AP English Literature and Composition

Transcription

1 AP English Literature and Composition Course Description The AP English Literature and Composition course will present students with rigorous academic challenges as described in the AP Course Description and a workload equivalent to that of a literature/composition class at a university. We will study various genres of literature such as poetry, short stories, drama, and novels. We will also explore various writing genres and techniques. This course will culminate in the AP English Literature and Composition Exam in May. Most universities and colleges in the United States will award college credit for scores of 3 or above on the exam. Understandings Essential Questions What will you understand as a result of this unit? Literature provides a mirror to help us understand ourselves and others. Writing is a form of communication across the ages. Literature reflects the human condition. Literature deals with the universal, i.e., man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. self, man vs. God. Literature reflects its social, cultural, and historical values. What arguable, recurring, and thought provoking questions will guide inquiry and point toward the big ideas of the unit? How does literature help us understand ourselves and others? How has writing become a communication tool across the ages? How does literature reflect the human condition? How does literature express universal themes? Course Goals To carefully read and critically analyze imaginative literature. To understand the way writers use language to provide meaning and pleasure. To consider a work s structure, style, and themes through the author s use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone. To study representative works from various genres and a period (from the sixteenth to the twentieth century) but to know a few works extremely well. To understand a work s complexity, to absorb richness of meaning, and to analyze how meaning is embodied in literary form. To consider the social and historical values a work reflects and embodies.

2 To write focusing on critical analysis of literature including expository, analytical, and argumentative essays as well as creative writing to sharpen understanding of writers accomplishments and deepen appreciation of literary artistry. Reading Expectations It is important that you read every assignment with care and in a timely manner. If you are unaccustomed to reading multiple texts closely, within a short time, you will need to schedule accordingly. Poetry, despite being shorter than most other texts, is often dense, complicated, and should be read multiple times. It should be understood that all reading assignments will require annotations in the form of double-entry journals. Writing Expectations As this is a literature and composition course, you will be expected to use every assignment that involves writing to practice your best composition skills. Composition assignments will include: timed writing, formal essays (expository and argumentative), and narratives. No matter the kind of writing assigned, your best composition skills should be practiced. We will work with various sentence constructions, writing styles, and word choice. Our modes of writing will also be diverse; blogging, editing through Google Docs, and online discussion boards will enhance our exploration of literature. To assist in the writing process, the class will frequently participate in Socratic seminars in which multiple meanings of a single text will be explored. Students are expected to be prepared for each discussion with text annotations, written questions that arose during their close reading of the passage, and multiple responses to the distributed discussion questions. Each student will be held accountable for sharing their textually-supported opinions during the discussion as well as for providing constructive criticism of their fellow students contributions to the seminar. Texts Novels Short Stories Poetry Frankenstein Dracula The Namesake Happy Endings How Odin Lost His Eye Biblical Excerpts: Exodus 1 & 13 Beowulf The Fish For My Daughter

3 Purple Hibiscus The Kite Runner 1984 Brave New World Fahrenheit 451 One of These Days The Miracle of the Sword and the Stone The Marriage of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere The Adventures of Sir Lancelot du Lake Everyday Use The Tell-Tale Heart A Good Man is Hard to Find Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde A & P A White Heron Araby Shooting an Elephant A Modest Proposal The Yellow Wallpaper Harrison Bergeron To My Daughter in a Red Coat The Daughter My Papa s Waltz Those Winter Sundays Prologue - Canterbury Tales The Pardoner s Tale The Wife of Bath s Tale The Nun s Priest s Tale I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud The World is Too Much with Us The Lamb and The Tyger The Divine Image and A Divine Image Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person d God Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star The Flea A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning She Walks in Beauty Sonnet 101 (Petrarch) Sonnet 18 (Millay) Sonnet 43 (Elizabeth Browning) Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer s Day? (Moss) Sonnet 18, 73, 116, 130 (Shakespeare) Acquainted with the Night To Winter Unreasonable Snows Story of Ashes and Flame On My First Son Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Ode to My Socks Ode on a Grecian Urn Ode to the West Wind

