Chapter 1 Get off to a ‘Flying Start’ in AS/ A LEVEL ENGLISH LITER ATUR E

Welcome to Flying Start with Exeter College. We hope that you are excited to join us at Exeter College. We want to help you to focus on your skills for your course with us and so below you’ll find questions to consider, tasks to complete and some background research to undertake before enrolment. This is the first of two batches of Flying Start activity lists we’ll be sending you. The second will be launched around July 5th. Please read the instructions below and have a go at the activities. If you get stuck at any point, please see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section at the bottom for help.

To get you started…

Task 1: Watch this video introduction to English Literature at Exeter College. In this video our Curriculum Subject Lead discusses the texts you will study on the course and outline the tasks in this Flying Start. Task 2: Read through some of the short stories we have collated here. You don’t need to read all the stories, but we would suggest you read a few to give you some ideas for your own writing task. Task 3: Annotate the short stories with literary theory terminology. Below are a few of theories which we use in class frequently. We have included a brief instruction for some of the theories to help you to annotate the short stories effectively. Task 4: Write a short story! Once you have a firm grip on one or two theories and have enjoyed the stories, write your own. You can either write the story in the style of one of the authors you have read, or you can make it up entirely. The most successful short stories will thoughtfully use the elements of literary theory outlined below. Keep these in mind as you plan and write.

For those who want a bit more…

Task 4: In the reading pack there are a few authors who are featured more than once. Can you identify stylistic features of the writing which are unique to one of these authors? Stylistic features could be the tone and types of language used, the narrative perspective, the types of setting or character, as well as the way the story is ‘resolved’ by the end.

FAQs Q: How long should I spend on the tasks? A: We have included quite a few stories in the pack, and we do not expect you to read all of them (unless you’d like to!) Q: Is it okay if I produce the work by hand? A: Yes, that’s absolutely fine. You can either type your answers into a word document and print it or you can hand write your answers. Q: Do I have to do it? A: Flying Start isn’t compulsory, but many students find it useful for getting them used to thinking about subjects at the next level. Early classroom sessions will also reflect on some of the Flying Start activities.

Q: Will this work be marked and when is it due? A: We love to read, and would love to read your stories, but we won’t be ‘marking’ them. When you start your first few weeks with us in September, we will be talking about some of the readings you have done over the summer. Also, the literary theories are key concepts that we make regular reference to throughout the teaching of the fiction texts on the course, Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (e.1831). Q: I am not sure if I have got the answers right, what should I do? A: Don’t worry, just have a go at getting something down and bring it along to the lesson where we can talk it through. There is no need to get anxious about the tasks, we are not expecting you to know everything before you arrive but are interested in your ideas and what you have found easy or difficult as it helps us support you right from the beginning

What is narrative?

We use narrative or stories to make sense of our lives and the world around us. The term ‘narrative’ therefore refers to the way in which stories are told and how meaning is constricted to achieve understanding. Its focus then can be either on how events are sequenced or how other factors, such as voice and perspective, can influence the ways in which such events are conveyed.

Over time, numerous writers and academics have attempted to summarise or provide guides to how narratives can be constructed. We call these ‘narrative theories’. Here is a selection of some of the most influential and popular.

What are narrative theories?

In the same way that poets use a unique set of literary devices like enjambment to communicate their messages and dramatists need to consider the stagecraft of their work when composing their plays, fiction writers have a distinct set of tools to choose from to craft their works.

Here are three literary tools of novelist which we will be exploring in A Level English Literature. See if you can spot how the writers’ short stories in your reading pack use these tools in their works!

You also might want to consider as you read the stories why we read narratives. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Aristotle’s Linear Plot Structure

Greek philosopher Aristotle was the first person to significantly comment on the structure of narrative, proclaiming quite simply that plot must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that the events of the plot must causally relate to one another as being either necessary or probable.

Freytag’s Pyramid Plot Structure

Gustav Freytag focused on the five parts of action in drama, explaining narrative in terms of a pyramid structure of action.

The exposition provides important background information to the drama, especially in terms of the main characters and their relationships, as well as preparing the audience for the key conflict. There is usually then an inciting incident, which is a challenging event for the protagonist that sets up the rising action, in which the basic conflict is complicated. This is then settled, usually mid-way though, by the climax, which is an important turning point in the drama. The falling action then unravels the reversal of fortunes, and may contain elements of suspense, in preparation for the final outcome. The denouement is the resolution, which can either be comic (ending in happiness) or tragic (ending in sadness, especially death).

