Poems for Thursday!

Print these out and bring to class. The first one is here. And the second one is here. And another here.

Forget Printing Out Poem for Tuesday!

I asked you to print out a poem for tomorrow but have realized that we have the poem in our poetry anthology. NO NEED TO PRINT OUT POEM. FINISH YOU FAULKNER ESSAY IN PEACE. SEE YOU TOMORROW!

Pronunciation of names in Crime and Punishment

The Sound and the Fury Essay

Although I originally considered giving you a choice of topics for your essay, I realized that the following subject matter is so broad and open to multiple interpretations that it will offer you an equivalent opportunity to choose an approach that best suits you.

Please write an essay, typed, in 12 point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, and at a minimum, six pages long on the following topic:

The Benjamin, Quentin, and Jason sections of The Sound and the Fury pose obstacles to understanding to even the most careful reader. Each narrator has particular concerns, and through the "stream of consciousness" technique, each section offers unique perspectives on the unfolding crisis of the Compson family. Your essay will explore the particular viewpoints of the three brothers, their attitudes, and the struggles they face as revealed through their language and thoughts, examining what concerns they share and what concerns are unique to each of them. Your inquiry will certainly address the ways the brothers were shaped by their historical circumstances and cultural heritage and will of course explain how the stream of consciousness technique contributes to our understanding, including how each brother perceives the world around them, and what symbolic meanings emerge—both for them and for us as readers.

Be aware that you won't be able to "cover" this entire topic in your essay. You will need to decide what ideas you believe to be most important and focus on them. Part of your duty as a writer is to limit yourself in a productive way that keeps to the essential and offers us your deeply felt take on what most matters in this text.

Remember, as always, address the language: what are the words, how are they used, what do they mean literally and metaphorically? How does each character's diction and syntax shed light on character and conflict?

IMPORTANT: Your essay must not simply recycle conversations we had in class. Although you may touch upon a point or two we made in our discussions, for the most part, this essay should examine language and passages, or elements within passages, we did not address in class.

Do not summarize plot, or merely point out language devices. Your writing must be free of errors (consult the no-no list), organized in a coherent manner, and free of awkward or unclear sentences.

Additionally, do not use study guides or critical commentary. This paper must involve your own thoughts and your own grappling with the work. I don't expect you to get everything right. Rather I insist that you to take the risk of being wrong! The point here is to be deeply and seriously engaged in the novel. When I see that, I will know that progress is being made. En avant, then.

This essay will be due on Monday, December 16.

Homework for Friday

Read to the end of page 127. Then choose a passage and explicate it, paying attention to language and giving context and significance.

A film version of the St. Matthew Gospel

This is Pier Paulo Pasolini's movie The Gospel According to St. Matthew.

Ian McKellen on Macbeth

Ian McKellen is one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of our time. This YouTube video shows him analyzing Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech. I would highly recommend that you watch it. His analysis of the language is a great example of the kind of thinking you can bring to the work we're doing.

Macbeth's Speech

Here's Patrick Stewart as Macbeth. Give a look and listen:

Poems for Tuesday!

On Tuesday, we'll be discussing the following. Do the assignment as outlined in class on Friday. John Donne is perhaps the greatest poet to live in the generation after Shakespeare's. (DON'T FORGET TO PRINT OUT!)

Here are the poems:

Shakespeare's Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

(This is from the scene in the play when Macbeth finds out that his wife, Lady Macbeth, is dead.)

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Death, be not proud (from Holy Sonnets)

BY JOHN DONNE

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

The Good-Morrow

    BY JOHN DONNE

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?

’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love, all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room an everywhere.

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,

Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres,

Without sharp north, without declining west?

Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Response to Act IV soliloquy

Here is an example of a response to the soliloquy we discussed in class today. Please note that this is one possible response. There are probably thousands of ways to respond to this particular passage. Though I'm not expecting you to necessarily respond in the way I have, I believe there are several points in this response that may be helpful to you in shaping your own. 1) The response discusses most of the lines in the passage; 2) the response selects several metaphors and discusses them; 3) the response links aspects of the passage to other elements of the play as a whole; 4) the response is written in as clear a way as possible. 

