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AP English 2015-2016 Summer Reading Assignment

Monday, August 17 (3) - Collect summer reading assignment; ""If it were done..."; Course introduction; Tonight and tomorrow night, heed Nabokov's words and reread 1.1-1.3 of Macbeth. (1) What exactly are these witches? What information do we get about the limitations of their power? As you'll see it's really important to figure out what the witches are! An answer will help us know how to answer a central question: Is Macbeth a story of one man's free will and his decision to opt for evil over good? Or is it a tragic story of one man trying to cope with a life that is already set out for him? I hope the answer is somewhere in between. (2) You remember in the Patrick Stewart production, the first two scenes of the play are swapped. We'll want to think about why by asking ourselves what such an inversion accomplishes dramatically? 

Don't forget to register on turnitin.com:

Class ID: 10331092

Password: strake

Be advised that you should submit your summer reading draft (not the journal) to the site no later than Tuesday at 3:30 PM. 

Click to view the Crime and Punishment Reading Schedule

Tuesday, August 18 (4) - Course introduction, continued (policies); Download this Pages file and save as a template for when you write your in-class essays.; Set long-term reading assignment: Crime and Punishment, parts 1-2 must be read by Tuesday, September 8. There will be an in-class essay on the 8th. Click the assignment link for details.; How to annotate and take notes; Sample notes; Also, as you read, use this document, Questions for Analyzing Novels.

Patrick Stewart on his role in Macbeth. PBS Great Performances aired Macbeth starring Sir Patrick Stewart October 6, 2010.

Wednesday, August 19 (5) - Macbeth; For tomorrow, read "6 reading habits from Harvard". Tonight, finish rereading Act 1. Think about (1) how the dramatist works with 'levels of awareness': To this point, everything has been public knowledge. The play really picks up, though, when Macbeth and Banquo have private exchanges and especially when Macbeth speaks on stage alone. What do these levels of awareness add? (2) Where do you see continued conflict within Macbeth? 

Thursday, August 20 (6) - EC OPPORTUNITY; Macbeth; Tomorrow we will look at the entirety of Act 2 together. Reread it by then, thinking not only about the function of the Porter, but also about Macbeth's internal struggle and the ways it outwardly manifests itself.

Friday, August 21 (1) - Macbeth; FLEETWOOD; DENCH; Also, over the weekend, read the selections of the following two chapters that I've marked: Prose, Reading Like a Writer. You'll want to have reread all of Act 3 by next Friday. We'll break from our discussion for a few days and talk about your writing. Misters Callaghan and Bradley will come Friday with 1 discussion question each for us to think about before Monday's class.

Monday, August 24 (2) - Return Macbeth drafts; YOU MUST MEET WITH ME INDIVIDUALLY, OUTSIDE OF CLASS, AT SOME POINT THIS WEEK TO DISCUSS YOUR MACBETH DRAFT. 10 POINTS OFF THE PROJECT GRADE IF YOU FAIL TO DO SO. By Friday submit another draft of your Macbeth essay to turnitin.com by 8am for peer review. For tomorrow, read "Getting launched" and Trimble's model middle (from page 46-48).

Trailer for Macbeth - Starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard - in cinemas this fall

Tuesday, August 25 (3) - Arguments; Trimble's model middle; Tonight, read Wallace Stevens' "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" AND the accompanying essay by Austin Allen. Look over this document as well.

Wednesday, August 26 (4) - Revision assignment and grading notes; Due tomorrow: Read this essay that thinks in topics, noting in the margins the function of each paragraph. Does it respond to the previous paragraph? Does it establish information or define terms necessary to understand the rest of the essay?

Thursday, August 27 (5) - Writing Instruction

Friday, August 28 (6) - Peer revision; Remember to have all of Act 3 of Macbeth reread by Monday. Remember to think about your peers' discussion questions.

