English Literature A-Level
Nature and artifice
What Nature and artifice means in English Literature A-Level, as defined for Pearson Edexcel.
Definition of Nature and artifice
Check what you remember
Read the wording for your board, then hide it and explain Nature and artifice in your own words. Rough notes are fine. This is a self-check, with no mark or grade.
Reference: Pearson Edexcel
The contrast between what appears natural and what is constructed, shown through the role reversal in which human institutions are examined once their assumptions are removed.
Topics that use Nature and artifice
- Component 3: Poetry – Section B: Specified Poetry Pre- or Post-1900 – Post-1900 – The Movement – The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, editor Philip Larkin with foreword by Andrew Motion (OUP, 1973) (Pearson Edexcel A-Level)
Related terms
- Bureaucracy and control
- Childhood and Memory
- Commerce and labour
- Consumerism
- Cultural decay
- Death and ambiguous renewal
- Death and bodily identity
- Desire and impossibility
Using Nature and artifice in the exam
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