Study and ExaminationTechniques in EnglishLiterature

Introduction
The major method by which literature candidates are examined is the essay, with variations that are
discussed below. Before discussing the various types of essay question it is essential to grasp the basic
principles and conventions that govern almost all essay writing.

What is the examiner looking for?

'It's so vague!' is the most common complaint from students facing up to writing a literature essay, the
alleged vagueness being in what the question is actually demanding from the candidate. There will
always be a degree of vagueness in the questions set on a subject such as English Literature, which
requires a significant element of personal response from a student. This is compounded by the fact that
the rules and regulations of essay writing itself will always be a little vaguer than for a number of other
forms of written examination. Nevertheless, the degree of uncertainly that you face in interpreting and
answering questions can be significantly reduced.

Most important of all, distinguish between what happens when you read a book for personal pleasure,
and what happens when you read it for an examination. In the first case you can think what you like
about the book, and will probably first of all decide whether or not you enjoy it. Words such as 'boring'
or 'interesting' are the first ones that are likely to spring to mind. When you read a book for an
examination these are the last things you should think of. It is a bonus if you enjoy a book, but what the
examiner wants to know is if you have understood it: a very different thing. When you read a book that
you will be examined on you are reading it to judge or find out what the author wanted to say or achieve
in that book (the content), and to expose the techniques or methods by which he or she went about that
aim (the form). Again, you can think what you like about a book when you read it as part of an
examination course; the difference from personal reading is that in literary criticism you have to be able
to justify or prove everything you think by reference to the text. You will be reading the work of creative
or imaginative writers, but your essay will need a style more akin to that of a lawyer, presenting a
viewpoint and then establishing it through firm evidence, than to that of a lawyer. It follows that with
any essay there are certain basic dos and don'ts.

Style

Write on an author, not like him or her! Flowery language, magnificent similes and metaphors, long
words, and intricate sentence structure often interfere with an examination candidate's aims more than
they help. Simplicity, clarity, and economy are the most valuable stylistic features in any literary essay.
One of the most common mistakes is to use a flowery or ornate style, and to go for the sound of an essay
over its content. One example is:

This question is one of the most difficult of all to answer, and I propose to look at both sides of the case
before proceeding to my conclusion. What are we to think of this issue? The multi-layered phenomenon
of a great tragedy with its eponymous hero and final catharsis presents such a magnitude of experience
that only excessive insight can provoke a final and complete understanding ...

Convinced? You shouldn't be. The problem with this is that it does not say anything. You might usefully
note a number of other points on style:

1. Never say how difficult the question is, or that you cannot make up your mind on it. You are only
stating the obvious or displaying to the examiner the fact that you are inadequate.
2. Never ask questions in an essay; your task is to answer them.
3. Never write gobbledygook, or language so puffed-up as to beincomprehensible.
4. Never use words because they 'sound good’; it is what they mean that matters.
5. Never use a word unless you are absolutely sure of what it means. Certain words and phrases should
be avoided at all costs, such as 'brilliant', 'terrific'. 'nice', 'nasty', 'naughty', 'boring', and 'super'. Try to
use 'however' as little as possible, and never as a conjunction.
6. Never try to rain your argument down an examiner's throat. Saying something many times over is
not the same as proving it, so writing 'No one could deny that ..’ or 'It is absolutely obvious that ..’
achieves nothing. In practice most students only say things like this when they are actually quite
unsure of what they should think.
7. Never patronise or condescend to the reader, or try to show off your knowledge, as in 'When one has
studied the book in great depth, and thought long and hard over it ..’; the examiner expects you to
have done all that, and does not need telling. It is the weight of your arguments that wins marks, not
the loudness of your voice.

Answering the question

The single most common cause of failure to write an effective answer is failure to answer the question.
This usually takes two forms. The first is where the student writes an answer to the question he wants to
be asked,instead of writing an answer to the question he has been asked. The second is where the student
gives a plot summary, or piles up details of the story, instead of answering the specific question as set. A
long, rambling account of the plot gets you nowhere; the examiner can find the plot when he reads the
book, and does not need you to tell it to him. It is what you make of the plot that matters, not your
knowledge of it. Your essay should contain quotations from the text and references to incidents in it, but
only as back-up or evidence for a point you are making.

