AP English Literature and Composition
1001430
2017-2018
At GCHS each student is required to take the AP exam at the date and time established by College Board. Neither, GCHS nor CCPS has control over the date or time an AP Exam is scheduled. Students may not request to have a change in either a date or time of an exam. Any student who fails to arrive on time for an AP exam or who misses an AP exam will be assessed a fee.
Welcome. You have chosen to commit to a very rigorous and extensive study of Literature and the English Language. The Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition course is a college-level, introductory course in the reading and critical analysis of literature. The course is concerned with language as a symbolic process and with literature as experience preserved in language. For those students who complete all the requirements for the AP Literature and Composition curriculum, the skills necessary to read and respond to literature as demanded by college level courses will have been met.
The demands of this course will be many. This course will guide you for successful and beneficial college-level, literary analysis necessary for successful completion of the AP English Literature and Composition requirements as mandated by the College Board; in addition, it will prepare you for using research for writing authentic papers and developing multi-media presentations. For a more complete overview of the course as described by the College Board, please consult the following links: https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-course-overviews/ap-english-literature-course-overview.pdf and http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-english-literature-and-composition-course-description.pdf
A great deal of the work for this class will be done independently. Outside readings, writings, and research will comprise the majority of the work. At the completion of various literary works, each student will be responsible for a position paper, research paper, or presentation. In addition, timed writings will be scheduled throughout the year. During the year, students will also work on the development of multiple choice questions based on poetry and prose excerpts.
This summer (2017) students are required to complete two reading assignments and are encouraged to read additional novels or plays that appear on the independent book list.
Summer Reading – Two Novels and one play (You may obtain Poisonwood Bible from Mrs. Gorence in room 5-125 prior to the end of May 2016; however, it is recommended that you purchase your own copy so that you may annotate and highlight significant passages.) Please check with Mrs. Gorence for availability of the other titles. Not all books are available for loan.
Poisonwood Bible:
Keep a reader reaction journal on Poisonwood Bible to enable you to participate in a Socratic Seminar during the first week of class. In order to help you retain the information you may need for the discussion, you are encouraged to maintain journal entries that analyze: the narrator perspective; the effective techniques employed by the author; the effect of setting or other components on a character’s actions; the questions that arise concerning theme, action, character development; the motivations of characters and how he or she changes; the impact and connection of this book to other works, your experiences, and the world. Please make sure you use textual support in your reflections.
You will be required to write a paper based on a close reading of this book at the conclusion of the Socratic Seminar.
If you have not read Othello by Shakespeare, please have it read by the first day of class.
Choose one of the novels from the list of novels recommended by College Board:
After reading the book of your choice, respond to one of the five questions. Your typed responses will be collected the first day of classes:
1. It has often been said that what we value can be determined only by what we sacrifice. Consider how this statement applies to a character from a novel or play. Select a character that has deliberately sacrificed, surrendered, or forfeited something in a way that highlights that character’s values. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the particular sacrifice illuminates the character’s values and provides a deeper understanding of the meaning of the work as a whole. Examine the novel’s presentation of one of the relationships within the novel.
2. Choose a novel or play in which cultural, physical, or geographical surroundings shape psychological or moral traits in a character.
3. Choose a character from a novel or play who responds in some significant way to justice or injustice. Then write a well-developed essay in which you analyze the character’s understanding of justice, the degree to which the character’s search for justice is successful, and the significance of this search for the work as a whole.
4. In a literary work, a minor character, often known as a foil, possesses traits that emphasize, by contrast or comparison, the distinctive characteristics and qualities of the main character. For example, the ideas or behavior of a minor character might be used to highlight the weaknesses or strengths of the main character. Choose a novel or play in which a minor character serves as a foil for the main character. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the relation between the minor character and the major character illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.
5. Novels and plays often depict characters caught between colliding cultures -- national, regional, ethnic, religious, institutional. Such collisions can call a character’s sense of identity into question. Select a novel or play in which a character responds to such a cultural collision. Then write a well-organized essay in which you describe the character’s response and explain its relevance to the work as a whole.
Hint: Make sure you have dealt with all parts of the question, you have not merely provided plot summary, and you have provided textual evidence to support your claims.
Absalom, Absalom
Agnes of God
The Age of Innocence
A Lesson Before Dying
All the Light We Cannot See
All The King’s Men
All My Sons
All the Pretty Horses
America is in the Heart
An American Tragedy
And the Mountains Echoed
Anna Karenina
A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man
A Prayer for Owen Meaney
As I Lay Dying
A Thousand Acres
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Atonement
The Awakening
Beloved
Bleak House
Bless Me, Ultima
Blindness
The Bonesetter’s Daughter
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Caretaker
Catch 22
Cat’s Eye
Ceremony
The Cherry Orchard
The Color Purple
A Confederacy of Dunces
Crime and Punishment
The Crossing
David Copperfield
The Dead
The Death of Ivan Illyich
Doctor Zhivago
The Dollmaker
An Enemy of the People
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Fall
A Farewell to Arms
Fathers and Sons
Fifth Business
A Gathering of Old Men
The Golden Bowl
The Good Soldier
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Hard Times
The Homecoming
House Made of Dawn
The House of the Seven Gables
Invisible Man
In the Lake of the Woods
J.B.
Jazz
Joseph Anders
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
The Joy Luck Club
Jude the Obscure
King Lear
The Kite Runner
Snow Falling on Cedars
The Jungle
A Lesson before Dying
Light in August
Lord Jim
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Loved One
Love Medicine
MacBeth
Main Street
Major Barbara
Mansfield Park
M. Butterfly
The Member of the Wedding
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Moby Dick
Monkey Bridge
Mother Courage
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Warren’s Profession
My Antonia
The Namesake
Native Son
Native Speaker
Nineteen Eighty-four
No Country for Old Men
No-No- boy
Obasan
One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Other
Our Mutual Friend
Pamela
A Passage to India
Persuasion
The Piano Lesson
The Piano Tuner
Pain
The Plague
Portrait of a Lady
The Power and the Glory
Praise Song for the Widow
Pride and Prejudice
Redburn
Saint Joan
Saturday
The Shipping News
Sister Carrie
Sister of My Heart
Slaughterhouse Five
Snow
Snow Falling on Cedars
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Song of Solomon
Sons and Lovers
Soul Mountain
The Sound and the Fury
The Stone Angel
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
The Sun Also Rises
Sula
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’ubervilles
A Thousand Acres
To the Lighthouse
Tom Jones
The Rail
The Secret History
Things Fall Apart
The Things They Carry
Tristram Shandy
Victory
The Warden
Washing Square
Wide Sargasso Sea
Winesburg, Ohio
Winter in the Blood
White Teeth
Wise Blood
The Woman Warrior
The Women of Brewster Place
Wuthering Heights
The Zoo Story
Zoot Suit