Great Books / English 12 Honors
Monmouth Regional High School Syllabus
Semester I – Race, Gender and Class
JSTOR Criticism:
Brian Moon. Literary Terms: A Practical
Glossary.
Devon Hodge, “Frankenstein and the Feminine
Subversion of the Novel”
Hamilton. Essential Literary Terms.
Ellen Rose, Custody Battles: Reproducing
Knowledge about Frankenstein.”
Robert DiYanni. Literature: Reading Fiction,
Poetry, Drama, and the Essay.
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
Richard Dunn, “Narrative Distance in
Frankenstein”
AP Literature and Composition released tests
Multiple choice and Free Response Essays
Videos: (clips)
Frankenstein (1931 version)
September to October
Frankenstein (Norton Critical Ed.), Mary Shelley
(1818 edition)
A Vindication of the Rights of Women – Mary
Wollstonecraft (excerpt)
Poetry:
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” –Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
“Mont Blanc” – Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Bride of Frankenstein
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein
Seminar
Frankenstein – formal essay with literary
criticism
October to November
Mont Blanc paintings
The Awakening. (Norton Critical Ed.), Kate
Chopin
Criticism from Frankenstein (Norton Ed.):
“Desire’s Baby,” Kate Chopin
Ellen Moers, “Female Gothic: The Monster’s
Mother”
Historical Contexts in Norton Critical Edition:
Anne K. Mellor, “Possessing Nature: The Female
in Frankenstein”
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar,“Mary Shelley’s
Monstrous Eve.”
“An Etiquette/ Advice Column Book Sampler”
Fashion Plates from Harper’s Bazar
Criticism Norton Edition:
Suzanne Wolkenfeld, “Edna’s Suicide The
Problem of the One and the Many.”
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Great Books / English 12 Honors
Monmouth Regional High School Syllabus
Seminar on Their Eyes Were Watching God
Elaine Showalter, “Chopin and American
Women Writers.”
Elizabeth Ammons, “Women of Color in The
Awakening.”
Essay on Their Eyes Were Watching God
Poetry: Selections from Harlem Renaissance
poets
December
Jules Chametzky, “Edna and the ‘Woman
Question.’”
Toni Morrison, Sula.
Chopin’s “Retraction”.
JSTOR Criticism:
JSTOR Criticism:
Marie Nigro, “In Search of Self: Frustration and
Desire in Toni Morrison’s Sula.”
Ramos, “Unbearable Realism: Freedom, Ethics
and Identity in The Awakening”
Seminar on The Awakening
Phillip Novak. “‘Circles and Circles of Sorrow’: In
the Wake of Morrison’s Sula.”
Essay on The Awakening
Rita Bergenholtz, “Toni Morrison’s Sula: A Satire
on Binary Thinking.”
November
Susan Neal Mayberry. “Something Other Than A
Family Quarrel: The Beautiful Boys in Morrison’s
Sula.”
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale
Hurston.
Poetry:
EBSCO Criticism:
Gwendolyn Brooks, “Sadie and Maude,” “We
Real Cool,” “Ballad of Emmet Till”
Tracy Bealer. “ ‘The Kiss of Memory’: The
Problem of Love in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were
Watching God”
Lucille Clifton, “At the Cemetery…South
Carolina, “leda 3”
JSTOR Criticism:
Margaret Marquis. “‘When De Notion Strikes
Me’: Body Image, Food, and Desire in Their Eyes
Were Watching God.”
Jennifer Jordan. “Feminist Fantasies: Zora Neale
Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
Jurgen Wolter. “From History to Communal
Narrative: The Merging of Cultural Paradigms in
Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
Seminar on Sula
Essay on Sula
December to January
Nela Larson. Passing.
Criticism in Norton Critical Edition:
Deborah Mcdowell. “Black Female Sexuality in
Passing.”
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Great Books / English 12 Honors
Monmouth Regional High School Syllabus
JSTOR Criticism:
Catherine Rottenberg. “’Passing’: Race,
Identification and Desire”.
January to February
The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood.
Criticism in Harold Bloom, ed. , Margaret
Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: Modern Critical
Interpretations. :
Sharon Rose Wilson. “’Off The Path to
Grandma’s House in The Handmaid’s Tale”
Madonne Miner. “’Trust Me.’ Reading the
Romance Plot in Margaret Atwood’s The
Handmaid’s Tale.”
JSTOR Criticism
Peter Stillman. “Identity, Complexity, and
Resistance in The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Semester 2 – Modern Odyssey
Brian Moon. Literary Terms: A Practical
Glossary.
Hamilton. Essential Literary Terms.
Robert DiYanni. Literature: Reading Fiction,
Poetry, Drama, and the Essay.
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
AP Literature and Composition released tests
Multiple choice and Free Response Essays
February - March
*Independent Reading book choice: Read for
required term paper assignment. Required for
course completion
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Criticism in Norton Critical Edition:
Mario Klarer. “The Gender of Orality and
Literacy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s
Tale.”
Fairy Tales as Archetypes:
“Little Red Cap” in The Complete Grimm’s Fairy
Tales.
Anne Sexton in Transformations “Red Riding
Hood” (poetry).
Poetry:
Margaret Atwood. “Spelling”
C.S. Lewis, “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?”