Ask yourself at all times if what you are writing down is wholly and totally relevant to the question you
have been set. If the examiner ever has cause to want to write down 'So what?' in the margin of your
answer, you will almost certainly lose marks. The examiner wants to see that you can choose the few
relevant facts from a mass of information, and then apply them to a specific area of the text and its
content. Nor is it enough merely to provide relevant information: you have to show the examiner why it
is relevant. Very often candidates will put down a quotation and just leave it, wrongly assuming that it is
obvious why it is there in the essay. It never is obvious: you should always explain why you have chosen
to include a quotation, or a reference to an incident or character.

A major help in making sure that you are answering the question is the use of the topic or theme
sentence. This is always the first sentence in any paragraph, and in it you make sure that you have
summed up exactly and precisely what that paragraph is going to be about. Thus each paragraph falls
into three sections:

1. The topic sentence which sums up the statement made in that paragraph;
2. Some more lines to elaborate on that topic or theme;
3. Quotation and evidence to prove it.

Many candidates find this a difficult technique, because we are conditioned to think of a conclusion as
something that comes at the end, and a topic sentence is in a way a summary of an argument or
viewpoint - yet it comes at the start of a paragraph. There is a good reason for this. If you start your
paragraph with a great long list of evidence for a certain point you wish to make, the examiner cannot
judge whether or not this evidence is relevant to the point you aretrying to make and the question you
have been asked to answer. He or she needs to know what you are trying to say before he can judge your
evidence, and so by far the best technique is to provide him with this before you get into detail. If you
look at the plan for your essay and cannot think of a sentence to sum up what the paragraph is trying to
say, it is probably that the paragraph is saying nothing at all, and needs to be re-thought. Equally, a
glance at your topic sentence and a glance at the essay title tells you immediately if the content of that
paragraph is relevant to the question.

Punctuating the title

The title of a book or poem is always given special punctuation in an essay to mark it out from the rest
of the text. First of all, find out the correct title of the book you are studying, and how to punctuate it;
this is on the fly leaf or title page of the book, and may not be what is printed on the spine. The title of a
book or play should be underlined throughout, if you are writing by hand, or put in italics if you are
using a word-processor. The title of an individual poem should be placed in inverted commas, whichever
method you are using. Some other useful points on punctuation and presentation are:

1. Always write 'the title out in full. Shakespeare wrote Much Ado about Nothing, not Much Ado.
2. Start each word of the title with a capital letter, unless the title page of the book does it differently, as
in The History of Mr Polly, where the 'of' does not require a capital. As with all rules, it helps to
understand why it is necessary. The answer is that it can cause terrible "confusion if the examiner
thinks you mean Hamlet the character when actually, you mean Hamletthe play; similarly, words in
a poem sometimes appear as the title, and the examiner needs to know if you are talking about the
whole poem, or individual lines from it. Thus you would refer to Thomas Hardy's Selected Poems
(underlined, because it is the name of a whole book), but write ‘The Darkling Thrush’ when you
referred to a poem in that book.

Quotations

Any good essay will contain quotations. Provide none, and you are depriving yourself of your main
evidence for proving any point that you might make. Equally, if you provide too many the examiner
might think he or she could just as well have read the book in its original form! There are three basic
mistakes which commonly occur in essays with regard to the use of quotations:

1. Misquoting or presenting the quotation wrongly;

2. Quoting too much;
3. Turning poetry into prose.

It is essential that you quote accurately, down to the last comma and full stop, even if you think the
original writer has made a mistake. Remember that if your quotations are not accurate your whole
knowledge of the text is thrown into doubt, together with the accuracy of anything you might say. It is
also grossly insulting to an author to change what he or she originally wrote.

Long quotations are a menace; after all, the examiner is marking you, not the original author. Always
remember that at Advanced level the examiner expects you to know the text in detail, and wants to read
your comment on it. The best quotations are usually not more than four or five lines long at most, and
are often shorter than that. In any event, very few candidates can learn more than forty or fifty lines for
every text they are examined on.

The rules for presenting a quotation are quite simple. If a quotation is two linesor less in the original, it
can be run on in your essay without starting a new line. All that is needed is a comma before the
quotation, and the quotation to be marked off with inverted commas, as follows:

Hamlet's bitterness and anger towards women come to the surface withincreasing frequency as the play
progresses, as when he orders Ophelia, 'Get thee to a nunnery!'
If it is poetry that you are quoting you can still run on a quotation of two lines or less, but the end of one
line in the text and the start of another must be marked by a diagonal line:

Othello's anger is clearly heard in the lines, 'Now, by heaven,/My blood begins my safer guides to rule.'

