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Critical Approaches

4 dot points across 4 inquiry questions. Click any dot point for a focused answer with worked past exam questions where available.

How do you use literary theory and critical approaches to illuminate a text without reducing it to a label?

Applying critical approaches: drawing on critical perspectives such as feminist, Marxist, postcolonial, psychoanalytic and narratological readings as tools to open up a text, judged by the insight they yield rather than the label applied.
How to use literary theory and critical approaches in SQA Advanced Higher English: drawing on feminist, Marxist, postcolonial, psychoanalytic and narratological readings as tools to open up a text, judged by the insight they yield rather than the label applied, especially in the dissertation.
12 min answer →

What are the conventions of the four genres, and how do they give you the tools to analyse and write across the whole course?

Genre conventions of the four genres: the distinctive conventions of prose fiction, prose non-fiction, poetry and drama, and how knowing them equips you to analyse any text and write in any form across the course.
The conventions of the four genres in SQA Advanced Higher English: prose fiction, prose non-fiction, poetry and drama, and how knowing their distinctive features equips you to analyse any text in Literary Study and Textual Analysis and to write in any form for the portfolio.
12 min answer →

How do you use literary terminology and critical concepts precisely so they sharpen analysis rather than decorate it?

Literary terminology and concepts: using critical terms such as narrative perspective, free indirect discourse, tragic form, lyric voice, satire and the unreliable narrator accurately, to name techniques precisely and analyse their effect.
How to use literary terminology and critical concepts accurately in SQA Advanced Higher English: deploying terms such as narrative perspective, free indirect discourse, tragic form, lyric voice, satire and the unreliable narrator to name techniques precisely and analyse their effect, not to decorate.
11 min answer →

How do you read a text in its literary, social, historical and cultural contexts so that context deepens meaning rather than replacing analysis?

Reading texts in context: using literary, social, historical and cultural context to deepen the interpretation of a text, kept subordinate to close analysis and always returned to the text.
How to read a text in context in SQA Advanced Higher English: using literary, social, historical and cultural context to deepen interpretation, kept subordinate to close analysis and always returned to the text, rather than offered as detached background.
12 min answer →