AP Literature & Composition Syllabus 2011-2012
Henderson
Unit I: Entering the conversation
Approximate dates: 9/12 – 10/28
Unit II: Poetry analysis as a foundation for critical reading/
introduction to transcendentalism
Approximate dates: 10/31 – 11/23
Essential questions:
 What is the relationship between author, text, and audience?
 Why is it fair to say that there is no truly original story?
 How does a work communicate the anxieties of its age?
Concepts, terms, and themes:
Archetypes, voice, paradox, rhetorical devices, tragedy, fortune’s wheel,
corruption, redemption
Texts:
Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Foster, “A Still, Small Voice (or a Great, Galumphing One)”
Wainaina, “How to write about Africa”
Shakespeare, King Lear
Smiley, A Thousand Acres
Smiley, “The Circle of the Novel”
Additional resources:
Film, King Leopold’s Ghost
PowerPoint, Booker’s Seven Basic Plots
Supplement, “Rhetorical Devices in the Poisonwood Bible”
Supplement, “Muntu”
Supplement, “Voice: the slipperiest of all elements”
Supplement, “Dramatic terms for King Lear”
Assessment*
9/9
Comparative essay on King Lear and A Thousand Acres (100 pts)
_____ In-class essay on The Poisonwood Bible (50 pts)
_____ In-class essay, AP Prompt 3 (50 pts)
_____ In-class essay, AP Prompt 2 (50 pts)
_____ Lear/Acres role play (20 pts)
_____ AP exam practice (NFG)
Essential questions:
 Why and how should poetry be approached as art?
 What can poetry especially achieve through its compact form and
structural demands?
 How can reading poetry improve our overall critical reading skills?
 How does reciting poetry enrich the experience?
Concepts, terms, and themes:
Poetry movements and genres, SOAPStone analysis, meter and rhyme,
devices of sound, figurative devices
Texts:
Poems from The Academy of American Poets (www.poets.org)
Poems from The National Endowment of the Arts (www.poetryoutloud.org)
Emerson, “The Over-Soul”
Emerson, “The Poet”
Whitman, “Song of Myself”
Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden”
Johnson, “The Black Man’s Burden”
Additional resources:
Supplement, “Poetry Handbook”
AP Literary terms Wiki (student-generated glossary)
Assessment*
_____ AP Wiki entry (20 pts)
_____ Poetry Symposium (50 pts)
_____ In-class essay, AP Prompt 1 (50 pts)
_____ AP exam practice (NFG)
_____ Emerson responses (100 pts)
_____ Song of Myself (50 pts)
12/8
Poetry Out Loud classroom competition (50 pts)
* All due dates are tentative and subject to change.
AP Literature & Composition Syllabus 2011-2012
Henderson
Unit III: Hawthorne
Approximate dates: 11/28 – 12/21
Unit IV: The Modern American
Approximate dates: 1/3 – 4/5
Essential questions:
 How can “The Custom House” act as a key to The Scarlet Letter?
 How does Hawthorne’s self-consciousness pervade his works?
 What is the relationship between internal and external conflicts?
Essential questions:
 What is the nature of our American mythology?
 Can we define, defend, and cultivate morality?
 What are the challenges facing modern man?
 What is the relationship between the natural and mechanized
worlds?
 How does style affect tone and meaning?
Concepts, terms and themes:
Symbolism, semiotics, dual identities; heresies, blasphemies, and
witchcraft; Puritanical influences, American identity, reactions to perceived
authority, hypocrisy, relationships between the demonic and the divine
Texts:
Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil”
Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”
Hawthorne, “The Birthmark”
Concepts, terms, and themes:
Modernism, point of view, disillusionment, syntax and style, The Lost
Generation, castration and impotence, waste lands, indulgences, narcotics
(real and metaphorical), Grail quests
Texts:
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Foster, “Never Trust a Narrator with a Speaking Part”
Neuhaus, “Gatsby and the Failure of the Omniscient I”
Eliot, The Waste Land
Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Ellison, Invisible Man
Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (tentative)
Additional resources:
Film, The Scarlet Letter
Supplement, excerpts from The New England Primer
Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
Prezi, “Transcendentalism”
Assessment*:
_____ Comprehension test on The Scarlet Letter (50 pts)
_____ Hawthorne Short Story Fishbowl (50 pts)
12/22 Analysis Essay on The Scarlet Letter (100 pts)
_____ AP Exam practice (NFG)
Additional resources:
PowerPoint, “The Grapes of Wrath”
Supplement, “Grapes, Grapes Everywhere”
Supplement, “The Bible and the Grapes of Wrath”
Supplement, “You Might be a Christ Figure If…”
Supplement, “Jim Crow Stereotypes”
Assessment*:
_____ Composite analysis essay on the unit’s novels (150 pts)
1/6
In-class essay, The Great Gatsby (50 pts)
2/6
In-class essay, The Grapes of Wrath (50 pts)
3/5
In-class essay, Invisible Man (50 pts)
_____ In-class essay, AP Prompt (50 pts)
_____ AP Exam practice (NFG)
* All due dates are tentative and subject to change.