragic and pastoral genres...

Introduction

The fourteenth in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to help students analyse the context of novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow them access to the highest grades.

Context: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to analyse a text closely in terms of context is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using carefully chosen...

Introduction

The thirteenth in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to analyse the symbolism in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Symbolism: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using carefully chosen...

Introduction

This is the twelfth in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to analyse the narrative presentation of time in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Time: The Time Machine by H G Wells

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using...

Introduction

The eleventh in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to analyse how authors create a convincing sense of realism or ‘verisimilitude’ in novels, short stories or prose extracts.

An analysis at a level like this is capable of revealing the kind of subtle insights that allow students access to the highest grades.

Verisimilitude: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

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Introduction to the Literary ‘Frameworks’ Guides

At EnglishEdu our wish is always to try to help you, the often stressed and overworked English teacher, with something that you will feel is both very useful and – where possible – very different from what might be found elsewhere, either on the Internet or in print.

All of the guides, schemes of work and classroom materials on EnglishEdu have been written and produced by experienced and well-respected English teachers.

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Introduction

The ninth in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide explores and exemplifies an important requirement of many A-level English Literature teaching units, that students show how their own interpretation of a literary text is informed by their understanding that other possible interpretations exist, i.e. ‘alternative interpretations’.

‘Alternative Interpretations’: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

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Introduction

The eighth in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide looks at ways of analysing an author’s use of irony in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Irony: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using...

Introduction

The seventh in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide explores how to analyse an author’s use of description, imagery and figurative language in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Description, imagery, figurative language: Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed...

Introduction

The sixth in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide explores how to analyse the dialogue in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Dialogue: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using carefully chosen...

Introduction

The fifth in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide explores and exemplifies ways of analysing aspects and uses of atmosphere, mood, tone and foreshadowing in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Atmosphere, mood, tone and foreshadowing: Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is...

Introduction

The fourth in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide explores how to analyse authors’ uses of setting in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Setting, places and scenes: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse...

Introduction

The third in the Englishedu ‘literary frameworks’ series for A Level English Literature, this guide explores and exemplifies ways of analysing an author’s creation and presentation of characters in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Characters and characterisation: Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a...

Introduction

This is the second in the Englishedu series on ‘analytical frameworks’ aimed, primarily, at A Level English Literature teachers.

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Introduction

At EnglishEdu our aim is to help the overworked English teacher (including this writer!) with something that you will feel is both very useful and – where possible – very different from what might be found elsewhere, either on the Internet or in print.

All of the guides, schemes of work and classroom materials on Englishedu have been produced by experienced and well-respected English teachers. The guides are based on their best experience of teaching particular units of work.

This new guide is something a little unusual....

Click here to download this response as PDF file.

January 2010

Annie Besant makes her thoughts entirely clear from the first sentence she writes: a ‘Bitter memory’ about an issue extremely close to many Victorian women’s hearts, gender inequality. The ‘woman question’ was present in many literary pieces of the ‘golden age’. Hardy, a poet, was known for his idealisation of women, especially in the ‘Emma poems’, however few writers tackled head on the persecution women faced.  Besant also talks of gender discrimination in the...

Click here to download this response as PDF file.

June 2009

Cultural commentator John Ruskin comments on the ‘separate characters’ of men and women. Strict Victorian values dictated that the male’s role was in the outside world and the woman’s in domestic settings. There is no room for individuality, love or an upset order-like cogs in the machine men and women could function together if they kept their separate roles. In the article he describes this as an agreeable working relationship for men and women alike but Victorian...

Click here to download this response as a PDF file.

June 2009

During the Victorian Era, women were expected by society’s standards to be the carers for their home and their families. ‘The Gilded Age’ showed women how they were to be and how they were to act, highlighting the corruption of society with no free speech or lifetime ambitions fulfilled. John Ruskin makes it clear to the audience that men were ‘the creator, the discoverer, the defender’ whereas women were to stay at home and attend to the man’s needs, rather than their...

Click here to download this response as a PDF file.

June 2009

The ‘Golden Age’ of the Victorian Era was a time when women were looked upon in the toughest of lights. Society watched closely with a judging eye at any female breaking the conventions that other women such as Mrs Beeton had set. John Ruskin, being a cultural commentator, would have been all too aware of ‘the Angel of the house’. He sees the domestic expectation forced upon Victorian women while their husbands ‘create’, ‘discover’ and ‘defend’.

Ruskin seems...

The work ‘Our Old Home’ from which the extract is taken is by an American novelist, and therefore will be a more realistic impression of the squalor and poverty.  A British person of that time might lessen the impression,  for the Victorian society was founded on ‘appearance and reality’.  So providing they could fool the majority of the public that poverty was not such a great issue they felt...

In this extract Hawthorne is highlighting the extreme poverty he witnessed in the working class slums of Liverpool.  The Victorian era had a rigid class system which resulted in extreme differences of wealth and standard of life for the Victorian people.  As an American, Hawthorne would not have been brought up with a class system and so the wealth divide he witnessed during his time in Britain would...

In this event extract Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates his disquiet at the poverty he witnesses in the ‘working class districts of Liverpool’.  The reader can immediately sense his distaste by the use of the phrase ‘dismal abodes’ to first describe the scene.  This illustrates the contemporary social discussion of class division, and the standards under which different people lived and how they were...

Evidently an educated man as shown by his occupation as a representative of the U.S. government in Liverpool, Hawthorne expresses his surprised attitude at the conditions in working class cities during the Victorian era (specifically the years 1853 to 1857).  Other writers of the time, such as Dickens, present similar concerns through their literary works, in what seems to me to be a similar manner to the...

LTA1A – Introduction to Wider Reading

LTA1A is entitled “Texts in Context”, and Question 1 of this examination module is known as the “Contextual Linking” or “Wider Reading” question. Candidates are presented with an unseen extract about an aspect of Victorian society or life and invited to compare it to their wider reading in the genres of prose, poetry and drama.

The technique of integrating wider reading into an analysis of an unseen text may be a new challenge to your students, and it is a skill which requires careful and...