AP English Literature and Composition Summer Reading 2015
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AP English Literature and Composition Summer Reading 2015 Macbeth by William Shakespeare Interesting and helpful links About Macbeth from Cambridge ISBN 978­0199535835 Key facts about Macbeth Buy only this edition, for its clear text and its outstanding, useful, and enlightening notes. Looking back at Macbeth from Cambridge Patrick Stewart as Macbeth. Read the play Before your read anything, watch Rupert Goold’s production of Macbeth , starring Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood, which ran in London in 2008. Yup. You read right. Grab some popcorn or candy corn and enjoy the play as a theater experience. That enjoyment matters more than you might think. It’s the spark to understanding. Before you begin reading the play itself, read Character building, or what makes a truly great actor . Use the ten questions to guide your reading of Macbeth . They should help you begin to think about the play as drama, not just as literature. What you see on the page is the script. What you see on the stage is the play. Reading drama isn’t just about the words on the page. It’s about imagining how those words become stage action. Now that you’re prepped, begin your reading and studying of the play. Start by reading short sections, no more than one act in one sitting. We suggest these ten manageable chunks. 1.1­1.3 1.4­1.6 1.7 2.1­2.2 2.3­2.4 3.1 3.2­3.4 3.5­4.1 4.2­4.3 5.1­5.7 As you read the play, follow this sequence: FILM, SUMMARY, TEXT, FILM. FILM: Watch the scene/s in the Goold production . SUMMARY: Read the RSC summary of the chunk so that you’re absolutely clear on the plot as it appears in the original text and have some thematic insight. TEXT: Read it. Slowly. Carefully. Attentively. Resist the urge to skim. You may even consider rereading (Heed Nabokov’s words!), perhaps thinking about elements of style—diction, tone, figures of speech, imagery—which will become all too familiar very soon. Read the play aloud, with friends, if you can. FILM: Watch it again, thinking about and explaining why the production does what it does. Be an actor­director. The ten questions from Character building should help. ***As you watch for the second time, keep a journal to track your understanding of the director’s choices. You’ll submit this on day one of class. AP English Literature and Composition Summer Reading 2015 page 1 Write an essay On day one of class—that’s day one—you will present a typed essay of at least 1,000 words in proper MLA style . Shakespeare searched will be helpful as you write. More than anything, we value independence of mind. We want a gauge of your reading, thinking, and writing skill. So we’re interested in what you think and how you write. They’re no right or wrong answers here. English isn’t calculus or physics. English allows varied responses, even contradictory ones, to the same topic and rewards gutsy, informed exploration. So be informed and learn to have confidence in your own understanding and expression. The best advice? Say what you think. Follow your ideas. Invest in them. Care about them. Believe in them. With Horace and Kant, Sapere aude . To that end, consult no source other than the play, the links we’ve provided, and a dictionary . D o no Googling. Googling for knowledge is done by the man looking for the quick fix and puts you at risk of dishonor and plagiarism . Googling is for tourists; nobody likes a tourist. Remember, the penalty for plagiarism is severe: an F or a 0 on the assignment, depending on the severity of the offense. But the penalty for dishonor is still more severe: your own knowledge of your wrong. Conscience has sharp teeth. We’re looking for spark in your thinking and in your writing. While the obvious always matters, it doesn’t always matter in obvious ways. Your essay should be narrow in scope, as well as engaging in its thought and its style. Writing, no matter the type, is an imaginative and creative enterprise, a way to discover and understand—and therefore to enjoy. Never forget that. Enjoy yourself as you write and you’ll never be boring . Boring Quotient A: The reader smiles, eager to read more. B: The reader nods with pleasure, happy to have read the essay. C: The reader shrugs, happy to finish the essay and plop it on the graded stack. D: The reader grumbles, tossing the essay onto the graded stack. F: The reader grimaces, fuming, flinging the essay onto the graded stack. How to lower the BQ? Have something incisive to say and write in an informed, planned and engaging way. Spark. Think about it. Do want to hear boring stories? Do you want to hear great aunt Matilda recount her summer adventures playing Bingo in Topeka? A boring essay is that story. Don’t be great aunt Matilda. Be your favorite uncle who almost got his Ph.D. from Berkeley but dropped out to study Zen Buddhism in Kyoto before becoming an animator at Pixar, the uncle who makes Bolognese to die for, who