AP English in Literature and Composition
Course Criteria & Syllabus
Teacher: Mr. Craddock
Course Description:
Advanced Placement English in Literature and Composition engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature (primarily using the Western canon with a focus on British literature). Through close readings of selected texts, students will deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers.
Additionally, this course will also cover the fundamentals of the major schools of criticism (i.e. formalism, deconstruction, new historicism, mythic criticism, feminism, Freudian analysis, Marxism, Aristotelian or classical literary theory, etc.) and use these ‘focuses’ as a way of entering into varied interpretations of our reading.
After reading the selected texts, students will engage in a variety of formal and informal writing activities using the fundamentals of rhetorical theory to analyze, examine, explain, and evaluate a myriad of literary elements and their effect on the work in question.
Students may expect to write at least two formal papers per term on the required reading in addition to shorter more informal work. As always, students may revise and rewrite their papers throughout the term to improve their grade and gain a better understanding of effective writing techniques.
This course follows the curricular standards set forth by the College Board, and is designed to prepare students for college work. Information about the College Board can be found at: http://collegeboard.com
Course Objectives:
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Students will read and discuss selected works of literature
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Students will read for an understanding of human experience, culture, beliefs and values
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Students will read to critically discuss and closely analyze various texts
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Students will respond to literature in writing using primary and secondary sources
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Students will rewrite major papers using feedback from workshops and guidance from the teacher
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Students will continue to build upon their vocabulary and English/Language Arts skills previously learned
Course Requirements: (for detailed elements of the course, see below)
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Complete all summer work assignments
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Participate in all class assignments, class discussions, and projects
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Keep a notebook/binder for handouts/work in progress/writing exercises/projects (see below)
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Communicate regularly with teacher and peers
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Lead at least one class discussion per semester (see below)
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Respect the rules and procedures of the school and classroom
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This course teaches students to write an interpretation of the literature read that is based on careful observation of textual details: structure, style, themes, historical background, figurative language, imagery, symbolism, tone, etc. Students are required to write several short critical papers involving poetry, drama, and fiction. Students will draw upon textual details to make judgments about a work’s literary quality and social or cultural significance. Each paper may be rewritten after a conference with the teacher and “workshopped” with peer writers.
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Short timed and informal writing will also be completed based on fiction, poetry, and drama that we read for class. Many of these informal writings will help stimulate discussion in class and help the student focus on issues of plot, character, theme and a variety of other literary techniques.
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Students will keep a reading journal/notebook. More about this requirement is explained below. The reading notebook will help students discover what they think about the process of writing about their reading. It may also be used to facilitate and encourage class discussion.

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Students will write and rewrite expository, analytical, argumentative essays and conduct appropriate research. Some of these tasks will be timed, in-class responses. Others will require work done outside of class. These papers usually examine imagery, tone, theme, symbol, syntax, poetic techniques, and so forth to allow the student to interpret and examine meaning from the readings. Textual support and details will be embedded into the rhetorical argument of the paper(s) or writing activities. See the syllabus below for details about major critical paper topics.
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We will talk every day about some vital aspect of writing. This includes rhetorical technique (ethos, pathos, logos), structure, style, diction, syntax, figurative language and grammar mechanics. I will guide and help students achieve success in strengthening their writing before and after all writing assignments. Students will be asked to vary sentence structure, use effective word choice, use textual evidence (i.e. quotations), and use effective writing techniques to clearly support a chosen thesis or topic. Students are always able to rewrite and resubmit writing.
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Students will also be required to attempt some creative writing. This allows the student to approach the reading of literature as a writer him/herself. Most units (see below) require some aspect of creative writing in addition to the analysis and formal examination of literary texts. In this way, students will also gain knowledge concerning style, careful word choice, structure, establishing and maintaining voice, and other effects.
Course Evaluation:
25% Notebook/Discussion Leader/In-class assessments
25% Participation, behavior, attendance
25% Homework/Tests/Quizzes
25% Writing/Rewriting/Research projects
This course includes an intensive study of representative works in American, British, and world literature.
Students will read several texts from several genres (poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction, etc.) taken from the classical period of literature through the contemporary/post modern movement. The list below includes the authors and texts used in the course.
Primary Texts:
Poetry
Dante Alighieri; W. H. Auden; Elizabeth Bishop; William Blake; Anne Bradstreet; Robert Browning; Robert Burns;
George Gordon, Lord Byron; Geoffrey Chaucer; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; H. D. (Hilda Doolittle); Emily
Dickinson; John Donne; Rita Dove; T. S. Eliot; Robert Frost; Joy Harjo; Seamus Heaney; George Herbert; Gerard
Manley Hopkins; Ted Hughes; Robinson Jeffers; Ben Jonson; John Keats; Philip Larkin; Robert Lowell; Andrew
Marvell; John Milton; Marianne Moore; Sylvia Plath; Alexander Pope; Anne Sexton; William Shakespeare; Percy
Bysshe Shelley; Edmund Spenser; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Walt Whitman; William Carlos Williams; William
Wordsworth; William Butler Yeats
Drama
Aeschylus; Samuel Beckett; Anton Chekhov; Christopher Durang; T.S. Eliot; Euripides; Henrik Ibsen; Christopher
Marlowe; Molière; Plautus; Harold Pinter; Peter Shaffer; William Shakespeare; George Bernard Shaw; Sophocles;
Tom Stoppard; Oscar Wilde
Fiction (Novel and Short Story)
Chinua Achebe; Margaret Atwood; Jane Austen; Charlotte Brontë; Kate Chopin; Charles Dickens; William
Faulkner; E. M. Forster; John Gardner; Henry James; James Joyce; Franz Kafka; D. H. Lawrence; Gabriel García
Márquez; Toni Morrison; George Orwell; Mary Shelley; Jonathan Swift; Voltaire; Evelyn Waugh; Edith Wharton;
T.H. White; Virginia Woolf.

