This essay plan was created by a second-year English Literature undergraduate at Durham University. It looks at the question: ’Four Quartets is especially concerned with the problem of what it might be to know something. It has its roots in Eliot’s earliest philosophical interests as well as in his Christian conviction and his reading in mysticism’ (Martin Dodsworth). Discuss the presence of philosophical thought AND/OR religious mysticism in Eliot’s later poetry (after 1922). This analyses Eliot’s own Christian beliefs, the mysticism within his writing, and anxiety within his poems. Poems discussed are ‘Animula’ (from the Ariel collection), Marina, Ash Wednesday, Four Quartets, with mention of The Waste Land and Prufrock.

This essay plan was written by a second-year undergraduate student at Durham University. It answers the question: ‘To what extent do the political fears and anxieties associated with social change in the early twentieth century shape the forms and styles of modern writing?’ The plan considers T.S. Eliot’s personal life in shaping his writing in poems like ‘Ash Wednesday’. It also considers the poetic form of ‘The Waste Land’ in the context of post world war anxieties and Modernism. It also addresses poems such as ‘Four Quartets’ , ‘Ash Wednesday’, and ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’.

This essay was written by a second-year undergraduate at Durham University. It answers the question: 'Often in modern literature, despair prompts a new style of writing, or it becomes itself a kind of style – a darkly ironic style.’ Discuss. It looks at the influence of despair on T.S. Eliot’s writing style in poems such as ‘Marina’ and ‘Four Quartets’, the role of religion, and introspection in poems such as ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and ‘Ash Wednesday’. Can be used for university and A-level examples.

This essay was written by a second-year undergraduate at Durham University. It answers the question: Gaveston: What greater bliss can hap to Gaveston Than live and be the favourite of a king? Sweet prince, I come. These, these thy amorous lines Might have enforced me to have swum from France, And, like Leander, gasped upon the sand, So thou wouldst smile and take me in thy arms. (Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, 1.1.1-9) Taking this passage as a starting-point, write an essay on the phenomenon of the ‘court favourite’ in Renaissance literature. It looks at the ‘court favourite’ figure in Marlowe’s play, Edward II, as well as other contemporary Renaissance literature, mythology, religion, and homosocial bonds within the early modern court. Can be used for university and A-level examples.

This essay plan was created by a second-year English Literature undergraduate at Durham University. It looks at the question: Consider the place of ONE OR MORE of the following in AT LEAST TWO stories by Katherine Mansfield: the outsider; sexual adventure; symbolism. This analyses the idea of the outsider in Mansfield’s short story, ‘Bliss’, and themes and symbolism of gender, femininity, and the body and psyche.

This essay plan was created by a second-year English Literature undergraduate at Durham University. It looks at the question: ‘Whether an author self-identifies as male or female is what determines the author’s sex. The ways in which the author adopts styles, gestures, conventions, diction, and genres associated in a given culture with male writers or female writers add up to the masculinity or the femininity, the gender of the writing’ (Robyn Warhol). Assess the validity of this distinction with reference to ONE OR MORE literary works of your choice. This analyses Mansfield’s place within the Bloomsbury Group, Helene Cixous’ theory of ecriture feminine, feminism, and the Modernist era, and her short story, ‘Bliss’.

This essay plan was written by a second-year undergraduate at Durham University. It looks at the question: Consider the place of ONE OR MORE of the following in AT LEAST TWO stories by Katherine Mansfield: the outsider; sexual adventure; symbolism. This analyses symbolism within Katherine Mansfield’s short stories, ‘Bliss’, ‘Je ne parle pas francais’, and ‘The Garden Party’. Feminine, sexual, and erotic symbolism, and Helene Cixous’ theory of ecriture feminine is looked at. Can be used for university as well as A-level students.

This essay plan was written by a second-year undergraduate at Durham University. It looks at the question: ’The ultimate lesson of psychoanalysis is that we are never really ourselves’. Assess the implications of this claim, illustrating your response with reference to ONE OR MORE literary texts of your choice. This analyses Katherine Mansfield’s short story, 'Je ne parle pas français’, using Lacanian and Freudian 20th-century models of psychoanalysis, during the Modernist era. Can be used for university as well as A-level students.

This essay plan was created by a second-year English Literature undergraduate at Durham University. It looks at the question: ‘I meant nothing by the lighthouse’ (Virginia Woolf in a letter to Roger Fry). In the light of this comment, explore Woolf’s complex development of the symbol as a mediating figure between writer and reader, fictional and historical worlds. This analyses Woolf’s works, A Sketch of the Past, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and ‘A Writer’s Diary’.

