VCE Literature focuses on the meaning derived from texts, the relationship between texts, the contexts in which texts are produced and read, and the experiences the reader brings to the texts.
In VCE Literature, students undertake close reading of texts and analyse how language and literary elements and techniques function within a text. Emphasis is placed on recognising a text’s complexity and meaning and considering how that meaning is embodied in its literary form.
The study provides opportunities for reading deeply, widely and critically, responding analytically and creatively, and appreciating the aesthetic merit of texts. VCE Literature enables students to examine the historical and cultural contexts within which both readers and texts are situated. It investigates the assumptions, views and values that both writer and reader bring to the texts, and it encourages students to contemplate how we read and what we read. It considers how literary criticism informs the readings of texts and the ways texts relate to their contexts and each other.
Students consider how language, structure and stylistic choices are used in different literary forms and text types.
Students investigate the thoughts and concerns raised in texts and the ways social and cultural contexts are represented.
Students analyse and respond critically and creatively to how a text from a past era and a different culture reflects or comments on the ideas and concerns of individuals and groups in that context.
Students compare texts considering the logical nature of texts and how they influence each other.
Students focus on how the form of a text contributes to its meaning. Students explore the form of a set text by constructing a close analysis of that text. They then reflect on the extent to which adapting the text to a different form, often in a new or reimagined context, affects its meaning, comparing the original with the adaptation. By exploring an adaptation, students also consider how creators of adaptations may emphasise or minimise viewpoints, assumptions and ideas present in the original text.
Students explore the different ways we can read and understand a text by developing, considering and comparing interpretations of a set text.
Students focus on the imaginative techniques used for creating and recreating a literary work. Students use their knowledge of how the meaning of texts can change as context and form change to construct their own creative transformations of texts. They learn how authors develop representations of people and places, and they develop an understanding of language, voice, form and structure. Students draw inferences from the original text to create their own. In their adaptation of the tone and the style of the original text, students develop an understanding of the views and values explored.
Students focus on a detailed scrutiny of the language, style, concerns and construction of texts. Students attend closely to textual details to examine the ways specific passages in a text contribute to their overall understanding of the whole text. Students consider literary forms, features and language, and the views and values of the text. They write expressively to develop a close analysis, using detailed references to the text.
