Specifications that use this resource:

Love through the ages: specimen question commentary

This resource explains how a question taken from the specimen assessment material addresses the assessment objectives, with some suggestions of how the task might be approached. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every point that could be made but it gives teachers and students some guidance that will support their work on this paper. 

This resource is designed to help you plan your teaching for the 'Love through the ages' component of AS and A-level English Literature A, for first teaching from September 2015.

Paper 1, Section B

Sample Question

It has been said that Rossetti's poem is conventional and celebratory, whereas Millay's poem offers a very different view of love.

Compare and contrast the presentation of love in the following poems in the light of this comment.

How the question meets the Assessment Objectives

In this question, as throughout the paper, the assessment objectives are all assessed. As a result, all the key words in the question should be addressed, indicating either focus (conventional, celebratory, different view, presentation of love) or direction (compare and contrast, in the light of).

AO1 is tested through the way students organise their writing and express their ideas as they are comparing and contrasting the presentation of love.  Value is placed on technical accuracy, appropriate terminology and quality of discussion.

AO2 reference to 'the presentation of love' in the first part of the question gives a clear instruction to consider the writers' methods in detail, to engage with the poets' methods and their effects, and to show how the methods open up meanings about love.

AO3 will be addressed through the students showing their understanding of the importance of contextual factors and in the way they will elicit from the poems contextual ideas about love within an historicist perspective (e.g. feminism and modernism).

AO4 will be addressed through students making connections between the poems in terms of subject matter or poetic methods, and by connecting implicitly with concepts of the theme of love (and other texts which address the theme) through the 'aspects' which they are exploring.

AO5 will be addressed when students grapple with meanings that arise about love and its presentation in the poems. Critical viewpoints might be used to help advance the argument, or to offer alternatives.

Possible content

Students will address AO2 if they focus on any of the following:

  • aspects of form such as Millay's use of the Shakespearean sonnet
  • use of structural features such as the use of very long sentences where semi colons separate ideas; the shift of tone from Line 7 onwards in Millay's sonnet; the shift from the declaratives in stanza one to the imperatives in stanza two of Rossetti's poem; the use of indentation in Rossetti's poem; the use of repetition
  • use of figurative language methods e.g. the similes in Rossetti's first stanza; the personification of pain and death in Millay's poem; religious imagery in Rossetti's poem
  • language features such as possessive pronouns in Rossetti's poem; the use of alliteration in Millay's poem.

To address AO3 students will need to address the central issue of how literary representations of lovers expressing their feelings in texts can reflect different social, cultural and historical aspects of the different time periods in which they were written. In doing so, students might focus on:

  • how the representations of love in the two poems may differ due to their production within two different periods: the Victorian era and the twentieth century
  • the idea that poetry produced in the Victorian period is more likely to be conventional and celebratory whereas twentieth century literature is, on the whole, less likely to offer simple and straightforward representations of love
  • the fact that both poets are women, with Millay choosing a form historically associated with a male speaker rather than employing modernist experimentation typical for the time period.

AO4 will be addressed when candidates compare the presentation of love in the two poems, and the central issue of how lovers express their feelings in two texts separated by a substantial period of time. Comparisons might include:

  • relevant genre-related comment on the idea of the lyric poem or the sonnet
  • the similarity or difference of subject matter, for example the aspects of love and feelings of women towards men
  • the poets' methods including the images of the natural world typical of Romantic poetry in Rossetti's poem as opposed to images of pain, suffering and death in Millay's poem
  • the declarative certainty of Rossetti's poem which offers a contrast with the changing ideas and ambiguities of Millay's, which might be viewed as a more sceptical exploration of love and its limitations.

The criteria of AO5 are met if students are able to show that they have fully 'compared and contrasted the presentation of love' in the two poems, engaging with different interpretations.

Some students will agree with the proposition set up in the task and perhaps focus on:

  • the celebratory tone in Rossetti's poem when expressing an outpouring of joy occasioned by finding love
  • ways in which Rossetti's poem can be seen as a conventional and celebratory love poem in which the addressee is presented in a fanciful and idealised way
  • ways in which Millay's poem can indeed be seen as very different in being more radical and reflective of the ambiguity and complexity of love and its potential to disappoint
  • the possibility that Rossetti's poem might be viewed as being satisfying for the reader, while Millay's perhaps disappoints by failing to live up to expectations.

Some will disagree and perhaps focus on:

  • the possibility that Rossetti's frank admission of her feelings of love may be seen as rather unconventional, given her gender and the time period in which the poem was written
  • that Millay's use of the sonnet – the traditional form of the love poem – can be seen as  conventional rather than innovative.

This resource is part of the Love through the ages resource package.