Where a quotation occupies more than two lines in the original text, it should be preceded by a comma,
started on a new line, and indented (given an extra left-hand margin). Inverted commas are not strictly
necessary, but can be useful for complete clarity:

Othello's anger is clearly heard in the lines,

'Now, by heaven,
My blood begins my safer guides to rule.
And passion, having my best judgement collied,
Assays to lead the way.'
This speech marks the start of Othello's breakdown.

If something is written as poetry it is written on a line-by-line basis, and it is essential that you should
quote it as poetry, keeping to the original line arrangements. Poetry (or verse) is written in lines, and if
you ignore the division into lines you convert poetry into prose, and in so doing tell the examiner that
you cannot tell the difference between poetry and prose.

Planning

As a very rough guide the time spent on an essay written in your own time (that is, not under
examination conditions), should be divided into three.

 Part one consists of going through the text and notes assembling information that is relevant to the
essay title you are answering.
 Part two consists of taking this raw material and working up an essay plan for it.
 Part three consists of actually sitting down and writing the essay.

Each part should take roughly the same amount of time.

In an examination, there is less time for planning. A question requiring an hour to answer can allow for
up to ten minutes' planning time, but you will not be able to produce an effective plan in this time unless
you havelearnt the techniques we have mentioned when working under more relaxed conditions.

The first stage of planning is to make yourself want to do it, because it can be very tedious and
unexciting. When you walk into an examination you will know quite literally thousands of pieces of
information about your set texts. Your examination will test you on perhaps twenty percent of what you
know. You are tested on your ability to select the right information from a very long list. If you do not
select you do not pass, but this selection is impossible if you write spontaneously and off-the-cuff.

Try an experiment. Take an essay question on a book you know and write down everything, in the
briefest note form, that comes into your head as a possible answer to that question. This is actually the
first stage in planning. Then look at what you have jotted down. There should be a large quantity of
relevant and useful information, but it will all be jumbled up, in no logical order. Your notes will also
contain repetitions, and ideas that looked good at first sight but are quickly shown up with a little
thought as being irrelevant. Yet this is what goes down on paper if you do not plan an essay. Someone
has compared an unplanned essay to a chef trying to cook a five-course meal with all the ingredients for
every course in the same saucepan at the same time. It is not only that the unplanned essay is chaotic,
repetitive, irrelevant, and anarchic; it is also often inconclusive. Time after time literature students take a
quick look at an essay title (it is sometimes known as the 'smash and grab' technique of essay writing)
which seems horribly complex, reach an instant conclusion, and start writing with the first thing that
comes into their head. What then follows is like a Shakespearean tragedy - inevitable, and very sad.

Imagine a candidate answering the question 'Is Hamlet mad?', with his immediate response being to
think that he is mad. The candidate starts to write. He or she thinks up one, two, possibly three ideas that
seem relevant, and tries to hold ideas number two and three in his head which he is writing down the
first one. He will probably forget idea number three somewhere in between changing from his first to his
second idea, and remember it three hours after the end of the examination. Idea number one happens to
be a point that suggests Hamlet is not mad; no problem here, the candidate thinks - it is right and proper
to put down both sides of an a reunion'. Then idea number two goes the same way. Idea number four
(number three got lost some while back) suggests Hamlet is mad, but number five suggestshe is not ...
by this time the examiner is moving so rapidly from Hamlet notbeing mad to his being mad and back
again that he feels rather like someone on a roller-coaster. By the end of the essay and the time allotted
the candidate has actually written an essay in which two-thirds of the information he has presented
suggests the opposite of what he originally thought, namely that Hamlet is mad. He Might realise this
half-way through the essay. He can then either carry on and change his mind half-way through, thus
providing half an essay that suggests Hamlet was mad, and another half that suggests the opposite (not a
very convincing technique), or he can cross out what he has written and start again. If he does he has
almost certainly failed the question, because he will not be able to write an effective essay in the time he
has left. He can, of course, continue to put down his information, the balance of which suggests Hamlet
is not mad, but end the essay withsomething utterly feeble such as “Although there is a great deal of
evidence to suggest Hamlet is not mad ... I think he is.” The examiner's blue pen will move so last that it
will put scorch marks on the script. The point is that:

a) You must always argue on the side for which you have the most evidence.
b) You must know what your viewpoint is before you start to write the essay.

It is terrifyingly easy to jump to the wrong conclusion while you first see a title, and a preliminary plan
lets you see what your available evidence does actually prove.