4 Ode to a Nightingale Gertrude talks back Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Mad Girl s Love Song My Papa s Waltz Those Winter Sundays Wild Geese Where Does the Dance Begin? The Mother The Bean Eaters On the Subway Dramas King Lear Hamlet Nonfiction How to Read Literature Like a Professor Course Overview August 24 Introduction We will discuss the expectations for class and their presentations based on the content of How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Students will take a diagnostic test found in 5 Steps to a 5: AP English Literature August 25-September 18 Heroes & Villains Plot Structure, Author s Purpose, Themes, Archetypes, Epic Hero The discussion and analysis will concern structure, purpose, and archetypal characters of the epic Beowulf and the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. We will examine the following literary devices in our exploration of Beowulf: inference, syntax, milieu, caesura, and kenning. In Dracula, we will continue to focus on milieu and inference but

5 will begin to explore the meanings behind Biblical allusions, physical imperfections, and supernatural creatures. In effect, Beowulf will serve as an introduction to the How of a text, and Dracula will begin our journey into the Why. The reading of the epic and novel will be followed by both creative and formal writing assignments. Students will write a formal boast in the style of Beowulf and will create their own epic hero journey with a modern setting. The companion piece How Odin Lost his Eye will serve as both a valuable insight to the Old English literary period as well as a text to be explored in a practice essay. Students will write their first formal essay after reading Dracula. They will have a choice of 4 different themes to explore: dreams, sexual desire, beauty and youth, or religious influence. Students will practice formal writing techniques as they construct an outline, rough draft, and final draft that explore the theme using textual evidence and analysis of literary devices. September 21-October 14 Seeing Double Ambiguity, Character Development, Parallelism, Tragic Hero Through King Lear, students will explore the layers that exist in good literature. By analyzing repeated words, similar characters, and parallel plots, students will gain a deeper understanding of character development and the ensuing themes. The unit will begin with an understanding of symbolism and motif. Students will write a double entry journal analyzing Elizabeth Bishop s use of these tools in her poem The Fish. Toward the end of the unit, to bring an intertextual element to the play, students will read scholarly research on the character of the fool and will compare that archetype to other characters in various works of literature. As a final review, students will analyze Alice Walker s Everyday Use as well as excerpts from the Arthur Legends, comparing themes and symbolism to that of Shakespeare s in King Lear. We will also analyze the following literary devices in our study: invective, soliloquy, dramatic irony, tragic hero, foils, and pathetic fallacy. Throughout the unit, students will be reading a majority of the play independently, recording their observations in double-entry journals. They will complete creative writing assignments in correlation with the play, such as writing their own soliloquy (Lear 1.2) to deal with a problem unique to high-school seniors. Students will be assessed on their understanding of parallels through a comprehensive test in the style of the AP exam. Students will answer multiple-choice questions on factual, analytical, and inferential levels and will compose an essay. This essay will incorporate their knowledge of King Lear and draw parallels from My Papa s Waltz by Theodore Roethke and Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden. October 15-November 13

