AQA A-Level English Literature A Paper 1: Love through the ages, June 2025: Question 5

Question 05

05 ‘Both speakers blame their own strong feelings for the pain of failed love.’

In the light of this view, compare and contrast the presentation of the pain of failed love in

the following poems.

[25 marks]

Possible content:

Please refer to pages 4 to 7.

AO5 Explore literary texts informed by different interpretations

Students might consider:

• the view that the pain of failed love is entirely the fault of the speakers

• the self-destructive nature of both speakers

• the pathos created by the use of first-person

• the ways in which both speakers warn of the pain of over-commitment to love affairs that remain

unrequited or unsatisfied in some way

• the extent of the pain felt, particularly as expressed by the endings of the poems

• the view that Coward’s speaker blames himself for a series of failed relationships; he presents

himself as misguidedly over-enthusiastic leading to awkward and painful abandonment

• the fact that Yeats’ speaker twice warns the reader to ‘never’ give ‘all’ the heart – again, implying

more than one bad experience

• the alternative view that Yeats focuses more on the ‘passionate women’ who prove unreliable (not

liking love that is too ‘certain’, or not accepting that love can fade, or judge lovers by performative

expectations)

• the idea that with Coward’s speaker it is more than ‘generosity of heart’ that is the problem – more

to do with saying too much, being too intense, being suspicious and jealous, being too pessimistic

and bitter, etc

• the self-deprecating comedy of Coward’s speaker and the ways in which he presents his

misadventures in love

• the use of direct address to warn readers of the dangers of commitment

• the use of ‘speakers’, ‘blame’, ‘strong feelings’, ‘pain’, ‘failed love’ in the given view

• the use of lyric and loose sonnet forms to express unhappiness with failed love

• etc.

AO4 Explore connections across literary texts

Focus might be on (in the literature of love):

• representations of: the pain of failed love, either temporary or final; those involved; the

circumstances and effects

• the use of speakers and their accounts of the pain of failed love

• the typicality of these poems as examples of a literary sub-genre of self-deprecation

• the use of anti-heroic tropes that echo the Courtly Love tradition

• uses of lyric and sonnet form

• etc.

AO3 Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which

literary texts are written and received 25

Focus might be on:

• the historical contexts of the poems and how attitudes to relationships and the pain of failed love

might have changed over time

• Coward’s use of lyric form

• Coward’s use of anti-heroic tropes that echo the Courtly Love tradition

• Yeats’ use of sonnet form

• poems about failed relationships as a literary sub-genre

• etc.

AO2 Analyse ways in which meanings are shaped in literary texts

Focus might be on:

• the contrasting forms of the poems: Coward’s use of the lyric vs Yeats’ use of loose sonnet with

foreshortened lines

• structural issues relating to the forms adopted: Coward’s use of four sestet stanzas, each

expanding upon ‘I am no good at love’, each exploring an abstract concept as a constituent part of

failed love (tenderness, suspicion, jealousy and betrayal) and each arranged around triple rhyme

starting on the second line; Yeats’ use of a loose sonnet with foreshortened lines and a simple

scheme of rhymed/near-rhymed couplets which breaks down into two sections, each exploring the

warning to ‘never give all the heart’ and each focusing on the narrator’s vulnerability when faced

with ‘passionate women’ who are either put off certainty in a world of change or who judge on the

basis of the lover’s performance; both poems end on a note of deeply-felt hurt

• the ways in which both poets use metonymy in the use of the heart to represent passionate

expressions of love

• the confessional nature of both poems and how this affects the poetic methods employed

• the ways in which end-stopped lines, enjambement and caesurae are used as structural devices

within the poems

• the ways in which verse form reflects the feelings and intentions of the narrators

• the ways in which the feelings and intentions of the speakers are reflected in: word choices;

different sentence types

• the ways in which the elliptical nature of poetry raises questions about the narrators and the

relationships to which they allude

• Coward’s speaker’s emphasis on words and the manner of speaking, particularly in the first three

stanzas – ‘gibbering like an ape’, etc

• his use of honest, straightforward language

• his self-deprecating almost comic tone

• his allusion to the fairy tale of the golden goose

• his use of dynamic verbs to suggest his self-destructive tendencies

• his use of the first person to suggest introspective analysis

• metaphors such as ‘bed of bliss’ and ‘battlefield’ to evoke scenes/states in a love affair

• Yeats’ narrator’s more elliptical and ambiguous exposition of the pain of failed love

• the link between ‘passionate women’ and ‘they’

• the use of direct address to the reader, warning of the pain of failed love

• the ways in which ‘the heart’ also suggests a sense of detachment

• the ways in which he describes himself in the third person in the final couplet

• the use of irony

• etc.

AO1 Articulate informed, personal and creative responses to literary texts, using associated

concepts and terminology, and coherent, accurate written expression

• quality of argument

• organisation of ideas

• use of appropriate concepts and terminology

• technical accuracy

• comparing texts.

Accept any valid interpretations, any valid comments on contexts and any valid discussion of

authorial methods.

Section C: Comparing Texts