1. The first stage is to jot down everything you can think of that might be useful for that essay.
2. The second stage is to go through your rough jottings, taking out any repetitions, looking again at all
the information and checking if it is as good and relevant as you first thought. Try to knock the
remaining information into four or five paragraphs. Of course some essays will need more
paragraphs than this, others less, but it is surprising how often four or five paragraphs turn out to be
the ideal number.
3. The third stage is to put the four or five paragraphs you have isolated into a logical order.
4. The fourth stage is to think of an introduction and a conclusion (see below).

After you have been through all these stages, you can then write the essay with a clear conscience.

The Introduction

An introduction is a preliminary paragraph that comes before the main discussion of an essay title. It
should rarely, if ever, be longer than half a side of standard line A4 examination paper. It could sketch in
background information for an author or book, but be careful not to be irrelevant. If the essay asks for
discussion of a specific topic, the introduction could sketch out the main other areas of critical interest in
a book, to show the 'examiner that the candidate is aware of issues other than that specified in the essay
title. An introduction can show where the book being examined fits in with the rest of an author's work
('Our Mutual Friend is an example of "late Dickens", more sombre and pessimistic in its mood than his
earlier novels'), or can relate the book to other books being written at the time. The introduction can also
state what the candidate sees as being the main point of the essay title, tying it down, if it is a rather
vague and open-ended question, to certain issues and topics. The purpose of the introduction is to give a
gentle lead-in to an essay. It may either give any relevant background information to the book being
studied or to the essay title, or it may clarify the essay title and the line of approach that the candidate
proposes to take. Six or seven lines of normal handwriting is usually enough.

The Conclusion

A conclusion is simply a very brief summary of the main conclusions in each paragraph, and a more or
less bald statement of the conclusion the essay has reached. It is sometimes suggested that the candidate
leave a new point to be raised in the contusion. This is usually a very bad idea. If the new point in
question is that effective or interesting, it is worth more thanlines at the end, and if it is not, it is not
worth stating anyway.

General errors

There is a catalogue of errors that are very simple to avoid, but which occur time after time in the scripts
of advanced-level candidates and obscure whatever literary insight and judgement they may have.

1. Never try flattery on an examiner, with comments such as:

Dickens' masterly grasp of style, his superb command of the English language, and his tremendous
insight make him wholly admirable, and a genius in every sense of the word …

Presumably at some stage the candidate who wrote the above is going to start answering the question
he was asked. In the meantime, it is a long wait, and the examiner knows Dickens is good; he would
not be on the syllabus otherwise.

2. Avoid slang or casual phrases in your essay. Some have been mentioned already, and a full list
would occupy a whole chapter. Examples from a recent batch of scripts include 'nice', 'naughty',
'terrific, 'fabulous, 'mind-blowing, 'nasty, 'earth-shattering', 'quantum-leap', 'clever, and 'slap-bang'.
No one minds inventive use of language, but everyone who marks examinations minds casual use of
it.
3. Never describe a book as 'boring' — it only shows what type of mind you have.
4. Try not to be flippant in an essay. My favourite example (favourite in the sense of summing up
beautifully how-not-to-refer-to-a-text) is,

The moment when Macbeth peers into the witches' cauldron is of great dramatic significance and
tension — unless, of course, his beard falls off into the steam and goes in with the witches' brew!

Ho, hoho laughs the examiner, on the way to the waste-paper bin. If you feel like putting an
exclamation mark on the end of a sentence, think again; you are not in the examination to exclaim,
but to explain and understand.

5. Never start an essay with 'I propose to look at both sides of the question and then come to a
conclusion' (known sometimes as a CGO, or Crashing Glimpse of the Obvious), or end an essay
with 'This is a very difficult question, and I find it impossible to reach a conclusion.' Of course the
essay is difficult; it is advanced level after all, and it is your job to come to a conclusion.
6. Always write in the present tense when referring to a book. The events in a book, play, or poem
happen anew every time the book is read. They have happened (past tense) when the book was
looked at in the past, they are happening, and they will happen. As it would clearly not be a good
idea to state 'Hamlet was, is, and will be killed by Laertes', the best compromise is to write 'Hamlet
is killed by Laertes. Always remember that you are writing on an author, not like him or her.
The various types of essay and other questions
Practical criticism

'Practical criticism' essays are sometimes referred to as 'comment and appreciation, or even 'unseens'.
They can consist of a passage from a book which the candidate has not been required to read before, and
require her or him to comment on it, sometimes in a very general way, sometimes on specific points or
areas of interest. They can also come from a book that the candidate has not seen or read before.
Practical criticism essays arc of such importance in English Literature examinations that they are dealt
with in three separate chapters below, as regards poetry, prose, and drama respectively.

