AQA Tragedy: How to answer Keats’ Question?
Firstly, it’s important to know what kinds of things examiners want you to talk about in the exam - this means that you’re exploring the ‘concepts’ behind Keats and his poems appropriately. For more of an idea on this, take a look at AQA’s Overview of the Keats module here: https://www.aqa.org.uk/resources/english/as-and-a-level/english-literature-b/teach/tragedy-c-text-overview
After that, make sure you fully understand the nature of ‘Tragedy’ as a genre and how it changes and develops over time - this is actually important for the whole paper. To get a super detailed explanation of this, take a look at our own Genre Breakdown here: https://payhip.com/b/AWZtp
Then, understand the type of question you’ll be asked, and what kind of structure to use in your response.
Paper 1A, Section C
Sample question
'At the heart of the tragic experience is an overwhelming sense of shame.'
To what extent do you agree with this view in relation to two texts you have studied?
Remember to include in your answer relevant comment on the ways the writers have shaped meanings.
How would you plan an answer to this question?
How would you fit Keats (and your other text) into this?
Spend a bit of time planning this answer now, using your own revision notes.
This kind of question is an ‘argumentative essay’ question - this means that ideally, you need to set up a sense of debate in your thesis and topic sentences. After you’ve set that up, you can use the Keats poems and your other tragic text as ‘evidence’ to back up your main points - but it’s important to note that all of those points should directly answer the question, and directly be about tragedy as a whole - not just an idea about your text.
To make these kinds of points confidently, you need a very thorough knowledge of Tragedy as a genre, plus confidence with the way in which both of your texts use this genre - and how they contribute to the genre too.
