A.P.® ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION
SYLLABUS
ENGLISH 12 ADVANCED PLACEMENT:
The goal of the English 12 A.P. program is success on the English Literature and Composition
Advanced Placement Examination, designed by the Educational Testing Service (offered by the
school district in early May) or on an alternate test sanctioned by an individual college or
university. These tests attempt to measure the ability of students to examine closely a work of
literature, to understand its structure and theme, to recognize formal and informal styles, and to
evaluate an author's purpose, stylistic techniques, etc. A significant portion of the A.P. exam
involves writing critical essays; consequently, most of this course involves reading a variety of
literary genres, participating in discussions of them in class, and writing about them in prepared
or impromptu essays. Preparation for the class involves mandatory summer reading to be
addressed in the first composition in the course, in a quiz during the first week of class, and in a
project managed by the students.
The standards for this course are necessarily rigorous. Students must learn and refine the skills
of close reading and critical writing, primarily by discussing and writing about the many different
works on this syllabus. An A in the class means that a student can do similar work in any highly
competitive college or university. Since our high school weights A.P. grades with an additional
ten percent for the determination of G.P.A. and class rank, students should understand that only
superior work can earn an A grade.
Student grades will reflect their score on critical writing assignments, on quizzes, and in
individual or group projects. The high school’s Composition Checklist will serve as the basis for
all composition scoring; all essays will receive both a mechanics grade (one third of the total
score) and a content grade (two thirds of the total score). Students will go over returned graded
essays with me individually and in tutorials. Common errors in style and mechanics will merit
review by all members of the class. In addition to essays, quizzes and projects, students will
prepare “difficulty papers” on specific works, in which they identify problems with
understanding and offer possible solutions or clarifications.
The A.P. course will culminate with a major research project on a literary work determined by
the teacher. A final paper showing evidence of scholarly research and independent analysis and
evaluation will meet the requirements of both the A.P. course and of the high school English
department. Students will use exclusively the M.L.A. Handbook, Sixth Edition(or later edition)
as their style manual, and they will review and understand the departmental policy on plagiarism.
The research paper is a course requirement and high school requirement for graduation;
therefore, failure to hand in a paper or to avoid plagiarism will keep a student from graduating.
Details of this assignment will appear in a specific section of the syllabus.
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Grading system:
Course Work
Impromptu essays
Prepared essays
Quizzes, tests, projects, class discussion
Percent of final grade
30%
60%
10%
Numerical average
98-100, 94-97, 90-93
88-89, 84-87, 80-83
78-79, 74-77, 70-73
68-69, 64-67, 60-63
0-59
Letter grade
A+, A, AB+, B, BC+, C, CD+, D, DF
PARTIAL SYLLABUS
Unit 1: Summer Reading—two weeks
After a test on the specific works, students will work in small groups to prepare oral
presentations on one of the summer reading books. Students will teach one another the major
elements of style that each writer uses in his or her work. The summer reading program requires
the following books:
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ken Kesey
A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving
Beloved
Toni Morrison
The Elements of Style
Strunk and White
Unit 2: The Development of English Narrative—three weeks
Students will examine the elements of narrative style as it evolved through works such as those listed
below. Epic form, alliterative verse, courtly romance, and consistency of character are some of the
topics for study and discussion. Students will consider the development of the narrative, especially
the Germanic/English epic, the early design of plot, characterization, setting, etc. Students will write
essays on each of the works and will take quizzes on details of the plot. As preparation for The
Canterbury Tales, students will learn the basic sounds and spellings of Middle English. They will
take an oral test on their ability to read and translate Middle English, and they will submit their own
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entry into the General Prologue of a character appropriate to the pilgrimage. This entry will be
written in Middle English with a Modern English translation.
Beowulf
anonymous
Notes and readings from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Essay
assignment: What heroic qualities does Beowulf possess that make him an appropriate
representative of the values of the time period? In what way does Beowulf embody the
archetypal hero?