Booker’s Seven Basic Plots

More recently, in 2004, Christopher Booker published a comprehensive history of the narrative form, in a work that took him 24 years to research and write. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories (2004) argues that any story ever told can be summarised to fit the basic format of one of seven models, yet they all have one thing in common:

“However many characters appear in the story, its real concern is with just one: it’s hero or heroine. It is he or she with whose fate we identify, as we seem them gradually developing towards the state of self-realisation which marks the end of the story. Ultimately it is in relation to this central figure that all other characters in story take on their significance. What each of the other characters represents is really only some aspect of the inner state of the hero or heroine themselves.”

The journey of this hero or heroine therefore follows one of the seven basic plots identified:

• Overcoming the Monster – the protagonist sets out to defeat an antagonistic force (often evil) which threatens the protagonist and/or the protagonist’s homeland.

• Rags to Riches – the poor protagonist acquires things such as power, wealth, and a mate, before losing it all and gaining it back upon growing as a person.

• The Quest – the protagonist and some companions set out to acquire an important object or to get to a location, facing many obstacles and temptations along the way.

• Voyage and Return – the protagonist goes to a strange land, and, after overcoming the threats it poses to him or her, returns with nothing but experience.

• Comedy – light and humorous character with a happy and cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstances, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion.

• Tragedy – the protagonist is a villain who falls from grace and whose death is a happy ending.

• Rebirth – during the course of the story, an important event forces the main character to change their ways, often making them a better person.

Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory

A good story is like a puzzle – it wouldn’t be very engaging if we couldn’t solve it ourselves! For Hemingway, what this means is that a good writer will not give all the details of his characters’ lives, thoughts and motivations. In the same way that an iceberg is much bigger under the waterline and what we can see of the iceberg is only a small part, a good story will give us a little bit of the information and ask us to piece together what is not presented in the text, and properly place it in the context of the story. Hemingway’s stories, for example, use lots of dialogue and don’t use a lot of descriptive passages.

Draw an iceberg for each of the short stories in the pack and label your drawing with the features which are on the ‘surface level’ of the story and what can be infered on the ‘deeper’ levels.

Vladimir Propp’s ‘Stock Characters’

Another famous theory about narrative was developed in the 1920s by Russian structuralist theorist Vladimir Propp. He studies hundreds of folktales and concluded that there was a ‘morphology’ of stories, meaning that there are ‘building blocks’ of story elements and character types which all writers use. He concluded that at the heart of all stories there is a problem which the protagonist must overcome, and that there were only ever seven types of character. For example, in the Harry Potter Series:

1. Hero (a Seeker or a Victim) – Harry Potter 2. Villain - Voldemort 3. Donor/Provider – Dumbledore, who enables Harry to use magic 4. Dispatcher – Hagrid, who takes Harry to Platform 9 ¾ 5. Helper – Ron and Hermione 6. Princess (and her Father) – Ginny Weasley 7. False Hero – Draco Malfoy and Snape

See if you can identify character types in some of the short stories in the reading pack. You might find that several characters are the same character type, or that a character’s role might change as the story

progresses.

Levi Strauss’ Binary Oppositions

Structuralist Claude Levi-Strauss developed the idea that meaning is generated through the interplay of opposite concepts, known as binary oppositions. In narrative terms, the way to understand the meaning of a story is to look at it as a series on conflicts, e.g. good vs evil, or even order vs. chaos. Themes can be established by identifying how both sides of a debate are presented, usually through characters or sides that represent aspects of each opposition.

Roland Barthes’ Codes

Roland Barthes was a French semiologist (studying signs with culture) who suggested that narrative works through one or more of five different codes which activate the reader/audience to make sense of it.

These are:

• Proairetic (Action) – a narrative device by which a resolution is produced through action, e.g. a shoot-out

• Hermeneutic (Enigma) – a narrative device that teases the audience by presenting a puzzle or riddle to be solved. It works to delay the story’s ending pleasurably, creating a game or sense of accomplishment.

• Semic/Semantic – the use of connotation to suggest additional meanings outside of the text itself, creating an extra layer beyond the literal meaning o the actions, perhaps suggesting that a character’s actions in one specific context act as a metaphor for how we live our own lives.

• Symbolic – the use of symbolism to exercise opposites to show contrast and create greater meaning, tension, drama, and/or character development.

• Referential/Cultural– a narrative device which the audience can recognise as being part of a culture, e.g. a ‘made-man’ in a gangster tale is part of mafia culture.

Conflict models

We like to read stories because, deep down, we’re all terrible people. Wait, here me out. Try to think of a story you like where the protagonist doesn’t face a difficult challenge, must overcome a problem, or face their fears… it’s impossible, isn’t it?

Can you identify the conflict models used in the short stories of your reading pack?

Do you think the type of conflict model the writer of the story has chosen contributes in any way to the genre of the story?