shows up to your house unexpected with a zither under his arm and a worn trilby on his head. The relative you welcome with a big smile—and the relative who returns the welcome. A final note about SCOPE: The more imaginative and creative your thinking, the more narrow in focus your essay will be. Broad character studies about Macbeth being ambitious are cringeworthy, but sharply incisive, honed arguments born of (for instance)“the temple­haunting martlet” or equivocation or bodily fluids or Macbeth’s evolving, complex attitude toward the supernatural are en vogue. Please, include the prompt you’ve chosen under the title of your essay. After you submit your essay, we’ll supply ample feedback that you’ll use to write a revision. The draft will count for 30% of the project grade, the revision 70%. So, if you get a 70 on the draft but make an 85 on the revision, you can achieve at best an 80 on the project as a whole. AP English Literature and Composition Summer Reading 2015 page 2 Essay prompts Choose EITHER option 1 OR option 2 Option 1: Choose one of the listed quotes from the play as the starting point of your essay. We hope at least one of the quotes sparks some interesting thinking for you. Please, include the prompt you’ve chosen under the title of your essay. But ’tis strange; And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s In deepest consequence. (1.3.123­7) O come in, equivocator. (2.3.11) There’s no art To find the mind’s construction in the face. (1.4.11­2) Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. (2.3.68) [T]o beguile the time, Look like the time, bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue­­look like th’innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t. (1.562­5) Who can be wise, amazed, temp’rate, and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? (2.3.110­11) Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. (2.2.62) To be thus is nothing, But to be safely thus. (3.1.46­7) [T]his my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red. (2.2.60­2) Nought’s had, all’s spent, Where our desire is got without content; ’Tis safer to be that which we destroy, Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. (3.2.4­7) Option 2: Let one of the following quotes spark your thinking. Please, include the prompt you’ve chosen under the title of your essay. “I’m interested in human beings. They aren’t saints and they aren’t evil men, as a rule.” Graham Greene “There are bookish dreams here, sir, there is a heart chafed by theories; we see here a resolve to take the first step, but a resolve of a certain kind—he resolved on it, but as if he were falling off a mountain or plunging down from a bell­tower, and then arrived at the crime as if he weren’t using his own legs.” Dostoevsky “Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear—concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear…. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens!” Joseph Conrad ”Better his cry—much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory!” Joseph Conrad “He had faith—don’t you see—he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything—anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party.” Joseph Conrad “I believe the basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.” Flannery O’Connor “Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.” Joseph Conrad “The man who fights for his ideals is alive.” Miguel de Cervantes AP English Literature and Composition Summer Reading 2015 page 3 “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.” Dostoevsky “Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.” Samuel Johnson Recommended Reading AP reading is nothing more than GOOD reading. While you’re accustomed to reading professor­like for what writers say, in AP Lit. and Comp. you’ll read writer­like for how writers say, for how they use technique to create meaning and make literary art. Here are a few recommended—that’s recommended , not required—books offering examples of GOOD reading. They’re books best dipped into, not read through. Otherwise, follow your own interests, but find new ones, too. Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. Chapters organized by technique, with lots of closely­read examples. Prose takes the right approach and shows you what close reading means. Highly recommended. How Fiction Works by James Wood. In the same vein as Prose but more erudite. Linked series of meditations on fictional practice from an esteemed critic. Highly recommended. Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster. A classic look at fiction, according to Forster’s predilections. How to Write a Sentence by Stanley Fish. Not so inspiring as Prose or Wood but solid. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age . Discussion about reading well from a UH professor. Solid. Backwards and Forwards by David Ball A primer to reading and understanding how plays work AP English Literature and Composition Summer Reading 2015 page 4
