The Student Room Group

Gothic Lit Course-work

Throughout my AS year, I was extremely ill and there is a meeting next week deciding upon if i am able to continue with ALevels.
I have been told that I need to choose a book to do my coursework on.
realistically my health is not going to get drastically better meaning I will likely miss college during hospital admissions etc, so good online resources are a must for me.
The texts we have been advised to choose from are:
Prose

Vathek
The Red Right Hand
M R James Selected Storys
Caleb Williams
The Strange Case Of Docter Jekyll And Mr Hyde
Dracula
The Wasp Factory
American Pyscho
Wuthering Heights
Edgar Allan Poe Short Stories
Frankenstein
Rosemary's Baby
The Castle of Otranto
The Moonstone
The Wyvern Mystery
Fight Club
The Woman In Black
The Woman In White
The Mysteries of Usolpho
Northanger Abbey ( A Satire)
The Turn Of The Screw
The Monk
The Confessions Of A Justified Sinner
Gormenghast
The Hound Of The Baskervilles
Jane Eyre
The Yellow- Wallpaper
We Need To Talk About Kevin
The Picture Of Dorian Gray
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
The Haunting Of Hill House
Lolita
Carmilla
Rebecca

Poetry

Coleridge
Edgar Alan Poe
Byron
Browning
Rossetti

Drama

Dr Faustus
Macbeth
Duches of Malfi
The White Devil
The Revengers Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy
Tis Pity She's a Whore
Pillow Man


For me it is extremely important that there are lots of revision material, (youtube, lithcarts sparknotes etc) and audiobooks of the book- i travel six hours a day, so eating/work is done mostly on public transport.
thank you :smile:
Jeckyll and Hyde, Jane Eyre and Macbeth are on the GCSE curriculum, so while maybe not challenging enough to receive top grades, they do have a lot of online resources. The latter two also have a range of film adaptations which follow the text quite closely.
When deciding your coursework texts try to find ones that have a lot of resources online, so your texts like that would be:

- Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde
- Frankenstein
- Wasp Factor is a good novel but doesn’t have much online
- Macbeth
- Witheringly Heights
- Hardy’s Poems
- Northanger Abbey
- A Doll’s house by Henrick Ibsen
- The Yellow Wallpaper
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Eyre
- Blood brothers

Have you decided on a question? I know that if you follow the AQA exam board they allow you to choose your own question. You could always take a thematic approach to the question. So pick your two texts, carry a little research into them by reading summaries etc, look for key themes between your chosen two texts and then decide your question. Once you’ve researched into your theme create mindmaps on them so you can use them for future reference. Also, keep you question simple don’t try to over complicate it!

Currently, I’m in the process of doing my coursework and I have chosen to do Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I have taken a theme that is prevalent within the two texts like the duality of human nature and I’ve broken my overall theme down into 3 aspects: good vs. evil, rationale vs. Irrational and the gothic setting.

Hope that helps :-)

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