Product Description

York Notes Advanced offer a fresh and accessible approach to English Literature. This market-leading series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts, York Notes Advanced intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44955 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 120 pages

Customer Reviews

A study guide of very limited value
Do not be misled by the promise that this book has been written for 'the specific needs of advanced level and undergraduate students'. It has not been. If you are studying at GCSE level, this would be useful as a reminder of what happens in each scene, and some of the major themes. But it won't help you to a good grade - that there is just one paragraph of analysis on Portia, and three on Shylock, gives a good guide to how superficial the book is as a guide to the text.

What it does have is plenty of padding, including fifteen pages on Shakespeare's Life and Shakespeare's Theatre, lifted wholesale from other volumes in the series, and long lists of glossed vocabulary. (Unless you are using the Penguin Shakespeare, your edition is likely to be doing a better job already.)

As an English teacher, it annoys me that there is such second-rate material on the market, pandering to worried students looking for last minute support. Students who feel the need to buy a study guide would be better off looking elsewhere.

prefect for my examination!
i'm studying "merchant of Venice" this year in my english literature. i find yorknotes very helpful as it has a detailed chapter summary and a profounded characters' analysis which are both very useful when doing essay. if u are sitting for the GCSE this year, don't hesitate to buy this book!

Useful for the basics
I have had to read The Merchant of Venice for my English degree, but felt that I needed a little help understanding the bigger themes of the text, as I have heard so much about it before.

I came across this book in the hope it would help me gain a better insight to the play as a whole, which I have to say it did. The themes were well explained, as were critical views, character descriptions and so on. However, the aspect that makes me mark this book down is the fact it has so little focus on scene summaries. Each summary is two paragraphs at best in most cases, and this just does not seem adequate for some of the more weighty scenes.

This guide is good to help you understand the context of the play and give you an overall understanding, but just seems to lack in places and so left me a little unsatisfied. It does deliver the material fairly well, but is not that suitable for higher level exams such as A-Levels, and especially degrees, as it claims. A good study guide, but lacking in real in depth analysis. Buy it to help aid your first impressions, but look elsewhere to supplement it too as this book does not really contain enough to carry you confidently through your exam without alternative reading too.