AP Literature and Composition Syllabus
2011 – 2012
Major Concepts, Understandings, and Goals
Being a student in this English IV AP Literature and Composition class means always working at a college level and always working toward the highest expectations. Not only will the class go through some of the most important and literary merited pieces in the English canon, but we shall also be writing to analyze and understand.
Students will be reading through poetry from both British and American poets in order to master how to analyze poetry, compare and contrast ideas within multiple poems, and look into the deeper meanings that the poet offers.
The short story writers chosen for this class are of the highest in their craft. Students will not only annotate and close read these pieces, but learn to discern the most important parts to analyze and discuss with the class.
Students will meet with the teacher once every quarter to discuss his/her progress in class, discuss college needs, and to ask questions that may have not been discussed in class.
Required Texts and Materials
In the AP Literature and Composition course, the student should consider obtaining a personal copy of the various novels, plays, epics, poems, and short fiction used in the course. You may purchase copies from a local new or used bookstore, or from an online book source. If available, you may check out books from your school’s English Department. All titles may also be found in the local library branches. Some of the works used can also be accessed online.
Beowulf trans. Seamus Heaney
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Medea by Euripides
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Poetry from the following poets: John Donne, Robert Herrick, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Burns, William Shakespeare, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Keats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Maya Angelou, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ted Hughes, Dorothy Parker, Mattie Stepanek, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, T. S. Eliot
Short Stories by the following writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Isabel Allende, Edgar Allan Poe, Katherine Anne Porter, Maxine Hong Kingston, William Faulkner, Roxanne Roberts, Dick Gregory
Outside Reading Requirement
One of the following novels / plays will be chosen by the student each and every quarter for their Outside Reading requirement. Upon completion of the reading, the student will obtain a Major Works Data Sheet and complete it by the assessment date. Also on assessment date, the teacher will decide an aspect of the novel or play read that she wishes the students to expound upon in a written essay / paragraph. The reading is independent and should not rely on the reading of any Internet “crutches” instead of reading the text. The novels / plays to choose from are:
Beloved by Toni Morrison (90, 99, 01, 03, 05, 07, 09, 10, 11)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams (00)
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (71, 76, 80, 85, 87, 95, 09, 10)
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (03)
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (94, 96, 97, 99, 01, 03, 05, 06, 07, 09)
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (06)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (03, 09)
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (09)
Assessment Dates:
First Quarter = Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Second Quarter = Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Third Quarter = Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Fourth Quarter = Friday, May 25, 2012
Performance Tasks
• Timed essays based on past AP prompts
• Essay questions as required of college-level writers with helpful feedback from the teacher
• Reading/responding to/analyzing novels, drama, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as doing the above to Outside Reading also
• Imaginative writing including but not limited to: poetry, imitative structures
• Literary analysis papers—expository and persuasive
• Personal essay
• Graphic organizers, double-entry journals, paragraph responses, questions
Pre-Course Assessment
Students entering into AP English IV must read the following works as selected by the Summer Reading Committee:
East of Eden by John Steinbeck (no option – all must read)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (option #1 or below)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (option #2)
These works will be discussed aloud in class as well as the students having to complete a Major Works Data Sheet over the novels read, then an essay quiz will be given over the close reading of the novel. Students may use their books.
Course Syllabus
First Quarter (August 22 to October 14, 2011)
- Discussion of East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- Discussion of both Wuthering Heights by Jane Austen and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
- Essay quizzes given over the reading of the Summer Works
- Major Data Works Sheets will be assigned over Summer Reading
- Assign College Admission Essays with specific criteria; will be due in two weeks
- Ascertain from students which literary merited novels have been read in the past so that can be used throughout the year on writings and discussions
- Hand out important items for the year: handbook, poetry handbook, short story handbook
- Teach Jane Schaeffer Analytical Response method
- Short Stories to read, discuss, and respond: “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “And of Clay Are We Created” by Isabel Allende, “Man of the Crowd” by Edgar Allan Poe
- Teach Phyllis Wright’s T.P.C.A.S.T.T. method to analyze poetry
- Example T.P.C.A.S.T.T. poem – “The Whipping” by Robert Hayden
