ADDITIONAL IDEAS/REMARKS/EXAMPLES
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ADDITIONAL IDEAS/REMARKS/EXAMPLES
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Dear AP Lit and Comp Student:
Welcome to my 2011-2012 AP Lit and Comp class. We’ll have a lot fun this year I guarantee it. And we’re going to work as well. As you know, I asked you to read two books over the summer: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I also asked you to mark up the books as you read them--at least one mark on average per page. As you may remember I suggested you might mark the following: vocabulary words, scenes or characters that remind you of something, a question mark for what is confusing, a really great line you like, something fun or sad or stupid. Most of this can be written in the margins of the pages. I will examine each of your books in first few weeks of school. If nothing is marked up, I will assume you didn’t read it and give you an F. I know you do not want to start with an F grade for each book. So, if for some reason you were stuck on a desert island for three months and did not read the books, I would suggest you do so IMMEDIATELY and hope I'm not going to look at the books for the first couple weeks.
And remember, the finest thing you can do to a book is mark it up. That means it’s yours and you love it!
Mr. Rychlewski
AP LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION 2011-2012
AP LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION 2010-2011
OVERVIEW
This course will be devoted to the in-depth study
of literature. We will read, discuss and write on canonical and non-canonical
texts from the theocratic age to our own age of anxiety and chaos. Although our
main focus will be on literature written in English, some works in translation
will be considered. The study and practice of AP test taking skills will be
embedded in the course throughout the year. The course will be conducted like a college seminar
and comply with the requirements of the AP English Course Description. Students
will have the materials read and prepared on the days of discussion. Grades will
be determined from papers, projects, essays, objective exams, practice AP exams,
classroom participation, continual re-writing of essays and, above all, attendance.
There will be two summer reading assignments:
A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel
Garcia Marquez. Both books should be marked-up extensively to show
there was close reading. Students will be graded on this. Students will also
take an objective test on each book after the beginning of the school year. Both works will be
reviewed throughout the year during various thematic units.
Themes may vary from year to year, as will the texts. A full list of possible
texts is available at the AP Lit and Comp page at THELEARNINGCURVE.NET
Here is a tentative schedule:
Quarter One:
1) Possible AP pretest assessment
2) Possible objective exams and close readings of
A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia
Marquez.
3) Discuss and write on
A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
4) In-depth analysis of poetry
Quarter Two:
1) Dramatic works TBA +
Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, focusing on the theme of "love."
2) Practice multiple choice exams and follow up discussions
3) Analysis of prose passages from AP selections and from various works of drama
and fiction
Quarter Three:
1) Thematic work with at least two novels. TBA
2) Continued poetry analysis TBA
3) Continued MC prep
Quarter Four:
1) AP post-test assessment
2) Review for the AP Exam
3) Additional drama, fiction and poetry TBA
4) Evaluative essays on literature
5) Preparation of the class AP book
MY EXPECTATIONS
During the course I want you to write to reflect, create, analyze, and evaluate. I want you to examine personal emotional reactions, imitate genres and styles, explore and articulate themes, and argue the importance of a work of literature to a society. In addition, I want you to write essays in which you demonstrate your ability to apply a theory to a text, to compare and contrast two or more texts, to render a close and well supported textual reading, to discover and articulate how a short passage in a work can embody the larger themes found in the book, and to examine your personal value systems as they compare with those of the writers studied.
I also want you to prepare for the AP exam by writing, criticizing, and rewriting AP essay prompts and by practicing and analyzing AP multiple-choice passages. These formative assessments will guide you in your development as readers, writers and thinkers. There will also be summative assessments at the end of each quarter--usually AP essay prompts and AP multiple-choice passages.
At the end of the course you should be able to:
· explain the purposes of a given rhetorical or stylistic strategy in a particular literary or non-literary text and not simply its identification.
· identify the use of voice, wit, tone, metaphor and irony as they apply to both the essay and multiple-choice portions of the AP exam.
· realize that reading is not a uniform activity and that different texts have to be read in different ways, with each text requiring a specific focus and demanding a specific skill.