This resource is a plan written by a second-year undergraduate at Durham University. It looks at the question: ‘At this moment I am casting about for an end. The problem is how to bring Lily and Mr Ramsey together and make a combination of interest at the end’ (Virginia Woolf). Consider the idea that Woolf’s major aesthetic ambition in To the Lighthouse is that of combining the evanescence of thought and feeling with narrative completion. This can be used as a starting point to research themes of artistry, objectivity, imagery and symbolism within Virginia Woolf’s various works.

This resource is a plan written by a second-year undergraduate at Durham University. It looks at the question: ‘The mind receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old’ (Virginia Woolf, ‘Modern Fiction’). To what extent, and in what ways, is Virginia Woolf interested in the ‘myriad impressions’ received by the human mind? This can be used as a starting point to research themes of objectivity, family life, femininity, and symbolism within Virginia Woolf’s various works.

This essay has been written by a second-year undergraduate student at Durham University and received a 2.1 / 1st classification. It answers the question: ‘What would have happened [had my father lived]? No writing, no books – inconceivable. I used to think of him & mother daily; but writing The Lighthouse, laid them in my mind’ (Virginia Woolf). With reference to ONE OR MORE writers on this module, examine the extent to which artistic vocation is set against the demands of family life. This uses Virginia Woolf’s autobiographical diary, ‘Sketch’, as well as her novels To the Lighthouse, and Mrs Dalloway. Can be used by university students, as well as A-level and GCSE students. It contains context (AO3), critics and alternative interpretations (AO5), as well as the other assessment objectives. Also contains a MHRA referenced bibliography and footnotes.

An A* essay plan on the question, '‘Minor characters are likely to be skipped over’ (Dennis R. Preston). Discuss the function of AT LEAST TWO minor characters in Shakespeare’s plays.’ This is a university-level (BA English at Durham) plan, but can be used for GCSE and A-level. Characters such as Lear’s Fool, and Ariel and Gonzalo in The Tempest are discussed.

An essay on the question ‘Grief was what you owed the dead for the necessary crime of living on without them’ (Kamila Shamsie). Explore the relation between the living and the dead in the work of ONE OR MORE authors on the module.’ Poems discussed include: The Skunk, The Strand at Lough Beg, A Postcard from North Antrim (Field Work elegies); Punishment, Bog Queen (Bog Poems from North) This is a university (BA English) essay, but can be used for GCSE and A-level examples, and includes a bibliography and footnotes.

An essay on the question ‘Supposedly a dramatization of the inner life, the dramatic monologue form actually reveals just what a social performance the inner life is.’ Discuss’. This essay analyses the dramatic monologue form in Robert Browning’s poem ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, using ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Johannes Agricola in Meditation’ to support. This essay is complete with MHRA bibliography and footnotes, and received a 74 (first) grade. Can also be used for GCSE or A-level.

A plan for the question ‘How do Victorian writers envisage the relationship between childhood experience and adult authority?’, exploring the genre of the bildungsroman in Charles Dickens’ novelGreat Expectations. A Durham first-class university (BA English Literature) level plan, but can also be used for A-level English and GCSE.

A plan for the question ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’ (Gerard Manley Hopkins). Explore the connection between nature and EITHER religious faith OR doubt OR BOTH in any work(s) of Victorian literature.’ This explores these themes - faith and doubt - in Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Goblin Market’. A university (BA English Literature) level plan, but can also be used for A-level English and GCSE.

5 in-depth essay plans on D.H. Lawrence’s novel, Sons and Lovers. Written by a Durham BA English Literature graduate. Plan 1 is on masculinity, plan 2 on phallic consciousness (a psychoanalytic reading), plan 3 on mental and bodily spirit, plan 4 on class and sexuality, plan 5 on human fulfillment. Can be used for university, A-level, or any other relevant level.

A plan for the question ''In D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers the rhythms of love and the rhythms of work are so deeply intertwined that we see in them both the ideal human fulfilment towards which the novel aspires and the tragic failure of that vision.’ Discuss. ', using his novel Sons and Lovers. A university-level (BA English) plan, but can be used for A-level or any other relevant level.

A plan for the question ‘Discuss the interplay of issues of class and sexuality in the writings of D. H. Lawrence’, using his novel Sons and Lovers. A university-level (BA English) plan, but can be used for A-level or any other relevant level.