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Monday, October 19 (5) - NO SPLIT CLASS ON WEDNESDAY (WRITING INSTRUCTION); Crime and Punishment, Epilogue; Tomorrow you'll have your next vocabulary quiz, focusing on units 5-6. I'd also like you to read the selection of your Killgallon text associated with participial phrases (80-83). Then, complete Practice 3, numbers 3-5 AND Practice 8, numbers 1-4. These must be hand-written on loose-leaf paper, ready to be handed in at the end of your vocabulary quiz. By Wednesday, 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?
Tuesday, October 20 (6) - Vocabulary Quiz, units 5-6; Killgallon; Tonight, read this essay, using the same process as last night. We'll be looking at both "Money Talks" and "Pond Scum" tomorrow.
Wednesday, October 21 (1) - NO SPLIT CLASS (WRITING INSTRUCTION); Essays that think in topics
Thursday, October 22 (2) - Openers
Friday, October 23 (3) - Closers; Over the weekend read chapters 1-2 of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych (found in your anthology, 264-275) and "The Secrets of Leo Tolstoy."
Monday, October 26 (4) - Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych; Read chapter 3 of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych by Wednesday (275-9).
Tuesday, October 27 (5) - Prose analyses
Wednesday, October 28 (6) - Prose analysis revision during activity period; Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych; Read chapters 4-6 of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych by tomorrow (279-288).
Thursday, October 29 (1) - Tolstoying with words; Read chapters 7-8 of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych by tomorrow (288-294).
Friday, October 30 (2) - Set Detail Assignment; Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych; Finish the novella over the weekend (295-300) AND read James Wood's chapter on DETAIL.
Monday, November 2 (3) - Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
Tuesday, November 3 (4) - In-class prose analysis; Tonight, watch Professor Kagan's lectures below (from lecture 15, 36:11 to lecture 16, 13:52).
Wednesday, November 4 (5) - Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
Thursday, November 5 (6) - Vocabulary Quiz, units 7-8; A Few Sentence Patterns; Sentence combining exercises (finish for homework what we did not complete in class); Bring Killgallon tomorrow.
Friday, November 6 (1) - Killgallon catch up; Sentence work
Questions for thinking about DETAIL (derived from James Wood's chapter on Detail in How Fiction Works):
Does the detail "draw abstraction toward itself and see to kill that abstraction with a puff of palpability" -- that is, does it "tend toward substance?"
Is it specific for specificity's sake?
Is this detail comic?
Is it making an allusion?
Is there insufficient detail in one area but overspecific detail in another?
Does the detail inform the narrator's attitude?
Do the detail and other like details highlight a larger theme in the novel?
Is it one of James Wood's "lazy stock-in-trade" details or does it serve a thematic function?
(1) the cinematic sweep, followed by the selection of small, telling details (“It was a large room, filled almost entirely by rows of antique computers; there was an odd smell of aftershave and bacon”)
(2) the careful mixing of dynamic and habitual detail (“At one of the computers, a man was unhurriedly eating a spring roll; traffic noise pierced the thick, sealed windows; an ambulance yelped by”)
(3) the preference for the concrete over the abstract (“She was twenty-nine, but still went home every evening to her mom’s ground-floor apartment in Queens, which doubled by day as a yoga studio”)
(4) vivid brevity of character-sketching (“Bob wore a bright-yellow T-shirt that read ‘Got Beer?,’ and had a small mole on his upper lip”)
(5) plenty of homely “filler” (“She ordered a beer and a sandwich, sat down at the table, and opened her computer”)
(6) more or less orderly access to consciousness and memory (“He lay on the bed and thought with shame of everything that had happened that day”)
(7) lucid but allowably lyrical sentences (“From the window, he watched the streetlights flicker on, in amber hesitations”)
Monday, November 9 (2) - Revision: The Day Dylan Got It Right, All Things Considered, NPR, 11/06/15; Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych - How does one cope with life in the face of slow, inch-by-inch death? SIGN UP FOR PA CONFERENCE - I'VE COMBINED YOUR SHEET WITH THE ENGLISH 4 SHEET; By next Monday, read the first 4 chapters of Book One of The Age of Innocence.
Tuesday, November 10 (3) - Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych - How does one cope with life in the face of slow, inch-by-inch death?
Wednesday, November 11 (4) - Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych - "Stupefied misery"; How does the last chapter explain the narrator's claim from chapter 1 that "the expression on the face said that what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly?" For tomorrow I'd like you to read Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" (30-35) in your anthology. We'll use this to help hone our understanding of point of view. Respond to questions 2 and 3 in your notes.
Thursday, November 12 (5) - Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily"; For tomorrow, complete (these may be typed) the following exercises from Focus 1 (Sentence Unscrambling) of your Killgallon text: Practice 1, numbers 5-7, Practice 2, number 1 AND Practice 4, using one body paragraph from your Hamlet thematic essay. I want to see both the old version of the paragraph and the revised version.
Friday, November 13 (6) - Vocabulary Quiz, units 9-10; Killgallon; Over the weekend, read the first four chapters of The Age of Innocence (3-26). Use this reading guide put together by Mr Volding. I'll be leading discussions next week. You'll take over, in groups, beginning after the Thanksgiving holiday. More on those specifics next week.
The lecture explores the question of the state of being dead. Even though the most logical claim seems to be that when a person stops P-functioning he or she is dead, a more careful consideration must allow for exceptions, such as when one is asleep or in a coma.
Professor Kagan puts forward the claim that Tolstoy's character Ivan Ilych is quite the typical man in terms of his views on mortality. All of his life he has known that death is imminent but has never really believed it.
“One peculiar feature of Tolstoy’s style is what I shall term the “groping purist.” In describing a meditation, emotion, or tangible object, Tolstoy follows the contours of the thought, the emotion, or the object until he is perfectly satisfied with his re-creation, his rendering. This involves what we might call creative repetitions, a compact series of repetitive statements, coming one immediately after the other, each more expressive, each closer to Tolstoy’s meaning. He gropes, he unwraps the verbal parcel for its inner sense, he peels the apple of the phrase, he tries to say it one way, then a better way, he gropes, he stalls, he toys, he Tolstoys with words.”
Study Links
"6 reading habits from Harvard"
Achebe, "The Truth of Fiction"
Questions for analyzing novels
“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
Required Course Texts
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, 11th edition
Vocabulary from Latin and Greek Roots VI
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment: Pevear & Volokhonsky Translation (Vintage Classics)
Euripides, Medea (trans. Diane Arnson Svarlien)
Killgallon, Sentence Composing for College
Wharton, The Age of Innocence (Norton Critical Edition)
Students should also expect to purchase a few paperback titles at my discretion.
What's Due?
Monday, October 26 - Crime and Punishment Thematic Essay
Tuesday, November 3 - In-class prose analysis (Tolstoy)
Wednesday, November 11 - Detail Assignment
The Death of Ivan Ilych Study Links
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
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.
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
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