AP ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION 2015-2016 Mrs. Liebson T1 (Aug 14 - November 6) The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say. --JRR Tolkien According to the College Board, the goal of AP English Literature and Composition is to engage students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. Assessments include essays, exams, special projects, creative writing, a research paper, and minor assignments, including a reading notebook and vocabulary quizzes. (Approximately every other Friday, students are tested over 10 assigned vocabulary words.) Essays, research papers, and other homework must be submitted in hard copy. Late papers will be penalized 10 points per day. Students are expected to be in class, on time, and to participate in class discussions. One of the essays required for the first trimester is a 650-word personal or college application essay. Options for the Common Application essay: (1) some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. (2) The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? (3) Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again? (4) Describe a problem you ve solved or a problem you d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution. (5) Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family. Rough drafts of college application essays are due September 18, revised
drafts October 2, and final drafts October 20. Check college application deadlines. Note that some colleges require an essay on a topic of their own choosing in addition to or in place of the Common Ap essay. I ll be happy to help you with those, too. 8/14. Introduction to AP English Literature and Composition: The Minister s Cat. 8/17-21. Mythology project. No reading notebook. 8/24-8/28. American poetry: Billy Collins, Introduction to Poetry (handout); Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (American Experience, 810) as an exemplum; Emily Dickinson, I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died, Because I Could Not Stop For Death, A Route of Evanescence, The Bustle in a House, This World is not Conclusion (396, 397, handouts); W alt Whitman, Song of Myself, I Hear America singing, When I Heard the Learn d Astronomer (408-411, 413, 415); Langston Hughes, I, Too, Dream Variations, Mother to Son, Frosting, Christ in Alabama, Harlem (419, handouts); TS Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (647-651). Group presentations, Langston Hughes. No reading notebook. 8/31-9/4. American short stories: Jack London, To Build a Fire (The American Experience, 556-565). Vocabulary quiz Thursday. Essay on London due Friday. No reading notebook. Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour (592-595). In-class creative writing assignment. Mark Twain, The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, (525-529). In-class analytical paragraph on Twain. Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (468-475). Vocab quiz. William Faulkner, Barn Burning (handout); Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (American Experience, 798-799). 9/7. Labor Day. No school. 9/8-9/11. Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. 9/14-9/17. Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front. (Cf. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.) Reading notebook, vocabulary quiz Friday. 9/18. Poetry of the Great War, dir. Bob Carruthers. DVD. Alan Seeger, I Have a Rendezvous with Death ; Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est, et al. (handout). 9/18. Rough draft, college ap essay, due.
9/21-9/25. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. (Cf. William Golding, Lord of the Flies.) Reading notebook, vocabulary quiz Friday. Adam Hochschild, Meeting Mr. Kurtz, from King Leopold s Ghost (handout). 9/24. End 6-week grading period. 9/27-10/3. Banned Book W eek. 9/28-10/2. Albert Camus, The Stranger. Mock trial. Reading notebook due Tuesday. Revised draft, college ap essay, due Friday. The Cure, Killing an Arab (handout). 9/29. Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, archangels. 10/4. Memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi. 10/5-10/23. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman. Vocabulary quiz, October 9; Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man (handout): summary due Friday, October 16; reading notebook due Monday, October 19; language worksheet due Thursday, October 22. 10/12. In-service. No school. 10/20. Final draft, college ap essay, due. No rewrites. 10/26-10/28. Voltaire, Candide. In-class essay on Voltaire Wednesday; no rewrites. No reading notebook. Letter to Frederick, Crown Prince of Prussia (World Literature, 122-125). 10/29-10/30. Leonard Bernstein, Candide, dir. Lonny Price. DVD. Recommended outside reading: Ovid, Metamorphoses; Whitman, Leaves of Grass; Eliot, The Waste Land, The Dry Salvages ; London, The Call of the Wild; Chopin, The Awakening; Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence; Susan Glaspell, A Jury of Her Peers ; Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August; Thoreau, Walden or Life in the Woods; Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms; Conrad, The Secret Sharer; Camus, The Plague; Kemal Daoud, The Meursault Investigation; Miller, The Crucible. 11/1. All Saints Day. Daylight Saving Time ends. 11/4-11/6. Trimester 1 exams. English Lit. T1 final exam: Open-book essay.