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight anonymous
Essay assignment: In a succinct essay (one page) prove the consistency of the character Sir
Gawain. You will have to think about what consistency of character means, and you will
have to provide a brief definition or explanation. Support your opinion with evidence from
the text of the work. Be sure to examine Gawain as he is developed in Fit 1 and as he is
faced with his final test in Fit 4. It will be important for you to look at him across the four
fits, including the conclusion.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Essay assignment: Choose any one of the tales of the Canterbury Tales, and discuss the
appropriateness of the story to the character who tells it. Make sure to support your thesis
with references to the text of the character's tale and individual prologue and to the General
Prologue.
Unit 3: Poetry
Poems of the 17th Century
Shakespeare, Jonson, Marvell, Donne, Shirley, Suckling,
Traherne, Crashaw, Herrick, Herbert, Ralegh, Cowley,
Milton, Dryden and others
Poems of the 18th Century
Pope, Swift, Addison, and others
Poems of the 19th Century
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Tennyson,
Browning, Arnold, and others
Poems of the 20th Century
Eliot, Auden, Thomas, Plath, Hughes, Larkin, Wilbur,
Heaney, Szymborska, Justice, and others
Essay assignments: Students will write weekly timed essays on a variety of poems and poets.
Initially, the emphasis will fall on the reading of a poem and on extracting meaning from the text.
Students will examine poetic forms, meter (a short lesson in scansion), rhyme, diction, tone,
imagery, and structure. Subsequent assignments will note the relationship of form to function,
the establishment of mood, and the identification and interpretation of symbolism. Some of the
essay assignments will come directly from old A.P. exams. Some of the assignments follow:
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Explain in your own words what John Donne’s poem “The Flea” says. Your introduction should
summarize generally the theme of the poem; the body of your essay should give a more detailed explanation of the
meaning of specific lines.
Essay:
Essay:
Translate Donne’s poem “The Relic.” Describe the attitude of the speaker to his love, and indicate the kind of
relationship that they have. What does the idea of a relic have to do with this poem?
Essay: In Ralegh’s “To His Coy Mistress,” identify the major divisions of the poem and any consequent shift
in emphasis or mood. Substantiate your observations with references to the text.
Essay: Compare and contrast T.S. Eliot’s Love Song for J. Alfred Prufrock with “To His Coy Mistress.”
How does the twentieth century view of time compare with that of the seventeenth century?
Essay: Both of the following poems by English poets (John Dryden and William Blake) describe the city of
London. Which is the older poem? What clues in style, attitude, or structure influence your answer?
Essay: Write a detailed analysis of the diction of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Inversnaid,” and explain
the appropriateness of the author’s choice to the effect of the work.
Essay: Read Philip Larkin’s poem “Poetry of Departures” carefully, and then write an essay in which you
discuss how the poet’s diction reveals his attitude toward the two ways of living mentioned in the poem.
Essay: Read Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” carefully. Then write an essay in which you describe how the
speaker’s attitude toward loss in lines 16-19 is related to her attitude toward loss in lines 1-15. Using specific
references to the text, show how verse form and language contribute to the reader’s understanding of these
attitudes.
Essay: Note carefully where the mood changes in W.H. Auden’s poem “As I Walked Out One Evening.”
Identify the diction that contributes to this change.
Essay: Examine carefully the two poems entitled “Ozymandias.” Compare and contrast the style of the
authors; evaluate the effect of the two works; and select the better of the two, explaining the reasons for your
choice.
Essay: Read Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain” carefully. Then, taking into consideration
the title of the poem, analyze how the poetic devices convey the speaker’s attitude toward the sinking of the
ship.
Identify the primary metaphor of Abraham Cowley’s poem “The Thief,” and explain the effectiveness of that
metaphor in conveying the speaker's attitude towards his love.
Essay:
In addition to class discussions and prepared and impromptu essays on the poetry, students will
complete a cooperative project on poetry involving an explication du texte. Small groups will take
responsibility for an accurate reading, “translation,” analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of a specific
work. Teacher evaluation will include areas on a rubric familiar to the students.
