IB Diploma Programme Language A: Literature – Course Concepts and Critical Perspectives Revision Notes

For full explanations and the worked reading of Blake’s “London”, use the study guide. These notes condense Course concepts and critical perspectives for IB Diploma Programme Language A: Literature, at SL and HL. They follow the current IB subject brief (first assessments for SL and HL 2021). The unit maps to two areas of exploration, Readers, writers and texts and Intertextuality: connecting texts; there are no numbered subtopics.

Test yourself afterwards with the practice questions. Course links: Language A: Literature hub · printable checklist · assessment revision notes · exam preparation.

The brief in five phrases

Phrase in the subject brief	What it asks you to do
“the creativity of writers and readers”	Treat reading as making meaning, not receiving it
“the critical perspectives of others”	Read with, and against, other readers’ lenses
“shaped by cultural belief systems”	Ask where a reading comes from, including your own
“negotiate meanings for texts”	Reach a reasoned position that keeps what holds up
“interpretation, analysis and evaluation”	Judge readings, not just produce them

The brief prints no numbered list of concepts and names no school of criticism. Use only the ideas it names; your teacher will share the full guide’s wording.

Concepts at a glance

Concept	One question	Look for
Creativity	What did the writer make, and what must the reader make?	Gaps, invented forms, images that need decoding
Perspective	Whose view, whose silence, and where do I read from?	Narrator, speaker, who is described but never speaks
Culture	Which beliefs are assumed, which questioned?	Customs, religion, class, what counts as normal
Transformation	What does the text change?	Reworked sources, shifting forms, a reader’s changed view
Communication	How does the text reach its reader? How will I argue my reading?	Address, tone, clarity of your own thesis

A concept is a question you bring to any text. A theme is what one text is about.

Lenses at a glance

Lens	Key question	First things to look for
Formalist	How do form and language make meaning?	Repetition, sound, structure, turns
Reader-response	What does the reader do, and why may readers differ?	Ambiguity, withheld information
Historical and biographical	What could it mean then and there?	Period details, the writer’s circumstances
Marxist (class)	How are money, work and power shown?	Owners, workers, wages, institutions
Feminist (gender)	How are gender and power shown?	Who speaks, who is looked at, who decides
Postcolonial	How is empire shown, and whose voices count?	Centre and margin, language, land
Ecocritical	How are nature and its use shown?	Land, animals, weather, who owns a place

The lens belongs to the reader, not the writer. Choose the lens the evidence invites.

Method in steps

Building a reading

1  Notice   a detail: word, image, pattern, shift
2  Ask      the question it raises
3  Pick     the lens the detail invites
4  Claim    something arguable, with a concept in it
5  Test     against the whole text and a rival reading
6  Write    clearly and tentatively

Evaluating a reading: five tests

Evidence         precise quotations, not impressions?
Coverage         accounts for details that do not fit?
Coherence        its parts agree with each other?
Context          plausible for its time, or openly read through today's?
Counter-reading  names and answers a serious alternative?

An unusual reading is not wrong. A reading that fails these tests is weak.

Worked reminder

Passage (original text written for Marlbridge):

Ferry Terminal, 6 a.m.

The cleaners leave as the travellers arrive.
One of them waves to a boat she will never board.
The departures board flicks through cities in gold:
Lisbon, Tangier, Genoa. She reads them aloud
the way her mother read the names of saints,
then clocks out, and the sea keeps all of them.

Class reading. “The cleaners leave as the travellers arrive”: two groups share a building but never meet. The phrases “a boat she will never board” and “clocks out” show that her work serves journeys she cannot afford. The cities are “in gold”, the colour of money.

Culture reading. She reads the names “the way her mother read the names of saints”. A religious habit passed from mother to daughter becomes a way of longing. The city names are transformed into a prayer.

Evaluation. Both readings have precise evidence. The class reading covers lines 1–4 well but says little about the mother. The culture reading explains line 5 but not why she will “never board”. The last clause, “the sea keeps all of them”, fits both: the places stay out of reach, like the saints.

Negotiated reading. The poem shows longing shaped by both money and inheritance: she cannot buy the journey, so she prays it instead.

Connecting two texts with one lens

Assessment objective 2 includes “relationships among different texts”. A lens or concept gives two works a shared question, so the comparison has an axis:

1  Choose one question   e.g. who decides how a person is seen?
2  Answer it for work 1  with a quotation
3  Answer it for work 2  with a quotation
4  State the difference  and what causes it (form, context, culture)
5  Say what it reveals   that neither work shows alone

For a work studied in translation, add the concept of culture: its first readers may have shared beliefs that you do not.

Must-know distinctions

• Concept vs theme. “Perspective” is a question; “exile” is a subject a text may be about.
• Interpretation vs summary. A summary says what happens. An interpretation argues what it means and shows how.
• Lens vs label. “A class reading suggests…” is analysis. “This is a Marxist poem” is a label.
• Context of production vs context of reception. When and where a text was written, as against when and where you, or other readers, read it.
• Perspective in the text vs perspective on the text. The narrator’s point of view is inside the work. A critical perspective is the reader’s frame.
• Tentative vs vague. “This suggests the speaker resents…” commits to a claim. “It could mean many things” does not.
• Evaluating vs disagreeing. Evaluating applies tests and keeps what survives. Disagreeing just swaps one opinion for another.

Useful phrasing

• “Read through a class lens, the detail … suggests …”
• “This reading accounts for …, but it struggles to explain …”
• “A reader today may see …; readers in [the writer’s period] may have seen …”
• “Both readings are supported, but the second covers more of the text because …”
• “Taken together, these readings suggest …”

Quick self-test

1. Quote the brief’s phrase about what readers and writers share.
2. Give the question the concept of perspective asks of a text.
3. State the difference between a concept and a theme.
4. Name the five tests for evaluating an interpretation.
5. Which lens asks who is looked at and who decides?
6. A student writes: “Blake was a Marxist.” What is wrong with this?
7. Which test does a reading fail if it ignores the last stanza?
8. Explain “context of reception” in one sentence.
9. What does the brief say readers explore about how interpretations are shaped?
10. In “Ferry Terminal, 6 a.m.”, which phrase best supports a class reading, and why?

Answers

1. “the creativity of writers and readers”.
2. Whose view does the text give, whose is missing, and from where does the reader read?
3. A concept is a question you can bring to any text; a theme is what a particular text is about.
4. Evidence, coverage, coherence, context, counter-reading.
5. Feminist (gender).
6. The lens belongs to the reader, not the writer; Marx was born in 1818, after “London” (1794). Say “a Marxist reading suggests…”.
7. Coverage.
8. The time, place and beliefs of the people reading a text, which may differ from those of its first readers.
9. “how such positions are shaped by cultural belief systems”.
10. “a boat she will never board”: her work serves travel she cannot have. (“clocks out” also earns credit.)

Where marks are usually lost

• Naming a lens (“a feminist reading”) and then summarising the plot, with no analysis of language.
• Using a lens the text gives no evidence for, so the argument rests on assertion.
• Presenting one reading as the only meaning, with no rival reading tested.
• Mentioning a critic’s view as proof instead of weighing it against the text.
• Writing “it is open to interpretation” in place of a claim.
• Judging a pre-1900 text by present-day values without saying that is what you are doing.
• Treating a concept as a theme: “the theme is transformation”, with nothing about what changes.
• In comparison, applying a lens to one work only, so the two works never meet.

Go back to the study guide for the full method, or read Readers, writers and texts and Intertextuality for the areas of exploration this unit supports.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief, Language A: literature, first assessments for SL and HL 2021 (2019). The model passage is an original text written for Marlbridge.