AP ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION 2015-2016 Mrs. Liebson T2 (Nov 9 - Feb 19) 11/9. Late start. 11/9-11/20. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue (British Experience, 88-109). The Wife of Bath s Prologue, The Wife s Tale, The Miller s Tale, The Pardoner s Tale (handouts). Reading notebook, General Prologue only; vocabulary quiz, 11/13; creative writing assignment, due 11/23. 11/11. Veterans Day. 11/23-11/24. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Chapters One, Two, Seven (World Literature, 821-836). Reading notebook, due 11/24. Richard Wilbur, Parable (837). 11/25-11/27. Thanksgiving vacation. 11/30-12/11. Modern poetry: How do you read a poem? NO reading notebook; vocabulary quiz, 12/4. Sir Philip Sidney, Loving in Truth (handout). Sidney, Defence of Poesy (The British Tradition, 1176-1178). Small groups prepare an analysis of a poem in a packet of six to eight poems by Goethe, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Pushkin, Tennyson, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Rilke, Yeats, Thomas, or García Lorca. Gerard Manley Hopkins (The British Experience, 858-859, handout). In-class essay on poetry, 12/14. Memorize a poem by one of the poets we shall have read in T2 (12/14). 12/15-12/18. British short stories. Reading notebook, all stories and Gordimer s lecture, vocabulary quiz, 12/18. James Joyce, Eveline (World Literature, 1209-1212) Joseph Conrad, The Lagoon (The British Experience, 1034-1043). Cf. Heart of Darkness. Nadine Gordimer, The Train from Rhodesia (The British Experience, 1130-1133). Gordimer, Nobel Lecture (handout). Cf. Faulkner s Nobel lecture. DH Lawrence, The Rocking Horse Winner (The British Experience, 1068-1077). Where is DH Lawrence buried?
12/8. Feast of the Immaculate Conception. 12/11. Research paper: annotated bibliography due. See handout. 12/21-1/1. Christmas holiday. Read Jane Austen s Pride and Prejudice. 1/4. Late start. 1/4-1/23. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. Reading notebook, including Bowen s essay and Austen s letter to her niece, vocabulary quiz 1/8. Austen, On Making an Agreeable Marriage (The British Experience, 716-719). Elizabeth Bowen, Seventh Essay on Jane Austen (handout). 1/6. End 6-week grading period. 1/8. In service, early release. Research paper: thesis, outline due. 1/14. Research paper: rough draft due. 1/18. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. 1/25-1/29. Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis. Reading notebook, vocabulary quiz 1/29. 1/26. Edgar Allen Poe s birthday. 2/1. Research paper: final draft due. NO rewrites. 2/1-2/16. Oedipus Rex. Reading notebook, including Aristotle, vocabulary quiz, 2/12. Cf. Death of a Salesman; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart. Aristotle, Chapter 13, Poetics (handout). John Heath Stubbs, Not Being Oedipus (handout) 2/15. Presidents Day. Recommended outside reading: Wordsworth, The Prelude ; Goethe, Faust; Kafka, The Trial; Gordimer, July s People, Lawrence, Sons and Lovers; Joyce, Dubliners; Austen, Emma, Sense and Sensibility; Sophocles, Antigone; Aeschylus, Agamemnon; Euripides, The Bacchae, Medea. 2/17-2/19. Trimester 2 exams. 2T final exam: In-class essay. Read James Joyce s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by 2/22.