- Poets to teach and analyze: Medieval Ballads (“Lord Randall,” “The Unquiet Grave,” “Bonny Barbara Allan,” “Get Up and Bar the Door,” “The Three Ravens”), John Donne (“No Man is an Island,” “Holy Sonnet 10,” “Holy Sonnet 14,” “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”), Robert Herrick (“Divination by a Daffodil,” “Upon Love, By Way of Question and Answer,” “To The Virgins, To Make Much of Time”), Emily Dickinson (“Emily Dickinson’s To-Do List,” “#480,” “#88,” “#324,” “#712,” “#341,” “1462,” “#478,” “#340”), Robert Frost (“The Road Not Taken,” “Flower Gathering,” “Fire and Ice” “The Impulse,” “Into My Own,” “Revelation,” “Acquainted With the Night,” “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Out, Out –“), Theodore Roethke (“My Papa’s Waltz”), Elizabeth Bishop (“One Art,” “First Death in Nova Scotia”), Robert Burns (“A Red, Red Rose,” “To a Mouse,” “Auld Lang Syne,” “For a’ that and a’ that,” “A Mother’s Lament for Her Son’s Death”)
- Main pieces to be fishbowled, analyzed, and written (using timed writings) upon this quarter: The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Beowulf trans. Seamus Heaney, Medea by Euripides
- “Drill and Kill” for Free Response Question with brainstorming and feedback by teacher
- Examine and work on sample test questions from the Literature and Composition Exam
Second Quarter (October 18 – December 16, 2011)
- Short Stories to read, discuss, and respond: “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter, “The Girl Who Wouldn’t Talk” by Maxine Hong Kingston
- Poets to teach and analyze: William Shakespeare, William Blake (“To The Evening Star,” “The Lamb,” “The Little Black Boy,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” “Holy Thursday,” “A Dream,” “The Clod and the Pebble,” “Holy Thursday,” “The Angel,” “The Tyger,” “A Poison Tree,” “A Little Boy Lost”), William Wordsworth (“We Are Seven,” “Expostulation and Reply,” “The Tables Turned,” “The Lucy Poems,” “My Heart Leaps UP,” “It is a Beauteous Evening,” “The World is Too Much With Us,” “The Solitary Reaper,” “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“Christabel,” “Answer to a Child’s Question,” “Epitaph”), Lord Byron (“When We Two Parted,” “She Walks in Beauty,” “So We’ll Go No More A-Roving,” “Who Kill’d John Keats?,” “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year”), Percy Bysshe Shelley (“To Wordsworth,” “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” “Ode to the West Wind,” “To a Skylark,” “Adonais,” “Mutability,” “A Lament”), Langston Hughes (“Puzzled,” “Early Evening Quarrel,” “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “Little Old Letter,” “Children’s Rhymes,” Mother to Son,” “Still Here,” “Stars,” “Democracy,” “Cross,” “Dream Deferred,” “Lenox Avenue Mural,” “The Weary Blues,” “Life is Fine,” “Suicide’s Note”), Countee Cullen (“To an Unknown Poet,” “If You Should Go,” “Incident,” “For Myself”), Gwendolyn Brooks (“The White Troops Had Their Orders..,” “Of Robert Frost,” “Of DeWitt Williams on His Way to Lincoln Cemetery,” “The Children of the Poor,” “We Real Cool,” “a song in the front yard”), John Milton
- Main pieces to be analyzed, discussed, and written (using timed writings) upon this quarter: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, King Lear by William Shakespeare, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, excerpts from Paradise Lost by John Milton
- “Drill and Kill” for Free Response Question with brainstorming and feedback by teacher
- Examine and work on test questions from the Literature and Composition Exam
Third Quarter (January 4 – March 9, 2012)
- Short Stories to read, discuss, and respond: “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Grave” by Katherine Anne Porter, “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka
- Poets to teach and analyze: John Keats (“Isabella,” “The Eve of St. Agnes,” “Bright Star,” “Lamia,” “To Fanny, “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “You Say You Love”), Alfred Lord Tennyson (from “In Memoriam A.H.H.,” “Tears, Idle Tears, “Break, Break, Break,” “Ask Me No More,” “The Eagle,” “Flower in the Crannied Wall,” “Crossing the Bar”), Robert Browning (“My Last Duchess”), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnet I, Sonnet XIV, Sonnet XXVIII, Sonnet XLI, Sonnet XLIII), Sylvia Plath (“Mirror,” “Stillborn,” “Last Words,” “I am Vertical,” “”Edge,” “Daddy,” “Lady Lazarus,” “Kindness”), Anne Sexton (“Elegy in the Classroom,” “The Truth the Dead Know,” “The Rowing Endeth,” “Wanting to Die,” “Words,” “Love Song,” “Sylvia’s Death”), Maya Angelou (“No Loser, No Weeper,” “Preacher Don’t Send Me,” “They Ask Why,” “My Guilt,” “Human Family,” “Elegy,” “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me,” “A Georgia Song,” “Caged Bird”), Edna St. Vincent Millay (“I Think I Should Have Loved You Presently,” “Lament,” “Memorial to D.C.”), Ted Hughes (“Hawk Roosting”), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (“The Blessed Damozel”)
- Main pieces to be analyzed, discussed, and written (using timed writings) upon this quarter: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
- “Drill and Kill” for Free Response Question with brainstorming and feedback by teacher
- Examine and work on questions from the Literature and Composition Exam
Fourth Quarter (March 19 – June 1, 2012)
- Short stories to read, discuss, and respond: “The Grieving Never Ends” by Roxanne Roberts, “Shame” by Dick Gregory, “Salvation,” by Langston Hughes, “Where Was God?” by Elie Wiesel
- Poets to teach and analyze: Dorothy Parker (“Unfortunate Coincidence,” “One Perfect Rose,” “Indian Summer,” “Love Story,” “Coda,” “There Was One,” “Idyl,” “Afternoon,” “Pig’s Eye View of Literature,” “Epitaph,” “Epitaph for a Darling Lady”), Mattie Stepanek (“Magical Big Boy Underpants,” “It Happened Anyway,” “Lunch Hour”), Seamus Heaney (“Mid-Term Break,” “Digging”), Philip Larkin (“Take One Home for the Kiddies”), T.S. Eliot (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “The Wasteland,” “The Hollow Men”) Naomi Shihab Nye (“Making a Fist”), Edgar Lee Masters (“William and Emily,” “Abel Melveny,” “Trainor, the Druggist,” “Sarah Brown”), Christina Georgina Rossetti (“No, Thank You John,” “Remember,” “A Better Resurrection,” “Sleeping at Last”)
- Main pieces to be analyzed, discussed, and written (using timed writings) upon this quarter: Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot
- Creative Poetry Assignment using Billy Collins’ poem “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes” (poets will be assigned to each student with directions given)