Unit 4: Drama
 by Horace Smith and Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Because of time constraints, the unit on drama is the shortest and the fastest. Students cover four
plays—roughly one per week—during the second half of the third marking period. Readings occur in
class while students continue reading the various novels on the syllabus.
Antigone by Sophocles: Students review the characteristics of Greek tragedy and read notes on The
Poetics of Aristotle.
Macbeth and King Lear by William Shakespeare: Macbeth completes a mandatory cycle of
Shakespearean tragedy; King Lear (or Othello as an option) supplements that cycle. Students
read and investigate the plays in class, applying the criticism of A.C. Bradley in his
Shakespearean Tragedy.
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett: Students examine the theatre of the absurd in Beckett’s
play, comparing the views on life of the absurdist and the tragic playwright.
Unit 5—The Novel
The particular unit on the novel involves reading throughout the school year. Beginning with a
brief review of the works on the summer reading list, the unit looks at the evolution of the novel
from earlier narrative forms. Students examine the significant differences between the romance
and the novel as delineated in The English Novel and the Principle of Its Development.
Investigation includes both a historical/biographical and formalistic approach. Students will
examine the development of plot and character; the sophistication of setting; the depiction of
social class; the influence of scientific, psychological, philosophical/theological, sociological,
political and other forces on the form and function of the genre. The study of each work will
include teacher lecture, independent student research, and class discussion. Students will take
tests or quizzes on each work to test their familiarity with the plot; these tests will typically
involve identification and explication of short passages from a work, as well as short essays.
Formal critical essay assignments will accompany each novel to insure that students have a close
acquaintance with each text and that they substantiate observations about the work with specific
references. The specific list of novels includes the following:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Students will learn about the Age of Sensibility and the
novel of sentiment. They will evaluate their experience of Austen’s work in the following
prepared essay assignment:
Essay: Read the two quotations below, and choose the one that more closely supports your view of Austen and
her novel Pride and Prejudice. Substantiate your choice with references to the text.
George Henry Lewes:
“First and foremost let Austen be named, the greatest artist that has ever written, using the term
to signify the most perfect mastery over the means to her end. There are heights and depths in
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human nature Miss Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of passionate
existence into which she has never set foot; but although this is obvious to every reader, it is
equally obvious that she has risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she has not
seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a perfect orb, and vital. Life, as
it presents itself to an English gentlewoman peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village,
is mirrored in her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest for all
time.”
Charlotte Bronte:
“Anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of
place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a
well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré or extravagant. She does her business of
delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese
fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement,
disturbs him with nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even
a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood ... What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves
flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes
through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death--this Miss Austen
ignores....Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather
insensible (not senseless woman), if this is heresy--I cannot help it.”
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: Students will examine the relationship between
setting and theme, especially in the sub-genre of the regional novel. They will compare and
contrast the means by which the dramatist and the novelist present tragedy. They will consider
the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the agrarian tradition, specifically the impact on
literature.
Essay: An effective literary work does not merely stop or cease; it concludes. In the view of some critics, a work
that does not provide the pleasure of significant "closure" has terminated with an artistic fault. A satisfactory ending
is not, however, always conclusive in every sense; significant closure may require the reader to abide with or adjust
to ambiguity and uncertainty.
In an essay discuss the ending of Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native. Explain precisely how and why the ending
appropriately or inappropriately concludes the work. Do not merely summarize the plot.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville: Students will examine the novel as epic form and as the
convergence of several powerful theological/philosophical cross-currents. They will review
concepts from American Transcendentalism and Presbyterianism. They will recognize Biblical
and mythological allusion and will note important symbolism. They will examine one of the
bedrocks of American industry—the American whaler.
Essay:
Analyze the critical comment below, and apply it to at least one cetological chapter from Moby Dick. Discuss
the specific chapter and its overall relation to the theme of the novel. Pay special attention to the last
paragraph or two, the sections that become philosophical.