Expository Prose
Joseph Addison; Aristotle; Matthew Arnold; James Boswell; Thomas Carlyle; T.S. Eliot; Samuel Johnson; George
Orwell; Richard Steele; J.R.R. Tolkein, Virginia Woolf; William Wordsworth
Secondary Texts:
I use a variety of secondary sources as a framework for student writing assignments, both timed tests and formal essays (personal, expository, persuasive, argumentative). Many of the poets, short fiction and non-fiction writers are taken from these secondary texts. Major works and authors (novels and plays) are available through our school library for student use.
Norton
Beaty, Jerome, Alison Booth, Kelly J. Mays, and J. Paul Hunter, eds. The Norton Introduction
to Literature.
Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors.
Mack, Maynard. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces.
Strand, Mark & Eavan Boland, eds. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms .
McGraw-Hill
DiYanni, Robert, ed. The McGraw Hill Book of Poetry.
Bedford/St. Martin's
Axelrod, Rise B. St. Martin's Guide to Writing .
Prentice Hall
Roberts, Edgar J. Writing about Literature.
Harcourt Brace
Levin, Richard (ed); Tragedy: Plays, Theory, and Criticism .
Tentative Yearly Syllabus and Course Units
Term: 1
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Introduction to the course: review of MLA format; explanation of course criteria; where to find help;
College Board standards and the 9 point essay rubric
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Introduction to textual analysis; Review of summer reading
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Assignments due first week of classes: Summer reading essay; Notebook
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Unit #1: The formation of Western literature; The Classical Period o Classical Literary Forms:
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Aristotelian criticism; basic elements of dramatic poetry
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Greek tragedy; the tragic hero, dithyramb
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Epic form and narrative
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Lyric poetic forms: ode, epithalamia o Literary criticism: Introduction to various literary schools of criticism
Required reading:
Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus, Electra - Sophocles
Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound, Seven Against Thebes - Aeschylus
Medea, The Bacchae – Euripides (Robinson Jeffers, translation)
Lysistrata; The Frogs – Aristophanes
Pseudolus, The Brothers Manaechmus - Plautus
Equus - Peter Shaffer
Aristotle’s Poetics - Aristotle
Poetry:
Selections from The Metamorphoses , Ovid (Ted Hughes, translation)
Selections from Pindar’s odes
Selections from Sappho