6 On a Mission Theme, Point of View We will analyze point of view and the relationship between theme and point of view through a careful reading of several selections from Chaucer s The Canterbury Tales. Beginning with the prologue, students will analyze the estates of the middle ages and Chaucer s satirical response to them. We will then read The Pardoner s Tale, and with this text, students will practice forming questions on the analytical and inferential levels. We will focus on the benefits of first and third person narrators with a special emphasis on unreliable narrators during our reading of The Wife of Bath s Tale, and students will write a research paper after their reading of The Nun s Priest s Tale. Supplemental texts The Tell-Tale Heart and A Good Man is Hard to Find will enhance students understanding of point of view and its impact on characterization. In this unit, special attention will be given to the following literary terms: direct and indirect characterization, frame story, irony, situational irony, dramatic irony, and verbal irony. Students will personally experience the power of point-of-view as they write their own estate satire. In this estate satire, students will implement elements of good characterization, choose the point-of-view best suited to their story, and develop their narrative style. In addition to that creative writing assignment, students will write a research paper exploring one of the following topics related to The Nun s Priest s Tale : medieval beast fables, medieval ideas about dreams, medieval anti-feminism, or courtlylove. November 16-December 18 Shall I Compare Thee Connotation, Figurative Language, Style, Poetic Forms This unit will cover the following lyric forms: Petrarchan sonnet, Elizabethan sonnet, elegy, and ode. We will analyze each author s style using the poetic forms and figurative language he/she chooses to implement. The unit will begin with the identification and analysis of poetic meter. Students will identify paradox in two of Donne s Holy Sonnets and will explore conceit in his poems The Flea and Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. The literary device blazon will be introduced with Petrarch s Sonnet 101, and the tone and mood of Petrarchan sonnets will continued to be explored through sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Claude McKay, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and William Wordsworth. We will focus on imagery as we read Shakespeare s sonnets 116, 73, and 130, accompanied by Keats Bright Star and Robert Frost s Acquainted with the Night. Alliteration and assonance will be given special attention as we study the elegies On My First Son by Ben Jonson and Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray. The following literary devices will be analyzed: apostrophe, analogy, antecedent, diction, syntax, metaphor, conceit, tone, mood, personification, rhyme scheme, and persona.

7 Students will combine all of their knowledge of poetic devices in their essay exploring their choice of one of the following odes: Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats, Ode to the West Wind by Percy Shelley, or Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats. In this essay, students will analyze the sounds, imagery, and poetic form to convey the significance of the object being lauded in the ode. January 5-February 5 Argue Like You Mean It Satire, Allegory, Rhetoric/Rhetorical Modes, Effective Arguments For this unit, students will begin by exploring the British Neoclassicism period s fascination with satirical writing. They will read A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift and then will delve into allegorical writing with Dr. Seuss s The Butter Battle Book and George Orwell s essay Shooting an Elephant. After reading each of these texts, students will evaluate the argument, determining its effectiveness on the intended audience as well as on themselves. Students will identify key rhetorical devices in Hamlet, and they will implement these devices in their own writing as they assign blame to key tragic events in the play, such as Ophelia s suicide, Hamlet s violent rage, and Laertes hasty revenge plot. The following literary terms will be emphasized in this unit: parody, sarcasm, euphemism, transition, hypophora, anaphora, syllogism, and intended audience. Students will write a job interview script using the following rhetorical devices: disinterest, virtue, and practical wisdom. Students will also write a comparison/contrast essay for the ghost scene in Hamlet (1.4-5) and the Biblical account of Saul s conversion (Acts 9). Culminating activities for the unit include a class debate and a rhetoric test in the style of the AP exam. Students will have a timed essay on the following topic: The following excerpt is from Shakespeare s Henry V (3.1). Read the passage carefully. Then write a well-developed essay in which you analyze how Henry reveals himself to be a powerful leader to his English troops. You may wish to consider such literary devices as rhetoric, imagery, and point of view. February 8-March 4 Science and Progress Allusion, Antithesis, Irony In this unit, the Victorian period of British literature will be explored through the novel Frankenstein and short story Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Studying the impact of science and progress of technology in both Victorian texts, students will examine archetypes, different forms of irony, and the impact of setting on emerging themes. In Frankenstein, students will focus specifically on Shelley s heavy implementation of Biblical allusion and her use of multiple narrators. Students will