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“The skill of the preparatory passages [in Moby Dick] is easily and, therefore, frequently overlooked. One is
either irritated at their incongruity or one is impatient at the delay in getting the voyage and its concomitant adventure
going. One must remark, however, the way in which the great central symbol of the novel is first intimated then
reiterated in countless small details: the picture on the inn wall, the Spouter Inn, the pulpit of Father Mapple, the
Pequod's tiller, Ahab's prosthesis, the implements of whaling, etc., all prefigure the final, climactic encounter with the
white whale itself.
Ishmael, the recorder of and philosopher over the events of this voyage, must make whaling and whales a part of
the reader's store of information before it can be apotheosized into its epic grandeur. He does this by ending almost every
cetological chapter with a philosophic rumination that broadens and deepens the reader's views.Ӡ
The Secret Sharer and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: Students will consider the
internalization of the classic conflict of good and evil by investigating the impact of Freudian and
Jungian psychology on literature. They will investigate the significance of the doppelganger in
fiction, of the confessional narrative, of the story-within-a-story as framing device, and of the voice
of the artist in the narrative. Students will study the story as political commentary on imperialism
and will look for parallels in other eras and in other societies.
Essay: Analyze the diction and the tone of the following passage from the conclusion of Heart of Darkness.
Discuss the way that the language of this passage contributes to the theme of the novella.
" '. . . Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once?" she was saying. "He drew men towards him by what was
best in them." She looked at me with intensity. 'It is the gift of the great,' she went on, and the sound of her low voice
seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds, full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever heard--the
ripple of the river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of the crowds, the faint ring of
incomprehensible words cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal
darkness. 'But you have heard him! You know!' she cried.
"'Yes, I know,' I said with something like despair in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that was in
her, before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness
from which I could not have defended her--from which I could not even defend myself.
" 'What a loss to me--to us!'--she corrected herself with beautiful generosity; then added in a murmur, 'To the
world.' By the last gleams of twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes, full of tears--of tears that would not fall.
" 'I have been very happy--very fortunate--very proud,' she went on. 'Too fortunate. Too happy for a little
while. And now I am unhappy for--for life.'
"She stood up; her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaining light in a glimmer of gold. I rose, too.
" 'And of all this,' she went on mournfully, 'of all his promise, and of all his greatness, of his generous mind, of
his noble heart, nothing remains--nothing but a memory. You and I----" 'We shall always remember him,' I said hastily.
" 'No!' she cried. 'It is impossible that all this should be lost--that such a life should be sacrificed to leave
nothing--but sorrow. You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them, too--I could not perhaps understand--but others
knew of them. Something must remain. His words, at least, have not died.'”
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce: The last novel and major work on the A.P.
syllabus, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man involves students in an independent, culminating
research project eventuating in a formal paper. Using the latest edition of the M.L.A. Handbook as
style manual, students formulate a topic based either on their own reading of the text or on their
selection from a list of topics that invite investigation. Over the years this list of topics has included
A Portrait as autobiography—fiction or non-fiction, A Portrait and Irish political history, the
influence of Catholicism on Joyce and A Portrait, Joyce’s use of color, water imagery in A Portrait,
† Ronald Mason, The Spirit above the Dust, London: John Lehman, 1951.
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the theme of rejection in A Portrait, the presence or absence of epiphany in A Portrait, an
investigation of Joyce’s aesthetic principle in A Portrait, the application of the Daedalus myth in A
Portrait, Joyce’s use of sense imagery, etc. Students must work within a set of formal research
parameters that include deadlines for bibliography and note cards, formal outline, rough draft, and
final paper, which must reach the teacher’s hands by 3:00 pm on the due date. Students review the
rules against plagiarism and master the ability to paraphrase, as well as quote, information and to cite
their sources.After the submission of the paper, students share their conclusions with one another in
informal presentations in class.
Abrams, Meyer Howard. A Glossary of Literary Terms.
Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Poetry.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1998.
Harrison, George Bagshawe, ed. Major British Writers.
Strunk, William, and E.B. White. The Elements of Style. 3rd Edition.
Murfin, Ross C., and M. Supryia. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms.
Salvatori, Mariolina Rizzi, and Patricia Donahue. The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty.
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