Context questions

A context question in its simplest form is an examination question which presents the candidate with a
short passage from a set text, and asks for it to be placed in context. This can simply mean stating where
the passage occurs in the book (done not by act and scene, or chapter references, but by referring to the
incident immediately before and after the period covered by the passage), or identifying which character
is speaking. Advanced-level questions are usually rather more complex than this, and ask the candidate
to comment on one or two specific areas highlighted in a passage.

In days gone by questions on authors such as Shakespeare and Chaucer used to ask the candidate to
translate selected passages in to 'clear, modern English’. This is now a virtually extinct mode of
questioning.

Questions asked on a passage vary a great deal. Some of the most common are:

a) Comment on what is revealed about a character by the chosen passage.

b) Comment on the descriptive or narrative technique of the author in the passage - how he or she tells
the story and creates atmosphere.
c) Comment on any themes covered in or advanced by the passage in question.
d) Say what contribution is made to the book, play, or poem by the passage.

Certain basic rules govern all answers to context questions. Some of them are covered in the chapters on
practical criticism below. The main point to bear in mind is that a context question is on a specific
passage. It is not a general essay, and though of course you may refer to general issues in the book, and
indeed need to say how the passage you are studying links into the rest of the book, the majority of your
answer is based on that passage and that passage alone. Do not write lengthy quotations from the
passage: the occasional line or two is perfectly reasonable to back up what you are saying, but resist the
temptation to write out the whole passage. Resist alsothe temptation to write on only one idea. There
should more than one point of interest in the passage, or more than one example of what the examiner is
interested in, and you need to make sure that there is a quantity of ideas in your answer, as well as
quality. A context question is a short essay, and short essays need to be more distilled and concentrated
than longer essays.

Character sketch

A straightforward character sketch - 'Give a full account of the characterof King Lear' - is rarely set at
advanced level, but questions of a more complex nature on characters are frequently set. The major
mistake here is to give an account of a character's actions when what is wanted is something on his
personality or motivation - in other words, what those actions lead us to assume about a character. In
general terms then major points of information about any character in a novel or play are:

1. What the character says;

2. What the character does;
3. What other characters say about him or her;
4. What other characters do to him or her;
5. What the particular tricks of language or expression used by that character are;
6. What the character looks like;
7. What association the character has with any given place, setting, or even incident. A character such
as Krook in Charles Dickens' novel Bleak Houseis characterised as much by the place in which we
usually see him a:, any other method.

Discuss

One of the most common styles of examination question is a quotation (one wonders sometimes how
many of these are invented by the examiners), followed by the word 'Discuss, as in, "The central
concern of Hamlet is revenge" Discuss' Discuss does not mean illustrate; the candidate does not have to
agree with the statement, but merely to discuss it. The word discuss means explore or 'analyse the truth
of'. Discussion means working round an essay title or topic, analysing its wider implications and the
truth or otherwise of the assertion in the title. You do not have to agree with the title. You do have to
reach a conclusion in your discussion, but it need not be the one implied in the title.

Dramatic significance and contribution

If your set text is a play you may be asked to comment on the dramaticsignificance of a scene, episode,
or character. If it is a novel, you may be asked what contribution is made to the book by a character or
episode. This type of essay is asking you to illustrate the manner in which an episode or character fits in
and contributes to the wider effect of the novel. Examples are 'What is the dramatic significance of
music in Twelfth Night?', or 'Discuss the contribution made to Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend by
symbolism and imagery.' A useful start is to list all the possible contributions made by the item you are
being questioned on. In the first question ask yourself if music in the play contributes to the plot or
story, to our knowledge of any of the characters, to any of the themes of the play, to its general
atmosphere, and to its value as an entertainment (in this case the answer is yes to all except the area of
contributing to the plot); in the second question the answer should suggest that symbolism and imagery
have almost come to dominate the technique of the novel.

Style

A majority of students arrive at Advanced level convinced that there is 'hidden meaning' in every work
they read. As the function of every author is, more or less, to communicate something to a reader or
audience, it might be asked why they bother to hide their meanings. What the phrase 'hidden meaning'
usually means in practice is 'themes in the book which I cannot perceive when I read it'. Just as a young
child will always choose to write a story if given a choice of essays, so an older student will always tend
to write about themes, or 'meanings'. Themes are only one part of a book, its 'content'. Examiners are
equally interested in the techniques used to convey these themes, in other words, in the book's form.
Therefore questions about style, narrative techniques, use of imagery and symbolism, and other
technical matters abound, though they are very often unpopular with students. These are the mechanics
of writing, how an author actual13, conveys what he or she wants to say by the use of language.