Selections from Virgil’s Aeneid
Critical writing: Students will be required to compare or contrast plays in a 3-5 page essay. Thesis ideas will vary, but must include secondary sources to support the primary texts. Quotations and textual support must be included.
Creative writing: Students will be required to try writing an ode, epithalamia, or choral dithyramb
Term: 2
Unit #2: Literature of the Middle Ages; The formation of British literature and language
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Anglo Saxon poetic form: o Elements of Anglo Saxon poetry: alliteration, kenning, caesura, allegory; figurative language o The early English epic o Lyrics and songs; the ballad form o
Riddles & symbols
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Middle and late English poetic form: o Narrative poetry o Miracle, Mystery, Morality plays
Required reading:
Beowulf – Anonymous (Seamus Heaney, translation)
Grendel - John Gardner
Selections from Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
The Inferno - Dante Alighieri
Everyman – Anonymous
Poetry:
The Seafarer , The Ruin , medieval lyrics & ballads, selections from the Book of Exeter
Critical writing: Through a careful interpretation of the texts, students will be required to write two short critical papers. Suggested topics include: English epic form; the persistence of Anglo-Saxon poetic technique;
Characterization in Chaucer, Dante, Gardner, or White; Allegory and religious symbolism in selected text; archetypical plot structure in selected text, feminine portrayal in selected text, etc.
Creative writing: students will be asked to create a ballad or metaphorical riddle
Term: 3
Unit #3. The Renaissance; Literature of the Elizabethan period
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Dramatic poetry: English tragic form
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Sonnet forms: Shakespearean, Spenserian
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Metaphysical poets: John Donne and others; the extended metaphor; conceit
Required reading:
Dr. Faustus - Marlowe
Hamlet; Titus Andronicus ( or Othello ) ; The Tempest; King Lear - Shakespeare
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead – Tom Stoppard
Saint Joan – Bernard Shaw
Poetry:
 Selections from Shakespeare’s sonnets
 Selections from Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queen
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Selections from John Donne
 T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland or Murder in the Cathedral
Unit #4: Preparation for the AP Midterm
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Various test prep assignments; tips on taking the AP exam

Critical writing: Due to time constraints, students will closely examine a literary element or pattern found in
Shakespeare’s plays and write a critical essay exploring the idea. Students will use close reading and textual support to argue their position. Students also take a midterm exam modeled after the AP exam in May. To prepare for this, timed tests and sample questions will be given routinely.
Creative writing: students create a sonnet, using the technique of conceit, figurative language, or extended metaphor.
Term: 4
Unit #5: 17 th century Restoration; Ben Johnson and the Cavalier poets
Unit #6: 18 th century Neoclassicists
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Neo classical literary form: the unities, figures of speech, diction, verisimilitude
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Review of rhetoric technique: logos, pathos, ethos
Satire and the satirical form; the mock epic
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Poetic form: heroic verse, blank verse
Required reading:
Selections from : Gulliver’s Travels; A Modest Proposal; The Battle of the Books – Jonathon Swift
Candide - Voltaire
The Rape of the Lock – Alexander Pope
The Misanthrope - Moliere
Poetry & Essay form:
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Selected poems from Ben Johnson & the Cavalier poets
 Selections from Addison & Steele’s The Tattler; The Spectator
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Selections from A Journal of the Plague Year – Daniel Defoe
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Selected writing from Samuel Johnson
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Selected poems from Blake, Burns, & Gray
Critical writing: Students are required to write an analytical essay on one of the selected texts exploring an interpretation or analytical idea; Students may also opt to write a creative non-fiction essay using rhetorical strategies. Either way, secondary sources must be used to support the rhetorical argument.
Creative writing: Using a variety of rhetorical strategies and figures of speech, students are required to try their hand at writing a parody, mock epic, or satire.
Term: 5
Unit #7: The literature of the early 19 th century: Romantics
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Poetic form: the pastoral, the ode; free verse
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Fiction form: the gothic romance
Unit #8: The literature of the late 19 th century: Victorians
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Poetic form: metrical verse and light verse
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Fiction form: realism
Required reading:
Pride & Prejudice/Sense & Sensibility – Jane Austen (done as summer reading)
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (done as summer reading)
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (done as summer reading)
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
Dracula – Bram Stoker