· recognize a word definition in context, the purpose of an example, contrasting assumptions, referents for a modifying phrase, and inference as to the belief underlying a statement.
· write a brief and incisive introductory paragraph on the AP essay exam that conveys an authority of thinking and an understanding of the parameters of the rhetorical situation and does not simply repeat the prompt.
· develop body paragraphs that show a depth of thinking and a complexity of analysis and not just a demonstration of fluency and correct mechanics.
· conclude an essay in a crisp, inventive and provocative manner and not simply restate the opening paragraph.
· avoid paraphrase, clichés, platitudes and unsubstantiated generalizations.
· demonstrate that you’re capable of reading, discussing and writing on great literature.
I think that the best way to teach literature is to illuminate a central work with selections from other texts, to create a dialogue, if you will, between the texts. If we were studying Moby Dick, we might examine Wordsworth (The Prelude Part 6), Conrad (selections from Heart of Darkness), Faulkner (The Bear, chapter 1), Thoreau (Walden, chapter 2), Shakespeare (scenes of Lear and the Fool), Donne (selections from Holy Sonnets), Whitman (“Song of Myself” part 15), Twain (Huckleberry Finn, chapter 15) and discuss how each of these texts illuminates Moby-Dick in a different way and how each text deepens the understanding of the other. The goal of this course is only to grapple with a great work of literature, but to discover other writers whose moral imperatives, aesthetic concerns and literary strategies not only reflect the social, economic, spiritual and philosophical questions of their time but also shine a keener light on the central text in question. With that in mind, expect that fully half the course (second and third quarters) will be devoted to this approach. Finally, we should read, discuss and write to examine our values. I want this course to be more than a preparation for an AP exam. I want it to be a place where we can think about who we are and what we want to make of our lives. I want you to re-read these works of literature throughout your lives, visiting them again and again, as one returns a sacred place.
If you can't understand a text, it's impossible to write on it. With that in mind, we will spend much of the first quarter practicing close readings of texts. The majority of the focus will be on poetry since poetry comprises 40% of the AP exam. If you can understand poems, you'll probably do well on the AP test. We will study the basic elements of poems (language, sight, sound, movement, shape and voice) and the various forms (ballad, haiku, ode, sonnet, villanelle, sestina, blank verse, free verse, field poetry) throughout the 10-week quarter. But we will also delve into Jennifer Egan's exciting novel.
SOME POSSIBLE POETRY ASSESSMENTS
1) personal emotional reaction to a poem, prose passage or dramatic selection
2) close textual analysis of poem, prose passage or dramatic selection
3) argument for an antecedent scenario
4) application of critical theory to a poem
5) reflective essay on problems with interpretation
6) AP poetry analysis with re-writes
Weeks 1-4: Close reading of poetry
American poets: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Hart Crane, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, Denise Levertov, Sylvia Plath, Richard Wilbur, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and John Ashbery.
British poets: William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, and Eavan Boland.
Poetry in Translation: Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Neruda, Charles Baudelaire, Wislawa Szymbroksa, Rainer Maria Rilke, Francisco Garcia Lorca, Jacques Prévert, Czeslaw Milosz.
*
Weeks 5-6: The A Visit from the Goon Squad. (summer reading). Discussion questions TBA.
*
Weeks 7-9: Review of critical readings on poetic theory.
Ion by Plato,
A Defense of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley
An Apology for Poetry by Sir Philip Sydney
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth
The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry by Lawrence Perrine
Good Readers and Good Writers by Vladamir Nabakov
Preface to Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Decay of Lying by Oscar Wilde
From Projected Verse by Charles Olsen
Some Notes on Organic Form by Denise Levertov
QUARTER TWO: Literature that examines the concept of the love.
The quarter will be devoted to "love." What is it? Where does it come from? What did the great thinker's say? How does it change us" How long can we wait for it? We will examine poems that deal with love and use those to illuminate Love in the Time of Cholera.
We will extrapolate the theme of love from characterization, plot, setting, conflict and tone. We will do close textual readings from many works.