In the opening lines of the soliloquy (IV, 4), Hamlet says that every event pushes him to revenge but also shows how off-base his reluctance to act is. He then goes on to philosophize (which he often does) by asking what is the purpose of a human being. He sets up the contrast, which he has repeatedly made earlier in the play regarding his uncle and the queen, between the beast like and godlike nature of humans. This is a central metaphor of the play.

He next, however, applies this thinking to himself, and asked in lines 40 to 41, whether it’s his bestial side or his tendency to think too much (his godlike side) that is keeping him from acting against the king. In lines 44 to 45, he frankly says he doesn’t know why he has failed to act, endowed as he is with every necessary motive and quality to get the job done.

From there, he reasons how the example of Fortinbras shows an almost opposite tendency to act that reveals Hamlet’s own lack of character. This argument is drawn out over the rest of the soliloquy, in which Hamlet shows how Fortinbras’s willingness to attack Poland is a willingness to risk all over an “eggshell” (line 53) — a metaphor that compares the Polish field of battle to an eggshell, that is, to something of no great substance, value, or use. He then relates how he himself will “let all sleep” (line 59), despite the far greater damages to honor and moral right that he has sustained in the murder of his father. This metaphor is extended when he goes on to say that Fortinbras’s soldiers will go to their “graves like beds” and fight over a plot of land that doesn’t even have room to bury all the dead (line 64). 

All of this may be linked back to the "to be or not to be" soliloquy in which Hamlet develops the metaphor of death as sleep. Yet Hamlet is doomed to sleep (as in action) while the soldiers go to actual death for nothing. The soliloquy ends quite oddly with Hamlet saying “my thoughts be bloody” — thus even in telling himself he will act, he is locked in his thoughts (he does not say “my deeds be bloody” — and anyway he is leaving Denmark, presumably further still from his revenge.

Rubric for Shakespeare Paper, AP English

Structure and organization:

Your paper should contain an opening paragraph that develops your overall views about language use in the play. What patterns have you found to be most important and/or interesting? Briefly explain why these patterns matter or how they develop the plays major ideas.

In its body paragraphs, your paper should develop the ideas you’ve expressed in your opening. Organize in the manner you think best advances your views. Perhaps each section of the paper should address a constellation of conceptually linked metaphors or other language elements. These sections should closely explain the language you are discussing. How does it work? Be explicit. The sections ought further to develop how the language serves the play’s larger ideas or character development.

A conclusion to your paper should not simply be a restating of your opening paragraph. Rather it should draw the natural conclusions that follow from the arguments you’ve made in your body paragraphs. That is, the conclusion should advance a more developed sense of the your opening points because it follows the development of your ideas in the body paragraph.

Language use: Your paper should use diction choices that are appropriate for a formal paper (avoid slang and colloquialisms) and be clear. Syntax should be elegant and precise. You are working at developing a style as a writer, and you should clearly be making efforts in this direction. Obviously grammar and spelling must be spot-on and all but perfect.

Content: Your paper should show that you have done real work at untangling the complex language elements that comprise the play. Your discussion of the language should show your developing skill at analyzing the language and should provide a depth of analysis that goes beyond the “first observation,” looking at the why and how of the words you are examining. In addition, the connections you are making between the specific language and the play’s larger meanings must not be satisfied with vague enunciations. Develop your thought. Go several steps beyond what you’ve been used to doing.

Engagement: Your paper should shine with evidence of your passionate engagement with the play you’ve read. Your reader should leave the paper with the sense that they’ve just experienced the play in a way that makes it glow with the fire of your understanding. We should leave your paper with the feeling that you wanted urgently to make us better readers of the play. We should leave your paper knowing that you have made your own language sing.

Advanced Placement Shakespeare Paper

While we are reading Hamlet, you are to select another Shakespeare play from the list below. Read it carefully and make detailed notes of Shakespeare's use of language to create meaning, being particularly observant about the use of metaphor. Look for patterns in language use. If you were reading Romeo and Juliet, for example, you would notice the celestial comparisons to sun, moon, and stars found throughout the play.

You will write a paper of at least six pages in Times New Roman font, 12 point type (standard for all papers in this class), discussing how language is used to create meaning in the play of your choice. Double space this and all your papers.

Do not write plot summary!

Discuss theme only in the context of its relationship to the play's language.

Annotate quotes with act, scene, and line number (i.e. I, :iii, 3-10). Organize your paper around types of metaphors and other language devices and their meaning.

