AP Literature and Composition
Instructor: Mr. Hoffman
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The advanced placement program was begun by the College Board in 1955 to allow highly motivated high school students the opportunity to experience a freshman college course and to be awarded college credit. Our AP Literature and Composition course is designed to reflect what is being taught in college-level English classes. This course complies with the curricular requirements set forth by the College Board in their AP Lit. and Comp. course description (accessible both on their website, collegeboard.com, and in their publications). Students should anticipate the same level of intellectual challenge and work requirements that they would encounter in a typical undergraduate university English Literature or Humanities course. Our school year is divided into 10-week quarters. Students may expect to write 2-3 papers (3-6 pages each) outside of class, 2-3 in-class essays (rhetorical or literary analysis) and complete a variety of quizzes and tests per quarter. In addition, each student will prepare a 10-12 page research paper in which they analyze an aspect of a work of literature of their choice. As the course is designed to prepare each student for the AP Literature and Composition exam, many of the tests and quizzes will reflect precisely the structure and expectations of this exam which tests comprehension and composition skills through multiple choice questions and literary analysis essays.
Students registered for this class are expected to strive for a higher level of performance than they have yet demonstrated in their educational career. As we explore great works of literature that span the 16th to 21st centuries, including novels, plays, short-stories, essays, poetry, and literary criticism, students will need to reach deeper and further than they have in any other high school class. These works are established masterpieces that express humanity’s most profound aspirations, insights, ideals, and emotions. Collectively, our literary heritage is as challenging, as broadening, and as intimate as any human intellectual accomplishment. It is my hope that as we explore this rich heritage, students will considerably broaden their understanding of themselves and others, their own culture and all of human culture across the modern period.
Students will become adept at interpreting the multiple levels of meaning to be found within complex imaginative literature. We will engage in deep readings to attend closely to how writers use language to engage their readers and construct meaning. We will consider the structure, style, and themes of each work, as well as finer structural elements like figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone. We will consider the work in its historical context and its relation to the development of literary forms and movements. Students will be expected to view works through the lens of different schools of literary criticism and to build their own interpretations of works based on these models. Active reading will lead to active writing assignments including immediate reactions and reading journals, brief analyses of aspects of language and structure, broader analyses of form and theme, and evaluative essays. All writing assignments must comply with the rules and conventions of standard written English and standard MLA format. We will refine student essays, improving the use of accurate and appropriate vocabulary, creative and clear sentence structure, logical and coherent organization, firm textual support, and effective tone, style, and voice.
Plagiarism: Please acquaint yourself with the “Academic Dishonesty” section in the Students’ Handbook. Plagiarism is the act of representing the ideas or words of another as one’s own without attributing these ideas or words to the original source. Academic dishonesty is a broader term that includes plagiarism but also refers to various forms of academic misconduct such as allowing another student to use one’s work, relaying questions
from a test or quiz, or cheating in any of its forms. Even where collaboration is specifically permitted, all submitted work (tests, quizzes, homework, projects) must be your own! Otherwise, the assignment will receive a “0,” and your parents will be notified.
Required Text and Materials:
In the AP Literature and Composition course, each student should seriously consider obtaining a personal copy of the various novels, plays, poems, and short fiction used in the course. This will permit the student to enter notes and marginalia directly into the text while reading and during lecture and discussion, a practice that aids comprehension and retention.
Preliminary list of works:
The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Bedford, St. Martins, 8th edition.
Literature, A Portable Anthology: Bedford, St. Martins, 2nd edition.
Elements of Literature: 6th course. Holt, Rinehart.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Ulysses (selections) by James Joyce
Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
The Cherry Orchard or The Seagull by Anton Chekhov
(Note- all works will be supplemented with extensive literary criticism including the work of both established critics and contemporary critics. An effort will be made to include a variety of critical and cultural perspectives.)
Each of the following units will include a culminating exam which follows the approach of the AP Test of Literature and Composition. Each exam allows students to demonstrate the ability to comprehend the form and content of prose and poems through multiple choice items and essays. The essays require students to write clear, concise, persuasive analytical responses demonstrating understanding of literary techniques used by poets and authors of fiction.
Grading: As required by the school district, student grades will be composite averages composed of the following:
Common Summatives (unit exams, major papers, sample AP exams): 50%
Teacher Summatives (quizzes, short writing assignments, daily exercises): 30%
Homework: 20%
Late work: 10% penalty for each day late, maximum grade of 20% for five days or more.
Unit 1: Introduction to the Course
An introduction to the elements of fiction essential to literary analysis including plot, character, setting, point of view, symbolism, theme, style, tone, and irony.
Sample Case Studies
Unit 2- Woolf and Literary Modernism
Text: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: Modernism and Moments of Being
In our analysis of this modern masterpiece, we will focus on Woolf’s innovations in narrative technique including stream of consciousness and shifting perspective. We will carefully analyze Woolf’s discursive, meditative style, her aesthetic theory, her feminist commentary, and her role in modernizing the novel. The novel will be interpreted from a various critical perspectives including biographical, historical, feminist, and psychoanalytic. Students will compose an essay closely analyzing an extended passage from the book.
Unit 3- Beloved by Toni Morrison and the quilted slave narrative: reclaiming the interior life of the oppressed.
In our analysis of this essential contemporary work, we will focus on Morrison’s reinvention of the traditional slave narrative. The novel’s multiple and fragmented plot lines and shifting point of view create a layered and complex narrative structure. Through a series of flashbacks, Morrison weaves the harrowing story of slavery that both figuratively and literally haunts the lives of the main characters. It was Morrison’s intention to reclaim the silenced and marginalized voices of survivors of slavery. Students will consider the fusion of stark history with unapologetic ghost story.
Students will compose a creative effort modeling interior narrative from multiple perspectives and stream of consciousness.
