A Level Revamped: English Literature,the Universities and the Schools

This paper examines current developments in A Level English Literature in the context of a long‐running debate about the role of context and interpretation in the course, and explores the influence of university English on this debate. Following discussion of developments around Curriculum 2000, I trace the debate back to the ‘theory wars’ of the 1970s and 1980s, examining the influence of voices from universities on discourses about the nature of literary study at A Level, and drawing out tensions within the secondary community among traditionalists, liberals and radicals. I suggest that there is now a strong move to bring A Level Literature closer to university English, and link this with similar movements in Australia and the US, where sympathetic curricula and pedagogies, underpinned by critical theory, have been developed.