Poetry:
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The Romantic poets: selections from Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Keats
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Evangelical and Victorian poets: Browning, Arnold, Houseman, Tennyson, Yeats
Critical writing: students create a thesis and argument for an analytical essay on one of the 19 th century poets; students are also required to present a speech on an aspect of Victorian verse or the work of an 19 th century poet.
Creative writing: students are required to write a pastoral, a poem in metrical verse, and/or a gothic short story.
Term: 6
Unit #9: Early 20 th century: Literature of the Modern Period
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Short prose form and style
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Absurdist theatrical form; Dadaism
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Poetic form: free verse, alienation, and experimental form
Unit #10: 20 th Century: Postmodern literature
Unit #11: Literature on film: Jane Austen, E.M. Forester, Agatha Christie, C.S. Lewis, Ian Fleming, etc.
Required reading:
Dubliners; Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man – James Joyce
Pygmalion, Arms and the Man – Bernard Shaw
The Three Sisters – Anton Chekhov
The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
Brave New World – Thomas Huxley
1984; Animal Farm – George Orwell
Waiting for Godot – Samuel Becket
The Loved One – Evelyn Waugh (done as summer reading)
The Once & Future King – T.H. White (done as summer reading)
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess (done as summer reading)
The Homecoming – Harold Pinter
The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde
2009 Summer reading selections: Kindred – Octavia Butler; Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen; The Road - Cormac
McCarthy; Jennifer Government – Max Barry
Poetry & prose:
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Selections from: Chekov, Lawrence, Stein, Frost, Eliot, Woolf, Achebe, William Carlos Williams;
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The Waste Land – T.S. Eliot
Critical writing: students prepare for the final AP exam; students are required to choose a postmodern or contemporary author from a selected list, conduct research, and write an analytical paper in MLA format on a chosen interpretive thesis.
Creative writing: students may opt to write a short absurdist play or a short story using a variety of literary techniques.
Summer Work
A variety of Victorian, Contemporary and Post Modern authors are used to prepare students for the course material in AP English Literature. Authors and book titles may include the following as part of any given year:
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison; Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton; As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner; The
Once and Future King by T.H. White; Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte; The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood;
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe; The Eyre Affair by Jasper
Fforde; Kindred by Octavia Butler; The Road by Cormac McCarthy; Dracula by Bram Stoker; etc.

Miscellaneous Items
Discussion Leaders:
All students will be assigned periodically to act as a discussion leader/facilitator during classroom discussions. The discussion leader is responsible for beginning, sustaining, and facilitating discussions on the various readings in this course. Discussion
Leaders are expected to compose relevant probing or open-ended questions pertaining to the homework reading. The leader’s goal is to help students explore and interpret some aspect of the literature. These questions will be collected and disseminated to the class for examination. All students will be graded on their participation in whole class and small group conversations throughout the year. Rubrics for Socratic seminar and discussion methods will be discussed in class.
The Notebook:
All students in this course are required to keep a notebook. Vocabulary and definitions should be collected in the notebook. The primary purpose of the notebook is to take notes during lectures, but may also be used as a reading log to help the student interact more closely with the texts he or she reads. Some tests may require the use of the notebook and will be a great help to students when preparing for the AP exam in May. Each entry should include title, author, genre, notes about setting, identification of main characters, foils, protagonist/antagonists, possible themes or motifs, a short plot summary, and the student’s personal response to the texts we read in class. Difficult vocabulary and questions about the text should be recorded also. The notebook will be collected periodically throughout the first semester.
Writing Workshops/Peer Editing Groups:
Apart from teacher feedback on writing skills and progress, throughout the course students will be given class time to share their writing and get feedback from their peers on the writing assignments given in class. Peer groups will change for the second semester or when deemed necessary.
Writing and Revision:
Writing help is always available. Additionally, there is a “no fear” writing policy that allows a student to rewrite any major essay as often as he or she cares to during a given marking period. Rewrites will be completed after a conference with the teacher or after a peer writing workshop to gain a higher grade.
Teacher Conferences:
Students are encouraged to meet with me during or after class time to discuss their progress. Parents are free to ask for a conference at any time by emailing me (bradley.craddock@rcsdk12.org) to set up a time to meet.
Lab Equipment & the class Blog/Forum:
Our class is scheduled to use a writing lab. No food or drink is permitted in the lab. Classroom assignments and helpful material will be posted on our classroom blog: http://aplitsota.blogspot.com; Additionally, students will need to respond to reading materials on our classroom forum: http://apenglishlitsota.freeforums.org
The AP Exam and College Credit:
Successful test scores of a “3" or better on the AP Exam may result in college credit. The midterm exam, in-class responses, informal homework assignments, and tests throughout the various units, are used to prepare students for the exam in May. The
AP exam acts as a final for this course, although scores are not usually received until July.
The AP exam is a requirement for the course.
Students wishing to obtain credit from this course MUST take the AP Exam in
May. Please sign below to indicate your understanding and compliance with this College Board rule:
"I understand that taking the AP exam is a requirement for this course and agree to take the exam in May. Should I fail to do so,
I also understand that this may affect my transcript, grade for the course, and receiving AP credit."

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Students Signature
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Parent/Guardian Signature