Unit 4- The Research Paper
The paper must analyze a work of significant literary artistry. The instructor will suggest and approve the primary source before the research begins. Students are encouraged to examine works from AP reading lists and to explore authors who are new to them. Some previous topics include: the role of women in A Room with A View; the deconstruction of The Wasteland; the role of Catholicism in Brideshead Revisited.
The research paper is a 10-12 page paper analyzing a work of literary merit. It will require 10 sources gathered from a variety of mediums including critical texts, articles from peer reviewed journals, and articles from reliable internet sites. Standard MLA format is mandatory. The goal is for the student to compose a formal, systematic academic argument promoting his or her view of a challenging literary work. The student will experience the satisfaction of joining the ongoing academic dialogue devoted to the interpretation of literature in a way that demands the respect and attention of the academic community.
Unit 5- The Elements of Poetry
Approximately 3 weeks (we will revisit modern poetry in the 3rd quarter)
We will review how to read poetry with close attention to word choice, word order, tone, imagery, figures of speech, symbol, allegory, irony, sound patterns, rhythm, and poetic forms. We will explore case studies of several poets, from the Elizabethan to the modern.
Students will complete timed in-class writing assignments including critical analyses of several poems (reader-response and formalist approach) and the opportunity to share these with the class. Students will also compose original poetry in traditional forms and inspired by the style of well-known poets. They will have the opportunity to share, revise, and publish these poems.
Selections from Elements of Literature: Holt, Rinehart 8th Ed., and The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Bedford, St. Martin’s 8th Ed. Including but not limited to: Blake, Wyatt, Spenser, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Herrick, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Housman, Hardy, Arnold, Yeats, Eliot, Dickinson, Frost, and others.
Unit 6 – Hamlet by Shakespeare: Dramatic poetry unlimited.
We discuss Hamlet as Shakespeare’s drama without limits which challenges the resurgent humanist perspective of the Renaissance with troubling metaphysical and epistemological questions such as the elusive nature of sanity, appearance versus reality, the impossibility of ascertaining truth, meditations on mortality, and the complexities of familial and gender relations. Assessments will include journal writing, short papers analyzing important quotes, and a longer critical essay analyzing a major theme of the work. Some choices include Hamlet’s view of death, his acceptance of destiny, his indecision, his view of man, his love of Ophelia, and his attitude towards Gertrude. Students will examine the text through the lenses several critical schools of thought, including biographical, historical, psychoanalytic, feminist, and deconstructionist.
Unit 7- Macbeth by Shakespeare: The ravages of unchecked ambition
In this, the shortest and perhaps most intense of his tragedies, Shakespeare takes the reader beyond the traditional formulation of an ambitious prince finally overthrown, to address the growing involvement in evil, self-deception, and mental torture of a good man succumbing to temptation, trying to justify himself, being tormented by his conscience. We will closely explore the intensely poetic, richly metaphorical and symbolic language of this play that showcases the greatest writer of the English language at the height of his powers. Students will compose an analytic essay closely analyzing passages from the play and their connection to a major theme of the work.
Unit 8-Theater of Absurd
An exploration of the birth of postmodern theater with an emphasis on existentialism, deconstruction, and fragmentation of identity. We will explore a few seminal dramatic works which set the stage for 21st century literature.
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket
This quintessential classic of Absurdist Theater defies traditional notion of character and plot to explore the bleak zeitgeist of disillusionment and epistemic uncertainty that characterized literature in the mid-20th century. Students will decode the drama’s philosophical puzzles, revealing a powerful new way of formulating the human condition. Students will choose a section of the play and perform a close reading, leading to an interpretative thesis, and an essay supporting that thesis.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
In this farcical romp based on the misadventures of the two bit courtiers from Hamlet, Stoppard gives postmodern questions about truth, identity, and free will a delightfully comical twist. Students will compose a creative effort that captures one or more of these themes in a dramatic or poetic farce.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
This American classic brings absurdism home, challenging our culture’s iconic bourgeois ideals by calling into question traditional gender and family roles and calling out both liberal and conservative mores for a painful interrogation. Students will explore the powerful social and psychological issues underlying this bleak work and compose a creative piece inspired by Albee’s techniques that explores the hypocrisies and unspoken truths behind their own social interactions.
Unit 9- Joyce- The Culmination of the Modern Novel
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce- In this Bildungsroman, Joyce traces the psychological and moral growth of a budding artist in a stream of consciousness narrative that captures the social, political, religious, and aesthetic milieu of early 20th century Ireland and the young man’s unique character and perspective. A candid look at Joyce’s development as a writer, this modern masterpiece has been the subject of voluminous critical commentary. Students will survey the extensive literary criticism on the novel and construct a critical essay of their own which pursues a chosen theme or motif through the text.
Ulysses by James Joyce- We will read at least the first third of the novel, The Telemachy, which is essentially the continuation from Portrait of the development of Stephen Dedalus into a young artist. His search for a poetic and aesthetic framework from which he can forge a revitalization of Irish culture and his personal search for a comfortable identity and artistic patrimony forms the first part of this tripartite novel, generally considered the definitive modern novel. Ulysses is a tour de force of masterful writing and brilliant experimentation with language, and there is no limit to what a student can gain from close, repeated readings. Students will attempt a critical reading of a short section of the text employing a range of expert opinion to inform their work.
Unit 10- Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Forgiveness and humanity.
Students will examine this classic work of war within the family for the expressionism and nihilism characteristic of modern drama. We will examine symbols, images, music, and themes within the play. Students will write a paper evaluating the end of the play and analyzing how Blanche maintains her humanity even after severe trauma. The peer/instructor review will emphasize mature academic tone, variety of sentence structure, active voice, and strong verbs.