Monday, August 31 (1) - Macbeth and Lady Macbeth dominate the play; most of your essays either treat one of them or take the two together. And though they're not alone on stage as a pair for more than a few hundred lines of a 2000-line play, their relationship -- the way they manipulate and feed off of each other -- accounts for most of the intellectual and emotional intrigue the play offers, and, really, is what most people remember the most about this play. Today and tomorrow we'll examine their scenes meticulously. Today you'll break into small groups, with each group working through an assigned selection. Use the prompts I've given you below, or don't, and be inventive and take your own approach. I'll be walking around, listening to your discussions. The classroom should buzz today.

1.5.53-73: Is there any indication that Macbeth has sent this letter to Lady M, knowing how she will react? Is there any psychological manipulation in the letter he sends her? In her subsequent soliloquy, is it apparent that she knows her husband well? What is her attitude toward his moral ambivalence? Then Macbeth enters: Notice for a moment just what Macbeth says and doesn't say. He tells her Duncan is coming tonight, but gives no indication that he's thinking about killing Duncan. Does he want her to come to the idea on her own? Given Macbeth's earlier passionate commitment to murder, this exchange seems strangely quiet. In this sense, who has the upper hand in the exchange? What does each character want out of the other at this point in the play? 

1.7.26-83: What has happened to each character since their previous exchange? How have these events changed the way each thinks about the other? How has each's attitude toward his/her actions evolved? What is the last thing Macbeth says in his soliloquy right before this exchange? What is the juxtaposition of that thought and the immediate entrance of Lady M supposed to make us think? Who has the upper hand in this scene? Notice how Lady M's language has changed to something more visceral and attacking. How does Lady M spin M's figurative language? What does each character want out of the other at this point in the play?

2.2.9-73: This is off topic, but first of all, why don't we get to see the murder? Isn't drama all about imitation? Why is this kept from us? ***** How does this scene reveal some profound psychological differences between husband and wife? Now that the deed is done, do they see each other in ways we've yet to see? Why is Lady M so sensitive to sounds? Notice how terse the language has gotten once M enters. What is this supposed to help us understand? What else indicates extreme stress? Describe each's attitude toward the murder. NOW what does each want from the other? How do Ian McKellan and Judi Dench's performances of this scene (to the left) help you to understand what is really at stake in this scene? ***** My favorite scene in any Shakespeare play is 3.3 of Othello. This is a distant second, but a second nonetheless.

3.2.9-59: What has happened to each character since their previous exchange? How have these events changed the way each thinks about the other? How has each's attitude toward his/her actions evolved? What does the fact that Lady M says one thing to herself, but something contradictory to Macbeth tell us about her at this point? What is Macbeth keeping from his wife, and why? What has happened to their bond, if they ever had one? 3.2.53-59 are some of the most telling lines in this scene. How do they help to indicate a total reversal in their relationship?

3.4.123-145: What has happened to each character since their previous exchange? How have these events changed the way each thinks about the other? How has each's attitude toward his/her actions evolved? What does Lady M blame Macbeth's hallucinations on? What effect does each character have on the other at this point? What indicates, if anything, a complete deterioration of their relationship?

Notes from 09/01/15

Tuesday, September 1 (2) - Marital Bliss, continued

Wednesday, September 2 (3) - Macbeth, Act 4

Thursday, September 3 (4) - Macbeth, Act 5; Remember there will be an AP-style, open-ended, in-class essay on the first two parts of C&P on Monday. The question often asks you to take an idea -- death, revenge, cruelty, love, memory -- and to write an essay on how that idea informs another thematic element in the work as a whole. Here are the prompts. You will have one of the three assigned to you at the beginning of class on Tuesday.

You may bring your book and any handwritten notes you have. You will need a charged iPad, too. Have this (revised) Pages template with MLA formatting ready. Make sure you know how to send a Pages doc to PDF to Google Drive and then to turnitin.

Friday, September 4 (5) - Mass of the Holy Spirit (NO CLASSES)

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Due Dates

Monday, August 17 - Macbeth Journal

Monday, August 17 - Macbeth Essay

Monday, August 31 - Macbeth Revision 

Tuesday, September 8 - Crime and Punishment, Parts 1-2 In-class Essay

“To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus.”
Nabokov

Nabokov

“... one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do no have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous achievement of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is - a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed) - a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book.”