8 discuss the motivations, morals, and themes that arise from the following events in the novel: Frankenstein s creation of another human being, the monster s murder of Frankenstein s younger brother, Frankenstein s silence when Justine is accused, and Frankenstein s monster s desire for a wife. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, students will analyze and discuss how the connotation and denotation of the word monster has changed in each literary period. They will review their knowledge of Beowulf, King Lear, The Wife of Bath s Tale, Hamlet, and Dracula to summarize the archetypal heroes and villains of each literary period, comparing and contrasting each. The literary terms emphasized in this unit are as follows: antithesis, frame story, gothic novel, foreshadowing, and allusion. Students will write an argumentative essay concerning the idea of marriage in Frankenstein as well as in our culture today. They will read the New York Times article In the Season of Marriage, a Question. Why Bother? by Andrew Cherlin, and they will argue for or against marriage in this day and age, citing appropriate textual evidence from the novel. For Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde, students will read Manly Honor: Part III The Victorian Era and the Development of the Stoic-Christian Code of Honor and will participate in an online discussion board to establish whether the era s standards influenced Victorian men (as portrayed in the two texts) to become better versions of themselves or created a deterioration of their morals and character. March 8-March 23 Growing Pains Bildungsroman, Atmosphere, Character Development, Symbolism Beginning with John Updike s classic coming-of-age short story, A & P, students will analyze character development on a spiritual/psychological level throughout the Growing Pains unit. The next text, James Joyce s Araby, will serve as a model for the students own bildungsroman short stories. The final short story reading of the unit, A White Heron, will provide the students a chance to determine whether the protagonist places the story in the bildungsroman category or if the protagonist remains stagnant in development, making the piece an anti-bildungsroman. Special attention will be given to the authors use of a narrative hook, symbolism, colloquialisms, and stream-ofconsciousness writing. Because students will read the bildungsroman novel of their choice (The Namesake, Purple Hibiscus, or The Kite Runner) independently, they will record their impressions of their novel on a Wordpress blog which they will create. Students will complete a minimum of five blog posts about the following novel elements: a major turning point for the main character, the aspect of M.I.C.E. (Milieu, Idea, Character, Event) that is eminent in the novel, symbolism or motif, the ways in which the protagonist proves himself to be a Romantic hero, and details that contribute to the verisimilitude of the

9 novel. In each of the blog posts, students will use textual evidence and rhetorical elements to argue their answer to each prompt. April 4-April 22 World Problems Dramatic/Situational Irony, Literary Criticism, Archetypes We will focus on dystopian literature throughout this Modernism unit. In class, we will read Harrison Bergeron, and students will independently read a dystopian novel of their choice (Brave New World, 1984, or Fahrenheit 451). Movie clips and textual excerpts from the popular Hunger Games trilogy will be used to supplement the readings. Students will use contemporary song lyrics, Viva la Vida by Coldplay and Heavy is the Head by the Zac Brown Band, to evaluate different symbolic and point-ofview approaches to the same issue. Students will read their novels outside of class, but during the class period, students will be grouped by their novel choice. At the beginning of the novel, students will join a group with others who are reading the same novel in order to discuss initial impressions and to share opinions of the author s style and use of literary devices. When the rising actions begin in the novels, groups will consist of one representative from each novel. Each novel representative will share with the group his author s approach to tension, conflict, and theme; students will then compare and contrast the three different dystopian novels which were written in the same decade to deal with similar societal issues. Students will revisit the concept of literary archetypes, dramatic and situational irony, hubris, and paradox. At the end of the unit, each student will write a timed essay proving that the protagonist of his/her novel is an anti-hero. Students will also read a Forbes article discussing the trend of YA dystopian novels, and they will participate in an online discussion board that poses the following question: Are dystopian novels and movies a trend, or will they always be popular among young adults? April Rhymes of the Times Extended Metaphor, Narrative Poetry In the final week before the AP exam, students will review literary elements through modern and contemporary poetry. As we study the villanelles Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night and Mad Girl s Love Song, students will review poetic structure and sound. Mary Oliver s Wild Geese and Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End? will be used to examine style, syntax, diction, symbolism, and tone. Gwendolyn Brooks s The Mother, and The Bean Eaters will be used to re-examine ambiguity. The extended metaphor will be reviewed with Sharon Olds s On the Subway.

10 During this review week, students will write essay outlines for short poetry and prose accounts and will complete multiple-choice questions written in the style of the AP exam. Students will complete a review packet that not only reinforces critical reading and helpful test-taking skills but also reminds them of the literary periods and the conventions that exist for each era.