Ambition and knowledge — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Ambition and knowledge
Themes
What you need to know
How Shelley explores ambition and the dangerous pursuit of knowledge, in Victor and in Walton across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn', 'the fatal impulse that led to my ruin', 'Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge', 'he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow', 'pour a torrent of light into our dark world', 'then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind', 'sorrow only increased with knowledge', 'Of what a strange nature is knowledge!', 'I trod heaven in my thoughts', 'Did you not call this a glorious expedition?', 'Seek happiness in tranquillity, and avoid ambition', 'I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed'.
Context: Prometheus, who defied the gods to give fire to humankind, and the Romantic image of the lone genius whose striving ends in tragedy.
Edexcel's novel question has two parts, and neither marks context: part (a) on the printed extract marks language, form and structure (AO2); part (b) on the novel elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1), not language analysis. Use context only where it explains a reading, and say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