- Nabokov, Lectures on Literature

Suggested Reading

Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence

E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel

David Mikics, Slow Reading in a Hurried Age

Francine Prose, Reading like a Writer

James Wood, How Fiction Works

“In reading exam papers written by misled students, of both sexes, about this or that author, I have often come across such phrases — probably recollections from more tender years of schooling — as ‘his style is simple’ or ‘his style is clear and simple’ or ‘his style is beautiful and simple’ or ‘his style is quite beautiful and simple.’ But remember that ‘simplicity’ is buncombe. No major writer is simple. The Saturday Evening Post is simple. Journalese is simple. Upton Lewis is simple. Mom is simple. Digests are simple. Damnation is simple. But Tolstoys and Melvilles are not simple..."

-Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature

Below are 5 of my annotated pages from various texts and 1 of David Foster Wallace's copy of DeLillo's Players. The pages of the texts that you will be working with most closely should look just like these.

The College Board's official course description:

An AP English Literature and Composition course engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students consider a work’s structure, style and themes, as well as such smaller-scale elements as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism and tone. 

Strake Jesuit's official course description:

In AP Lit & Comp. you will learn to read like an artist-critic, studying texts not only for their development of themes and cultural ideas but also for their technical mastery and innovations. How do writers employ language to create texts that engage their cultural moment and literary history in rich, often ambiguous ways? Why is first-person the right choice in A Farewell to Arms? Why so many disease images in Hamlet?  What makes Joyce's sentences so terribly beautiful? You will read literature from a variety of genres and periods, always with an eye to unlocking its deeper mysteries. To read well you will first unlearn bad habits. No longer will quick reading, that nervous skim before class, do. No. You will learn to read slowly, to savor each sentence, each line, each paragraph or stanza for its multiple meanings, its suggestions, its silences. In time, you will learn the wisdom of Nabokov's remark that you can only re-read a book. Your writing assignments will be frequent and varied, from one-page response essays due the day of a reading, to longer, more formal essays of evaluation and analysis, to expository and creative pieces. Always, you will learn to sharpen your thinking and hone your writing, to give both an edge gained only by rethinking and rewriting. You will have conferences with me before and after essays are due. You will edit each other's essays for argument and style. And you will revise, revise, revise. This class offers an intensive reading experience and a full-on writing workshop.

AP Jargon

General Literary Terms

allegory, allusion, anachronism, arete, bildungsroman, canon, characterization, chiasmus, close reading, conceit, diction, epiphany, epistolary novel, fable, fabliaux, frame narrative, genre, irony, leit-motif, metafiction, mood, motif, novel, novella, poetry, prose, satire, symbol, tone, verisimilitude, verse   

Elements of Fiction

character, climax, conflict, denouement, dialogue, dynamic character, foil, narration, plot, point of view, suspense, tension, unity, unreliable narrator  

Poetic Terms

alexandrine, alliteration, anapest, apostrophe, assonance, ballad, blank verse, caesura, canticle, canto, carpe diem, consonance, contrapasso, couplet, dactyll, elegy, end rhyme, english sonnet, enjambment, epic, epic simile, free verse, half rhyme, heroic couplet, imagery, in medias res, internal rhyme, lyric, metaphysical, meter, ode, pastoral, pathetic fallacy, personification, prosody, quatrain, rhyme, slant rhyme, sonnet, sprung rhythm, stanza, terza rima, verse   

Drama Lingo

blank verse, catastrophe, catharsis, chorus, comedy, deus ex machina, dialogue, drama, hamartia, hubris, metadrama, miasma, mimesis, monologue, peripeteia, stasimon, strophe, tragedy, tragic flaw, tragic hero  

Rhetorical Devices

a priori, anadiplosis, anaphora, antithesis, apophasis, asyndeton, hyperbole, parallelism, parataxis, pathos, polysyndeton, procatalepsis, stychomythia, synesthesia

Figures of Speech

catachresis, euphemism, idiom, metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron, paradox, personification, simile, synecdoche, synesthesia