Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

Extended project ideas for English Literature?

So I'll be starting my extended project for next year and I'm a bit stuck for ideas. I wish to study Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic at Cambridge University (that's my top choice). I'm a big fan of The Hobbit and LOTR and I've recently read The Prose Edda, an I saw a lot of links between the two worlds. I now started reading the poetic diction and I was wondering if a comparison between LOTR and Edda would be a good idea for a project. If so, what would be the title?

I've also been writing my own fantasy/adventure novel (which is at this point approx. 67000 words) and one of my English teachers said that I could finish that for my extended project. Has anyone done anything similar?

What do you think of these ideas? Or does anyone have any different ideas?

Reply 1

roarchika

Original post by YumyumHolmes

I really like both of your ideas! And wow, okay, 67k is amazing - you could easily finish that and then write a 1000 word piece about it as your EPQ and that way you wouldn't have to do extra work. Writing a novel is definitely not something you see on every personal statement! Personally I know nobody else who has done this, but I have definitely read about someone who finished a 25k novella for their EPQ? So it's definitely a possibility. If you wanted to, of course, you could do a different 5k word essay and then put both on your application. For the LOTR/Edda comparison - honestly, you could phrase it as something like "To What Extent Do Similarities Exist in LOTR and Edda" and you'd probably be fine? You could always do something comparing Norse/Celtic culture, too, if you want to show Cambridge at interview that you've had an interest in the subject for a long time!