AQA A-Level English Literature B: Paper 2 Texts and Genres (7717)

This guide covers Paper 2 Texts and Genres, the second of two exam papers in AQA A-Level English Literature B (7717). Where Paper 1 Literary Genres builds outward from two long-established dramatic genres – tragedy and comedy – Paper 2 works with genres that are newer, more fluid, and still visibly evolving: crime writing and political and social protest writing. The specification is explicit that these labels describe elements rather than fixed categories, since many of the set texts pre-date the genre being discussed as a recognised literary tradition.

Where this fits in 7717

Paper 2 is worth 40% of the A-level, assessed by a 3-hour open-book written exam worth 75 marks. Being open book is the key practical difference from Paper 1: candidates may take clean, unannotated copies of their set texts into the exam room. This changes the revision emphasis – there is less value in memorising quotations for their own sake, and more in knowing the text well enough to locate and use material quickly under exam pressure.

Syllabus coverage

AQA A-LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATURE B (7717) — PAPER 2: TEXTS AND GENRES

Candidates choose one of two options:

• Option 2A: Elements of Crime Writing — texts in which a significant crime drives the narrative, and where the crime’s execution and consequences shape the text’s structure. Sub-elements the specification identifies as worth exploring include: the specific sub-type of crime text (detective fiction, revenge tragedy, an account of a life lost to crime); settings created as backdrops for criminal action; the nature of crimes, criminals and their motives; detection and investigation; whether moral order is restored; guilt, remorse and confession; the detective-hero and their nemesis; the treatment of victims and suffering; and how the text’s language draws on criminal, legal or police registers.
• Option 2B: Elements of Political and Social Protest Writing — texts with issues of power and powerlessness at their core, across both public and private settings. Sub-elements include: the specific sub-type of text (post-modern novel, satirical poetry, political drama); settings for power struggles, real or imagined; the pursuit of power and rebellion against it; corruption and control; the connection between individual and collective experience; gender politics and social class; and how the text’s structure heightens or resolves political tension.

Within the chosen option, candidates study three texts: one post-2000 prose text, one poetry text, and one further text – but the pre-1900 requirement differs between the two options. For Option 2A (Crime), the specification is stricter: the poetry text itself must be pre-1900. For Option 2B (Political and Social Protest), the requirement is looser: any one of the three texts may satisfy it. Applying Option 2B’s looser rule to a crime-option text list would permit a modern poetry text paired with a pre-1900 prose or drama text, which is not what the specification allows for that option. The exam also includes a compulsory unseen-passage question, which may be in any form – poetry, prose or drama, including literary non-fiction – and is always drawn from the genre option the candidate has studied, not from either option interchangeably.

Set texts for Option 2A include Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News?, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and a poetry selection spanning Crabbe, Browning and Wilde.

Set texts for Option 2B include Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Jim Crace’s Harvest, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama edition, translated by Michael Meyer), and Tony Harrison’s selected poems.

Exam structure

The 3-hour paper is divided into three sections, each worth 25 marks:

• Section A — a compulsory question on the unseen passage.
• Section B — an essay question on one of the candidate’s own set texts.
• Section C — an essay question that connects two of the candidate’s set texts. The rubric requires that the two texts connected here not be the same text used in the Section B essay, so plan in advance which text you will cover in each section.

How to approach it

Because the paper is open book, the highest-value revision work is building a mental map of each text – which sections deal with which “elements” from the specification’s list – so that material can be located quickly rather than recalled from memory alone. For Section C, practise planning connective essays that argue across texts rather than writing two mini-essays side by side: a strong response uses one text to illuminate the other, tracking a specific element (such as the treatment of guilt, or the structure of a power struggle) across both. For the unseen-passage question in Section A, practise applying the same “elements” framework used for the set texts, since the unseen extract is drawn from the same genre territory and rewards the same analytical habits. Because texts can satisfy more than one requirement at once (a pre-1900 poetry text, for instance, can cover both the poetry and the pre-1900 requirements simultaneously), check with your teacher exactly which three texts your centre has chosen and how they map onto the specification’s requirements before building a revision plan around them.

Common mistakes

Treating “elements of crime writing” or “elements of political and social protest writing” as if they named a rigid genre with fixed rules, rather than a set of features to identify and weigh in each text. Writing Section C as two separate text analyses instead of a genuinely connective essay. Bringing an annotated or additional-material copy of a set text into the open-book exam, which is not permitted. Neglecting the unseen passage because it feels less “revisable” than the set texts – it carries the same 25 marks as each essay section.

Quick revision checklist

• Know which option (2A or 2B) and which three texts your course covers.
• For each text, be able to identify at least three of the specification’s named “elements” and locate supporting material quickly in an open book.
• Practise Section C essays that connect two texts around a single element, rather than treating them separately.
• Apply the same elements-based analysis to unseen extracts as to set texts.
• Confirm which of your three texts is pre-1900 and which is the post-2000 prose text, since both are compulsory requirements.

Official syllabus

AQA A-level English Literature B (7717), Paper 2 Texts and Genres — aqa.org.uk, with exam structure confirmed via the specification at a glance page, both verified 2026-09-02. Note that AQA introduced additional optional texts to this specification for first assessment 2027 (recorded on the live specification pages); check with your teacher which text list applies to your examination series.