ADVANCED PLACEMENT ENGLISH
COURSE SYLLABUS
MS. DUNCAN
This course syllabus is designed to give you an idea of the direction we will take in our classroom discussions. The focus of
our literature discussions will work around both the authors' themes as well as our unit theme. We will not have time to read
all the works listed here, but we will choose from those listed. I have chosen literature which is representative of works which
usually appear on the Advanced Placement Examination, as well as works which are typically read in college freshman
composition/literature classes. While I am sure many of you will find some of the works difficult reading, I'm sure you'll find
them rewarding and enlightening.
THEME I:
Pathways and Hindrances to Human Potential
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons. (Edwin Arlington Robinson)
Myths:
"Jupiter, Juno, Vesta" from Myths and Their Meanings (22)
"Oedipus Rex" from Myths and Their Meanings
"Other Children of Jupiter" from Myths and Their Meanings (26)
Short Stories:
"The Yellow Wallpaper" Charlotte Perkins Gillman (153)
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" Ernest Hemmingway (258)
"A Worn Path" Eudora Welty(302)
"I Stand Here Ironing" Tillie Olsen (308)
Poetry:
"Ogun" E.K. Brathwaite
"The Last Night That She Lived" Emily Dickenson
"Ulysses" Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Penelope” Dorothy Parker
“An Ancient Gesture” Edna St. Vincent Millay
“The Lotus Eaters” Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Medusa” Louise Bogan
“Siren Song” Margaret Atwood
Essay:
"In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" Alice Walker (1651)
Critical essays discussing Hamlet
Drama:
Hamlet William Shakespeare
Novel:
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
Writing:
Literary Analyses, Journals, Poetry
THEME II:
The Nature of Good and Evil
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! (William Wordsworth)
Myths:
"The Four Ages of Man" from Myths and Their Meanings (13)
"The Dowry of Pandora and the Punishment of Prometheus"
from Myths and Their Meanings
Short Stories:
"The Black Cat" Edgar Allen Poe (77)
"A Pine Cone, a Toy Sheep..." Pablo Neruda
Poetry:
"Prometheus" George Gordon, Lord Byron
“Kubla Kahn” Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Tintern Abbey" William Wordsworth
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"I wandered lonely as a cloud" William Wordsworth (438)
"It is a beauteous evening" William Wordsworth (442)
"The Destruction of Sennacherib" George Gordon, Lord Byron (487)
"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" John Keats (494)
"The world is too much with us" William Wordsworth (617)
"The Solitary Reaper" William Wordsworth (618)
"Lines Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" William Wordsworth (619)
"She Walks in Beauty" George Gordon, Lord Byron (624)
"Ode to the West Wind" Percy Bysshe Shelley (626)
"La Belle Dame sans Merci" John Keats (628)
"When I have fears" John Keats (628)
"Ode to a Nightingale" John Keats (630)
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" John Keats (632)
"The Eve of St. Agnes" John Keats (634)
Essay:
"The Battle of the Ants" Henry David Thoreau
Drama:
Othello William Shakespeare
Tartuffe Moliere (Jean Baptiste Popuelin)
Novel:
Frankenstein Mary Shelley
1984 George Orwell
Writing:
Literary Analyses, Journals, Research Paper
Theme III:
Passages and Transformations
"The first step in the direction of truth is to understand the frame and scope of the intellect itself, to
comprehend the act itself of intellection" (James Joyce)
Myths:
"Europa and Her Kin" from Myths and Their Meanings (36)
"Theseus and the Minotaur" from Myths and Their Meanings (151)
Short Stories:
"The Prodigal Son" Luke (4)
The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka (191)
selections from The Dubliners James Joyce
Poetry:
"The Fall of Icarus" Charles F. Madden
"My Papa's Waltz" Theodore Roethke (421)
"Nature and Art" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (613)
"Portrait of My Father as a Young Man" Rainer Maria Rilke (701)
Drama:
Purgatory William Butler Yeats (1290)
Novel:
Arms and the Man Bernard Shaw
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
Their Eyes Were Watching God Nora Zeale Hurston
Essay:
Critical Essays Discussing the Works of James Joyce
Writing:
Literary Analyses, Journals, Poetry, Comparison and Contrast Essay
Theme IV:
Truth and Man's Search through Darkness into Light
"...of all his gifts the one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his
ability to talk, his words—the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the
most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable
darkness” (Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness)
Myths:
"The Coming of the Gods" from Myths and Their Meanings (11)
"On Mount Olympus" from Myths and Their Meanings (21)
"Gods of the Earth" from Myths and Their Meanings (100)
"The Regions of the Underworld" from Myths and Their Meanings (129)
The Bible John 8
Short Stories:
"Secret Sharer" Joseph Conrad
Poetry:
"The Starry Night" Anne Sexton
"In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see" Lawrence Ferlinghetti (535)
"Journey of the Magi" T.S. Eliott (544)
"Kubla Kahn" Samuel Taylor Coleridge (623)
"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--" Emily Dickinson (665)
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" Wallace Stevens (702)
"Summer Sestina" Marie Ponsot (788)
"Swan and Shadow" John Hollander (808)
Novel:
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
Writing:
Literary Analyses, Journals
Theme V:
Man's Search for Meaning
"All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it
was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I
was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I,
could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a
realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself" (Ellison
Invisible Man)
Myths:
"The Widow of Ephesus" Petronius (21)
"Dwellers in Tartarus" from Myths and Their Meanings (132)
“The Coming of the Gods” from Myths and Their Meanings
Short Stories:
"Araby" James Joyce (65)
“Bartleby the Scrivener” Herman Mellville
The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka
“A Rose for Emily” William Faulkner (56)
“A White Heron” Sarah Orne Jewett
Poetry:
"Sunday Morning" Wallace Stevens
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" William Butler Yeats (448)
"Same in Blues" Langston Hughes (549)
"We Wear the Mask" Paul Lawrence Dunbar (691)
"The Stalin Epigram" Osip Mandelstam (727)
"Reapers" Jean Toomer (736)
"Incident" Countee Cullen (746)
"The Unknown Soldier" W.H. Auden (752)
"The Melting Pot" Dudley Randall (762)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock T.S. Eliot (714)
Novel:
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
The Stranger Albert Camus
Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Essay:
“Myth of Sisyphus” Albert Camus
“An Explication of The Stranger” Jean-Paul Sartre
“Self Reliance” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Drama:
The Lesson Eugene Ionesco
Writing:
Literary Analyses, Journals