Ernest Jones, “Tragedy and the Mind of the
Infant”
Harry Levin, “An Explication of the Player’s
Speech”
March - April
Invisible Man– Ralph Ellison
JSTOR Criticism:
Excerpt from: “Circe Mud Poems”
Michel Fabre, “The Narrator/ Narratee
Relationship in Invisible Man”
Muriel Rukeyser, “Myth”
Christopher A. Shinn. “Masquerade, Magic, and
Carnival in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man”
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Great Books / English 12 Honors
Monmouth Regional High School Syllabus
JSTOR Literary Criticism
Yonka Krasteva. “Chaos and Pattern in Ellison’s
Invisible Man”
Invisible Man and Art, History, Poetry
Garrett Stwart, “Lying as Dying in Heart of
Darkness”
Jacob Lawrence -The Great Migration.
Jerry Wasserman, “Narrative Presence: The
Illusion of Language in Heart of Darkness”
Online Material from the Museum of Modern
Art Exhibit (summer 2015).
AP free response timed in-class essay on Heart
of Darkness.
April - May
May - June
Heart of Darkness– Joseph Conrad
Passage to India – E.M. Forester
History of King Leopold in the Congo
Bloom’s Criticism:
Ancillary Material in Norton Critical Edition:
Maria Davidis, “Forster’s Imperial Romance:
Chivalry, Motherhood and Questing in A
Passage to India”
Historical Backgrounds and Contexts
Photographs and maps
“King Leopold II”
“George Washington Williams”
“Roger Casement”.
Arthur Golden, “Passage to less than India:
Structure and Meaning in Whitman’s ‘Passato
to India’”
Gertrude White, “A Passage to India: Analysis
and Revaluation”
JSTOR Criticism
“Edmund Morel”
“Adam Hochschild”
Hegel, G.W.F. “Nineteenth Century Attitude
Toward Race”
Literary Criticism in Norton Critical Edition:
Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India
- (Excerpts on Mutiny of 1857 and Amritsar
massacre) Nonfiction
Literature. Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and
the Essay. 4th ed. – DiYanni
“Trifles” – Susan Glaspell
Hawthorn, Jeremy. “The Women of Heart of
Darkness”
Said, Edward W. “Two Visions in Heart of
Darkness.
Fothergill, Anthony. “Cannibalizing Traditions:
Representations and Critique in Heart of
Darkness.”
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Great Books / English 12 Honors
Monmouth Regional High School Syllabus
Great Books Course Requirements
Semester I
Race, Gender and Class
The first semester of Great Books focuses
on cultural perceptions and the interactions
of race, class, gender and sexuality as
represented in Western literature in the 19th
and the 20th centuries. Texts will be
examined within the social milieu of their
time period, and in relation to the changes in
these groups over time. Relevant
developments in science, philosophy and
culture will be explored. Assigned readings
from various schools of criticism will be
applied to the texts.
Students will analyze texts orally in formal
seminars and informal discussions. Timed
AP style essays will be completed and
graded using AP rubrics for texts, poetry,
and prose fiction selections. Ancillary
materials such as references to myths,
archetypes and literary devices will be
provided for the texts being studied.
Seminar discussions will consider the texts
individually, in relation to each other and in
relation to the cultures that produced them.
Film clips of the novels will stimulate class
discussion on questions raised by the texts
and ancillary materials.
Evaluations will include tests and quizzes on
required reading of novels and critical
pieces, essays on novels and poems, seminar
and informal discussion participation.
Formal critical essays based on the novels
and timed in-class AP style essays are
required and will be included in the
students’ evaluation.
Semester II
A Modern Odyssey
During this semester, students will select
and begin reading a novel for their critical
research report. A list of novels and due
dates will be provided. Choices are subject
to instructor’s approval. The research report
is a course requirement.
The semester’s unifying theme, the modern
odyssey, is introduced with Ralph Ellison’s
Invisible Man. The Great Migration Series
provides a subtext of the historical
relocation of African Americans in Invisible
Man. The art of Jacob Lawrence combined
with poetry from the period are studied in
conjunction with this text. Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness describes an odyssey into
the heart of Africa and the psyches of the
European colonial traders during the
scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth
century. Ancillary materials include
excerpts from history texts that describe
Belgian colonialism during King Leopold’s
reign. E.M. Forster’s Passage to India
depicts another colonial venture in a
different continent. Raj, The Making and
Unmaking of British India provides
background about the historical conflicts
that provide the setting for the book.
The Shakespearean drama for this course is
Hamlet which is studied from a modern
critical perspective that reads the play in the
context of the moral and intellectual
traditions and positions of Shakespeare’s
time. As a product of Renaissance thinking
about the nature of man and the nature of
death, Hamlet’s speeches reflect the
paradoxes present in nature – contradictions
between appearance and reality, words and
deeds, behavior and purpose.
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Great Books / English 12 Honors
Monmouth Regional High School Syllabus
Course Requirements and Grading:
Students will demonstrate literal, inferential
and critical comprehension of the assigned
texts.
Final Exam 10% of grade
Semester grades are based on:
Major tests and quizzes on assigned texts
during the semester.
Rubric graded, timed, in-class essays
analyzing novels and prose fiction and
poetry and graded oral responses during
seminars.
***A formal thesis-driven, critically
supported, research paper based on an
independent reading selection approved by
the instructor will be included in the
student’s evaluation. A passing grade on this
paper is required for completion of the
course. It will be written during the second
semester.
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