ASSESSMENTS
1) personal emotional reaction to the work
2) imitation of a work
3) close textual analysis of a passage
4) discussion of how a short passage relates to the large theme
5) comparison and contrast with supplementary works
6) AP prose passage analysis (re-writes will be expected)
7) AP open-essay question. (re-writes will be expected)
SCHEDULE FOR QUARTER 3 & 4 TBA
All through the year we will work individually and in teams deconstructing the AP multiple choice tests. Possible assignments may include
1) making marginal notes on texts followed by class discussions
2) triaging the difficulty of both questions and answers and then sharing strategies with fellow students
3) working in pairs and groups to arrive a correct answers
4) earning and quizzing for correct identification and use of literary terms
5) taking simulated tests
6) imitating the writing style of certain periods.
All take-home essays and in-class essay exams will be graded on a 1-9 AP scale and converted into the CPS grading scale. Students are allowed one rewrite, with the score usually going up no more than one grade.
9 = 110! Break out the champagne! 10 points applied to any other grade
8/9 = 100
8 = 95
7/8 = 90
7 = 85
6/7 = 80
6 = 75
5/6 = 70
5 = 65
4/5 = 60
4 = 55
3/4 = 50
3 = 45
Below 3 = Let's not talk about it.
Not handed in = 0 (no rewrite allowed)
All multiple-choice exams with be graded with percentages.
90 = A
80 = B
70 = C
60 = D
CENTRAL TEXTS of WESTERN LITERATURE
The Odyssey by Homer (Fitzgerald translation)
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
The Inferno by Dante (Ciardi translation)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
King Lear by William Shakespeare
Richard III by William Shakespeare
The Misanthrope by Moliere
Candide by Voltaire
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Stern
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
The Three Sisters by Anton Chekov
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
As I Lay Dying by William Fauklner
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
All My Sons by Arthur Miller
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The Leopard by Giuseppe de Lampadusa
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul
Master Harold…and the Boys by Athol Fugard
…If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvina
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Shame by Salman Rushdie
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Fences by August Wilson
Wit by Margaret Edson
Crabwalk by Gunter Grass
The History Boys by Alan Bennett
Waiting by Ha Jin
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
SHORTER FICTIONAL WORKS
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Dead by James Joyces
The Bear by William Faulkner
Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Billy Budd by Herman Melville
Short stories from You Gotta Read This (an anthology)
Text: You Gotta Read This, Edited by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard. Perennial/Hareper Collins. NY, NY, 1994
POETS
William Shakespeare, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gerald Manley Hopkins. Christina Rossetti, A. E. Housman, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, William Bulter Yeats, W. H. Auden, Langston Hughes, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, Richard Wilbur, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, Derrick Walcott, Eavan Boland, Denise Levertov, Anne Sexton, Adrienne, John Ashbery as well as translations from Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Neruda, Charles Baudelaire, Wislawa Szymbroksa, Rainer Maria Rilke, Francisco Garcia Lorca, Jacques Prévert, Czeslaw Milosz.
Text: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Fifth Edition (Paperback)
by
Margaret Ferguson (Editor),
Mary Jo Salter (Editor),
Jon Stallworthy (Editor), W. W. Norton
& Company; 5th edition (December 30, 2004)
ADDITIONAL ESSAYS
Poetics by Aristotle
On the Sublime by Joseph Addison
The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Art of Fiction Henry James
The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Tradition and the Individual Talent by T. S. Eliot
Criticism Inc. by John Crow Ransom
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin
Kinds of Criticism by Kenneth Burke
What is Literature? by Jean Paul Sartre
The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes
What is an Author? by Michel Foucault
Talking Black, Critical Signs of the Times by Henry Louis Gates
English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Text: The Norton Anthology of Theory of Criticism, Vincent B. Leitch, General Editor, W. W. Noton and Company, 2001
What follows are some additional ideas/remarks.exmaples--mostly about poetry--that might be implemented and/or referred to throughout the year.
