1. Gothic
LitB

2. Main Elements:
Intro: Summarise what each text is 'about'
Form/Structure: Which words are stressed? What is the effect of this and why has the writer done this? What does this reveal about the extracts theme?
Language: Which words stand out and why? Literary devices? Metaphors, hyperbole etc... What is the effect and why? What does this reveal about the theme of the text?
Tone/Atmosphere: To identify the tone of a piece think about how it would be read out loud, happy, sad, enthusiastic etc What does this reveal about the writers main idea?
Conclusion: Is the text successful, do you like it, is it effective, why?

3. The Paragraphs:
PEE still counts!
Just make sure there is more depth to your answer. Don't try to summarise what you want to say...spell it out to the examiner!
In the words of Mrs Hood...
SO WHAT?

4. Band 4 ( marks)
AO1 use of accurate critical vocabulary and clear argument expressed accurately
AO1 relevant with clear focus on task/ informed knowledge and understanding of texts
AO2 consideration of how specific features of form and structure shape meanings
AO2 consideration of how specific aspects of language shape meanings
AO3 detailed consideration of connections between texts
AO3 clear consideration of different interpretations of texts with apt supportive referencesAO4 examination of contexts of reception
AO4 examination of possible contexts of production
Band 5 (21 – 25 marks)

5. Band 5 ( 21 – 25 marks)
AO1 use of appropriate critical vocabulary and well structured argument expressed accurately
AO1 relevant with sharp focus on task/ detailed knowledge and understanding of texts
AO2 exploration of several features of form and structure with evaluation of how they shape meanings
AO2 exploration of several aspects of language with evaluation of how they shape meanings
AO3 detailed and evaluative discussion of connections between texts
AO3 clear consideration of different interpretations of texts with evaluation of their strengths andweaknesses and with significant supportive references
AO4 detailed exploration of contexts of reception
AO4 detailed exploration of possible contexts of production

6. Band 6 ( marks)
AO1 use of appropriate critical vocabulary and technically fluent style/ well structured and coherent
argument
AO1 always relevant with very sharp focus on task and confidently ranging around texts
AO2 exploration and analysis of key features of form and structure with perceptive evaluation of how they
shape meanings
AO2 exploration and analysis of key aspects of language with perceptive evaluation of how they
AO3 detailed and perceptive understanding of issues raised in connecting texts
AO3 perceptive consideration of different interpretations of texts with sharp evaluation of their strengths and
weaknesses and with excellent selection of supportive references
AO4 excellent understanding of contexts of reception with detailed links between context/text/task
AO4 excellent understanding of possible contexts of production with detailed links between context/text/
task

7. Comedy and Tragedy A comedy is a play in which the confusions of characters, often prompted by love and furthered by deception or misunderstanding, eventually work out so that the play closes happily. The action of comedy is usually amusing, and the plot intricate.
Tragedy is a play in which a character (often called the hero) falls from power, influence or happiness towards disaster and death. Often a hero is wilful and seems to bring destruction upon himself. This wilfulness is called hubris. The action arouses feelings of awe in the audience, who often leave the theatre with a renewed sense of the seriousness and significance of human life. The word catharsis is often used to describe the audience's feelings. It means the purging from the mind of the feelings of pity and fear the play has aroused.
You should be careful not to impose these, or any other definitions of comedy and tragedy, upon Shakespeare's plays. All definitions should be used as general guides and not as rules. Though comedy and tragedy usually apply to plays, the terms can be used of both poems and novels.

8. Farce A branch of comedy in which the characters are reduced to stock figures, and the action is often frantic and even violent. Thus, in farce characters can be beaten or humiliated and the audience reacts with laughter, because it has not been invited to see the characters as having any sort of distinctive personality. Elements of farce creep into some plays.
For instance, the middle scenes of Dr Faustus can be said to be farce, and the innumerable beatings of servants in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors introduce farce into a carefully constructed comic plot. (See also Tragedy and Comedy.)

9. General Criticism of Gothic Genre
"The whole tradition of the gothic is a pathological symptom rather than a proper literary movement...a reversion to the childish game of scaring oneself in the dark." Leslie Fielder, Love and Death in the American Novel (1960)
"Analysis of the form often devolves into a cataloguing of stock characters and devices which are simply recycled from one text to the next." Maggie Kilgour, Rise of the Gothic - not at all relevant to any essay question but oh God it's so true :')
"The gothic seems hardly a unified narrative at all, but a series of framed conventions..." Maggie Kilgour, Rise of the Gothic
"Grave robbing of literary tradition." Maggie Kilgour, Rise of the Gothic

10. Contemporary Criticisms
The Bloody Chamber is "an archaeological investigation of gender representation, coupled with a set of creative attempts at subversion."
In other words, a collection of academic exercises in creative writing that have, ultimately, failed.
Political Context
"The genre was the inevitable product of the revolutionary shocks with which the whole of Europe resounded." The Marquis de Sade
Early Gothic: Talk about fears of social disintegration, subverted codes of understanding in the making of the gothic genre; the battle between good and evil both simplified and woven into a more complex storyline.
Psychoanalytical and Freudian Interpretation: The predators = repressed sexual desires.

11. Masque A highly elaborate entertainment in verse and song with lavish costumes and sets that was popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The characters are often gods or allegorical figures. Shakespeare's The Tempest contains a masque to celebrate the betrothal of Ferdinand and Miranda. Milton's Comus is also a masque. If you have to write about masques, you will have to imagine the visual impact that they make on stage. (See alsoAllegory.)

12. Narrative A set of events that are related by an author to a reader or listener. Sometimes the term is used to cover the nature of fiction itself - what it is for a story to be told - and, by extension, it's also used of the kind of problems readers encounter in narratives. In these latter senses the emphasis is always on how the narrative is made.
Narrator The narrator is one who tells a story. The narrator can, but need not, be the novelist. Narrators can tell their stories, or narratives, in the first or the third person. If the story is told in the first person, there is only access to the mind of the narrator. If, however, the story is narrated in the third person, it is possible to see into the minds of all the characters. When an author knows everything that goes on in characters' minds, he or she is called an omniscient (all-knowing) narrator. (See also Primary narrator and Retrospective narrator.)

13. View, Viewpoint How an author regards and thereby invites the reader to regard the events of a narrative. The interesting questions to ask are the closeness of the author to the characters and events, the moral light in which they are regarded and any changes that occur in the author's perspective. Charlotte Brontë is very close to Jane Eyre but distant from most of the other characters; George Eliot views everything as a matter of moral concern but is always deeply understanding of human failure, and Dickens shifts the perspective in Great Expectations so that we are sometimes invited to look at things morally and at other times only as the material for comedy.