The only general point here is a reminder that an essay on form mustnot be turned into an essay on
content. Thus if you are asked 'DiscussChaucer's use of irony' that is what you must do; no matter if
Chaucer's 'The Ftanklin's Tale' has a thousand and one fascinating themes in it, with this essay you can
only write about irony and where that leads to. You can say that one particular theme is conveyed
largely through irony, but any theme is largely irrelevant to your essay if it does not rely heavily on
irony.
Opposed viewpoints

One of the most common types of essay is that which presents the candidate with two opposed
viewpoints, as in 'Is Hamlet best described as a "sweet prince" or an "arrant knave"?' Here you need to
know what your answer is before you start to write the essay, because if 'you do not, you will either
ramble and reach no conclusion, or end up arguing both sides with equal fervour, and never reach a
conclusion.

A convincing treatment of any one viewpoint always has to consider the other side of the question. If
you happen to think that Hamlet is a 'sweet prince' you must look at the reasons why he might be
considered an 'arrant knave' as well as at the reasons why he is a 'sweet prince'; you cannot persuade
someone into taking one point of view unless he also knows why he should not take the other side as the
truth.

It is no good ignoring contrary evidence; you simply have to show why your view is more powerful or
convincing. You can do this in a number of ways. List all the reasons why you think Hamlet is a 'sweet
prince'. Then list all the reasons why he might not be thought of thus. Some of these you might be able
to prove wrong. For example, Hamlet tells Ophelia to get into a nunnery and is very violent and
offensive towards her. You could argue that this is simply to drive her away from him, because he
knows he is in .anger and that anyone who supports or loves him might suffer as a result. In this case
you could say that what seems to be rudeness is actually Hamlet trying to protect Ophelia. You do not
always have to prove the opposition viewpoint wrong. You could argue that 'Hamlet is offensive and an
'arrant knave' towards Ophelia, but that there are more instances of his behaving like a 'sweet prince' in
the play, and that these outweigh the negative side of his character.

In any event, never just say that an argument or viewpoint is wrong; saying is not proving, and you have
to provide evidence and a justification for everything you say. As ever, it is your persona1 viewpoint,
backed up by evidence,that really matters. The answer is not as important as the methods by which you
reach that answer. The examiner does not want you to come down on any particular side; he or she just
wants a convincing argument in favour of any reasonable viewpoint. You could even argue that Hamlet
is neither a 'sweet prince' nor an 'arrant knave', but something completely different, and not covered by
these descriptions. If you feel it to be true and you can argue it, go ahead.

Conclusion

Clarity, economy, relevance, and a detailed knowledge of the text are what the best examination
candidates carry into the examination, together with a capacity for independence. Independence is the
ability to come to a conclusion about the work being studied, and to argue that conclusion convincingly.
Never undervalue the importance of 'background knowledge', be it other texts, or an awareness of the
social, literary, and historical background to a set text. Most examination boards expect the candidates to
know; about Elizabethan society and literature in at least some areas if they are studying a play by
Shakespeare, or to have a basic grasp of some of the factors that operated in medieval society where
Chaucer is being studied.

Most of all, never be frightened of holding your own view on a book, poem or play. That personal
feeling and insight is the most valuable thing you bring to being a student of literature. The only
difference is that you have to explain why you hold that view, and make it valid for someone else. You
might find yourself surprised at how much fun it is. You will not be surprised as how totally boring it is
to undertake a course in English literature and for anything up to three years become simply a
mouthpiece for other people's views.
Reference:

Martin Stephen, English Literature (London: Pearson Education, 2000)

Further reading

 Francis Casey, How To Study: A Practical Guide (Macmillan, 1993)

 John Clanchy and Brigid Ballard, How To Write Essays: A Practical Guide for Students (Longman,
1992)
 Nigel Fabb and Alan Durant, How To Write Essays, Dissertations and Theses in Literary Studies
(Longman, 1993): this is a text for the student who is working at degree level.
 Richard Gill, Mastering English Literature (Macmillan, 1995)
 Steven Lynn, Texts and Contexts. WritingAbout Literature with CriticalTheory (Longman, 1998):
also a book for the degree-level student.