I want you to start this year by working with poems and we’re going to approach them from two different directions. We’re going to read some in isolation--this means without considering the poet’s biography or the aesthetic, moral or philosophical concerns of either the poet or the era the poem was written in. We’ll look at the shape of a poem, the choice of words, the structure of lines and sentences, the tone, the rhythm, the imagery, the shifts, the implicit or explicit arguments, the intended audience, the antecedent scenario. In short, we’ll engage in what is called “a close reading.” It will be a slow and fruitful process. The second approach will be broader. We’ll read and discuss theories of poetry throughout history and consider selected poems to see if they support or refute these theories. I’m taking these two approaches for three reasons: 1) I want you to be able to read a poem for it’s intrinsic beauty and power but also to see how it fits into larger historical and aesthetic concerns. 2) I want to introduce you to poems and essays from various eras and acquaint you with the language of those eras because you will encounter those types of texts on the AP exam. 3) I want to instill in you a love for poetry and a confidence for understanding it. At the end of this unit I would like you to come to some appreciation of poetry and maybe even think of it as I do: as a sublime and revolutionary art.
I’ll hand out the poems we’ll read in isolation all during the quarter. Expect an average of one every other day. We’ll mark it up for 10/15 minutes, then discuss it and/or write on it. Some of the poems will be selections from previous AP prompts so we’ll get to write in a simulated AP atmosphere, compare sample AP student essays with ours, and internalize a rubric for what constitutes good writing about poetry. We’ll also take the opportunity to read poems and then answer AP multiple-choice questions about them so we can practice for that aspect of the exam.
I have selected six texts; each offers a “philosophy” of poetry. The texts begin with the ancient Greeks and continue to our day. None of these texts are exceptionally long, but some are more difficult to understand. All of the texts are on the Internet and you can read them there. If you wish to print them, please do. At font size twelve they should run around 100 pages. Be warned: some of this reading will be difficult. You have to learn how to read texts like these in college so start now. Have a dictionary next to you. Re-read, re-read, re-read.
Below are eight poems that we might apply the philosophical ideas to. All the poems are on the Internet. Students should print all these poems as well.
SOME POEMS ON POETRY
“Loving in Truth, and Fair in Verse My Love to Show” by Sir Philip Sydney
“Lovers and Madmen Have Such Seething Brains” by William Shakespeare
“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“The Poets Light But Lamps” by Emily Dickenson
“Had I the Choice” by Walt Whitman
“The Idea of Order at Key West” by Wallace Stevens
“Black Rook in Rainy Weather” by Sylvia Plath
“Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow” by Robert Duncan
Since we’ll be doing a lot of writing, you should also print the “Active Verbs List” from the “Handouts AP” section of my website: www.thelearningcurve.net. It’s important that we broaden our expressive vocabulary as soon as possible. Also print out any handouts there that pertain to the reading or analyzing of poetry.
PROJECTED ASSIGNMENTS/ASSESSMENTS FOR THIS UNIT
Please note: my official description of this course (listed above) is the one I have at the College Board, which certifies my class as an accredited AP course. While I generally follow the curriculum described above, I do vary slightly from year to year. So you may consider the assessments for this class to be a selection/combination of what is listed on the official page above and what I have proposed here. I like to offer lots of assessments and let student pick and choose what they feel they need to work on. I’m sure between the two lists, we’ll come up with something fair and reasonable.
We will return to poetry in each of the other three quarters, for two or three weeks per quarter, each time addressing another theme. I have some themes (and poems) in mind--love, childhood, war—but I’m willing to listen to your suggestions.
Mr. Michael Rychlewski
AP Literature and Composition
Schurz High School
Chicago Il.
I will hand out several poems to begin the year; the rest you have to print yourself.
10 poems to print and write on for the first quarter:
“The Portrait” by Stanley Kunitz
“Three Songs for the End of Summer” by Jane Kenyon
“Janet Waking” by John Crowe Ransom
“Daddy,” by Sylvia Plath,
“My Mother Would Be a Falconress,” by Robert Duncan,
“We Are Seven” by William Wordsworth
“The Chimney Sweeper,” by William Blake
“Fern Hill, “ by Dylan Thomas
“The Picnic” by John Logan
“On the Death of Friends in Childhood” by Donald Hall.
NOTE: Also begin reading Laurence Perrine’s “The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry” and Vladimir Nabokov’s “Good Readers and Good Writers.” (to read these texts see thelearningcurve.net under “Fine Arts”)