English

Literature A Level
First part of a lesson
Details about the course
Summer reading and preparation
Second part of lesson
Homework task
What title would you give this painting?
Analyse the painting
What can you see in frame?
How are the characters positioned?
How are the various characters dressed?
Who dominates the frame? How? Why?
How do the boy and the dog look at the girl?
What is her facial expression like?
What is significant about how the girl is dressed?
Who do you think commissioned this painting?
What message did they want to send to anyone
who might look at it?
If you were to write a creative
response to this painting,
whose perspective would you
write it from?
Why?
If you were to write a creative
response to this painting,
whose perspective would you
write it from?
Why?

Have a go at writing a creative

response to this painting.

You could write a narrative, a

poem or even a short play script!
A Young Girl with an Enslaved Servant and a Dog
ca. 1725
Bartholomew Dandridge
Oil on canvas
Support (PTG): 48 x 48 inches (121.9 x 121.9 cm)

In a private garden, a young girl stands in a lace-trimmed dress, accompanied by a dog and an enslaved servant,
who hands her a basket overflowing with peaches and freshly picked grapes. The servant and dog both wear metal
collars that mark them as property. The dog’s collar is inscribed with what may be a name, possibly referring to the
girl’s father; as a young woman, she could not own property.
In this portrait, Dandridge signals the girl’s virtues in several ways. The servant and dog gaze up at her, while she
looks out at the viewer, establishing her central role and position of power in this scene. Dandridge’s painting gives
especially clear expression to the way that many eighteenth-century portraits constructed their white sitters’ identities
in relation to perceived “others,” including non-Europeans and animals. (A commonly held view in this period was
that white Europeans occupied the highest point in a hierarchy of being in which black Africans ranked lower,
and animals lower still.)
The relief on the urn, which shows a group of cherubs taming a wild goat—an allegory of carnal lust—serves as a
contrast to the ostensibly chaste, “domesticated” love, which the young girl is shown to inspire in her two attendants.
In fact, the possibility of sexual contact between white mistresses and black servants or slaves was a source of anxiety
—and, as we will see in the next section, satirical comment—in this period.
B1981.25.205
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1670833
English Literature - the A Level Course

At The Wren School we follow the Edexcel course for A level English
Literature.

In Year 12 you will study:

A collection of 20 modern poems from 'Poems of the Decade'
Two novels: 'Never Let Me Go' by Kazuo Ishiguro and 'Frankenstein' by
Mary Shelley
A play: 'A Streetcar Named Desire' by Tennessee Williams
You will start choosing texts for your non-exam assessment and creating
your own title/essay question

You will have 8 lessons a fortnight: 4 with me (Ms Kendall) and 4 with Ms
Cresswell.
You will need to be keen to read all the texts independently as well as in
class, and to pursue your own wider reading
Drama - Year 12

Shakespeare - Year 13
Prose - Year 12
Modern poetry - Year 12

Keats poems - Year 13

Wider Reading (your choice) non-exam assessment (NEA)

Years 12 and 13
Holiday homework:

Buy yourself a copy of 'Never Let Me Go' and read it before you come back to school in September.

Get this version:

Publisher: Faber & Faber, ISBN: 978-0571258093
On Amazon you can buy a second-hand copy cheaply and that’s fine. Be aware that it might have a different cover
from the one shown here.
Your other texts will be provided to you in class in September


Further holiday homework:

Read and do the tasks in the wider reading booklet

this poem is from this book
which won the T S Eliot Prize

the poem is based

on the painting
What's the poem about?
Whose point of view is it from? (speaker)
Whose point of view does the speaker take. Why?
this poem is from this book
which won the T S Eliot Prize

the poem is based

on the painting
What's the poem about?
Whose point of view is it from? (speaker)
Whose point of view does the speaker take. Why?
How does the poet structure
the poem?

Why does he break the

stanzas where he does?

What do you notice about

many of the words that end
each line?
 What are the moods in the poem?
Do they change? How does the
writer create them?

What contrasts are explored in this poem?

Identify one feature or
aspect of the poem we
have not mentioned yet.
This could be a big idea,
a specific word or
phrase or even just a
punctuation mark!
Task for Mr Elford's lesson

EITHER

Choose one of these paintings and write a poem/story/

description from the perspective of or TO one of the characters

OR

Write a short essay of around 500 words analysing the POEM:

'A Young Girl with a Dog and a Page'

email Mr Elford ahead of the lesson with your work

selford@wren.excalibur.org.uk

skendall@wren.excalibur.org.uk