AP ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION 2015-2016 Mrs. Liebson T3 (Feb 22 - May 26) AP English Literature and Composition Exam May, 2016 2/22-2/26. James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Essay on Joyce: A Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, recounts the psychological or moral development of the protagonist from youth to maturity, when the character recognizes his place in the world. Select a single pivotal moment in the psychological development of Stephen Dedalus. Write a 500-word essay that analyzes how that single moment shapes the meaning of Portrait as a whole. Essay due February 26. No reading notebook. 2/29-3/18. William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library). Shakespeare s Theater, Folger, xxxiii-xlii. 3/4. Vocabulary quiz. Essay on Shakespeare: Write a 500-word essay about a minor character in Hamlet who serves as a foil, a person whose characteristics serve to intensify the distinctive qualities of Hamlet himself. In your essay, analyze how the relationship between the two characters helps to convey the meaning of the work. Essay due March 18. Additional approaches to Hamlet: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, From Lecture XII, 1811-12 Series (handout). TS Eliot, Hamlet and his Problems in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, http://shakespeare-navigators.com/hamlet/eliot/index.html. (Optional.) Margaret Atwood, Gertrude Talks Back (handout). Arthur Rimbaud, Ophélie (1870). Emma Vieceli, illus., Manga Shakespeare (New York: Abrams, 2007). Patrick Stewart, B or not a B, Sesame Street, http://tiny.cc/qk4fs. TaH pagh tahbe ( To be or not to be in the original Klingon), www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/klingon-hamlet. Discovering Hamlet, dir. Mark Olshaker. DVD. Review. Watch a video of Hamlet starring Sir Lawrence Olivier (1948), Richard Burton (1964), Mel Gibson (1990), Kenneth Brannagh (1996), or David Tennant (2010) or listen to an audio version starring Sir John Gielgud (1957). Due March 11. Did the production look like what you had imagined as you read the play? How was it similar? Different? Which actor best portrayed his/her character? Why? How was
the production different from the written drama? What decisions did the director make abut staging? Were these effective decisions? 3/18. Vocabulary quiz. 3/21-3/24. Dante Alighieri, Inferno, from the Divine Comedy. Introduction: The Divine Comedy (World Literature, 742-745). 3/21. Canto 1 (World Literature, 748-750). 3/22. Canto 3 (World Literature,751-754). 3/23. Canto 5 (World Literature, 755-758). 3/24. Canto 34 (World Literature, 765-769). 3/25. Good Friday. 3/28-4/1. Spring Break. 4/4-4/22. Beowulf. Trans. Seamus Heaney. The Seafarer (The British Tradition, 15-19); The Wanderer (20-23). In-class essay on Beowulf, April 22. 4/8. Vocabulary quiz. 4/11. End 6-week grading period. Summary: JRR Tolkien, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936), excerpt (handout). The full text of Tolkien s lecture is available on line. Summary due April 18. Richard Wilbur, Beowulf (handout). 4/23. Shakespeare s birthday! 4/25-4/29. Short stories from Europe and South America. 4/25. Guy de Maupassant, The Jewels (World Literature, 1034-1040). 4/26. Isaac Loeb Perez, If Not Higher and Leo Tolstoy, The Three Hermits (handouts). 4/27. Albert Camus, The Guest (World Literature, 1246-1256). 4/28. Gabriel García Márquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World (1307-1313) and Nobel lecture: The Solitude of Latin America www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1982/marquez-lecture Choose Spanish or English translation; Spanish audio is also available through this site. 4/29. Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand (The British Tradition, 1085-1087).
5/3. George Herbert, The Collar, The Altar, Easter Wings, Love III (handout). 5/4-5/6. Review: reports, Biblical allusions. 5/9-5/13. Senior exams. What is a technopaignia? May, AP English Literature and Composition exam. T3 final exam: Closed-book essay on a free-respon se question. Recommended outside reading: Shakespeare, The Tempest; Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; John Gardner, Grendel; Dante, The Divine Comedy; Tolstoy, Anna Karenina; García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Graduation, May 23, 2015 The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say. JRR Tolkien