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AQA A2 love throughout the ages coursework

'Compare and contrast how ... (authors) ... present ... (theme) ... in ... (three pieces of literature, any 2 novels along with Hamlet, the only compulsory set text)'

Basically, our coursework is comparing and contrasting how three different authors present a certain theme of love within their works.
The only set text we have to do is Hamlet by Shakespeare.

Themes of love could include;
romantic, familial, obsessive, jealousy ... etc

I was originally comparing Hamlet with Rebecca by Du Maurier and Jane Eyre by Bronte, but I've had a complete brain freeze and can't think of how to further my word count.

Basically - I'm looking for help in choosing a novel to compare with Hamlet and Rebecca, something that has a strong theme throughout similar to the other 2.
Right now I'm leaning towards something like 'love as a madness', which can easily be compared to obsession, jealousy and the descent into madness.
TBH if you know of 2 novels that I can compare with Hamlet with relative ease, that would be even more helpful.


Thanks.
Original post by queen of thorns
'Compare and contrast how ... (authors) ... present ... (theme) ... in ... (three pieces of literature, any 2 novels along with Hamlet, the only compulsory set text)'

Basically, our coursework is comparing and contrasting how three different authors present a certain theme of love within their works.
The only set text we have to do is Hamlet by Shakespeare.

Themes of love could include;
romantic, familial, obsessive, jealousy ... etc

I was originally comparing Hamlet with Rebecca by Du Maurier and Jane Eyre by Bronte, but I've had a complete brain freeze and can't think of how to further my word count.

Basically - I'm looking for help in choosing a novel to compare with Hamlet and Rebecca, something that has a strong theme throughout similar to the other 2.
Right now I'm leaning towards something like 'love as a madness', which can easily be compared to obsession, jealousy and the descent into madness.
TBH if you know of 2 novels that I can compare with Hamlet with relative ease, that would be even more helpful.


Thanks.


I'm not familiar with either text! But you could possibly look at the theme of "mind under stress" - so you're looking at how the breakdown of Hamlet's mind is constructed through characters, dialogue, plot, etc.

A similar novel is Enduring Love - a guy ends up saving a bunch of people from a hot air balloon, but one dies. However, a once grateful man then turns into an obsessive stalker who claims to love Joe, the guy who saved him. As Jed gets more obsessive, the stalking turns Joe slowly insane, before he decides to confront Jed which ends up in travesty. So you can look at how Joe's mind is presented under stress as well.

I compared that with Dorian Gray. A young innocent man meets a friend of a friends who then tragically corrupts young Dorian. This results in Dorian selling his soul to the devil in order to keep his youth, vitality and immorality. However, as time goes on, as he stays youthful, the portrait that his friend painted of Dorian slowly turns tainted and devilish. When Dorian starts to sin and do some amoral things, he descends more into moral depravity, his mind slowly turns on him and in the end one of them has won - the battle is between Dorian and the Devil himself.

So again, you could look at Dorian and look at mind under stress too. If you like insanity/madness and etc, those prose texts are good! I loved Dorian Gray!

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