You'll not be able to be exhaustive because to do so would mean writing a book. Select important examples of language use and be careful to explain meaning (e.g. "the master mistress of my passion) note and explain these as well.

Rely on your own brain to do this work. Don't read critics or use the Internet -- this should be your paper, your work, your thinking. If I detect signs of canned writing, I'll mark down, and if I discover plagiarism -- either based on work taken from other published sources, or work copied from other student papers -- the result will be a 0, along with the other consequences noted in the class description.

Write well. Use the no-no list or the grammar guide.

You may select from the following plays:

King Lear
Macbeth
Richard III
Henry IV, Part I
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Taming of the Shrew

The paper is due on Tuesday, October 8.

Remember: Where are the words? How do they work? What do they mean? How do they connect to larger meanings?

Plagiarism Assignment

Review these guidelines involving plagiarism. The first (here) discusses the many varieties of plagiarism. The second (here) is a more detailed discussion from the Purdue University Writing Lab about the challenges involved in creating original work. Be ready to discuss the issues raised in both these links by Friday.

A Useful Grammar Site

Here's a link to a public Facebook page that posts a daily grammar/usage tip. Making a daily check a part of your routine would be a most excellent habit to get into!

Important terms

For Thursday's homework, look up the definition of the following words and give one example of each. (You can use an example from the website where you find the definition.)

meter, rhyme scheme,  assonance, consonance, alliteration, sibilance, metaphor, allusion, synecdoche, metonymy

Questions on "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

1) What is the significance of the title?

2) What is the significance of reversing the word order in line 1?

3) What is the point of the word "though" in line 2?

4) How does the rhyme scheme add emphasis?

5) Describe the meter and how does it relate to the poem's meaning?

6) Provide more than one explanation for lines 8 and 15.

7) Comment on the use of the words "easy" and "downy."

8) Provide examples of assonance and alliteration.

Print these sonnets out for THURSDAY'S class

SONNET 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
   This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
   To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

Print out the following Shakespeare sonnet for WEDNESDAY'S class

SONNET 20

A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling,
Much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Print out the following Robert Frost poem for TUESDAY'S class

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Housekeeping Matters:

Grades will be based on the following:

Tests, essays, writing projects :  70 percent

Classwork, quizzes, homework, participation:  30 percent

Total: 100 percent

IMPORTANT: Grades are cumulative. That means the grades you make now count as much as the grades later in the semester. So it's important to work hard from the very beginning and not dig yourself into a hole in the first weeks of our class. We will use Skedula, an online grading system in this class. I’ll give you information shortly about how to register. You’ll have your own account, where I’ll post grades. Your parents or guardians should be given access to your account.

Responsibility: It is the student’s responsibility to make up work. If you’re absent, you must find out from a fellow student what work was done in class or for homework and get the work to me the following day. No late homework or classwork will be accepted! If you miss a test, it is your responsibility to let me know and arrange for a make-up.

Attendance: You’re expected to be in class every day. Absent notes are required if you are absent due to illness or family necessity. 

Electronic devices: 

Keep them in your pockets or bags. No use of electronic devices.

Honor Policy—Cheating and Plagiarism:  

If you do the work of this class on your own, you’ll develop skills that will serve you well for the rest of your life. If you cheat, you’ll get no such benefits, and you’ll receive a 0 on the work in question. Your parents/guardian will be informed of your actions. THIS IS MY CHEATING POLICY AND HOLDS FOR A FIRST TIME VIOLATION. In addition, Midwood has a series of consequences for cheating that you should be aware of, which will occur in addition to my own response noted above. Cheating will expose you to the Midwood consequences too. By cheating you'll also violate my trust in you, and you’ll lose my respect.

Plagiarism: This is a particular form of cheating that requires a special note due to its ubiquity. When you take other people’s work and hold it out to be your own (whether another student’s work or something taken from the Internet), you are engaging in theft. Plagiarism won’t be tolerated. Plagiarism will result in a 0 on the work in question. The consequences enumerated in the Midwood plagiarism code will also be enforced.

IMPORTANT: If you place work on blogs/fan sites, etc., you must not submit that work for class assignments, prior to turning it in for class credit.

Class Communications and Contacting Mr. Vilbig:

Class blog: The class will use a blog to communicate assignments and other important matters. It can be accessed at www.vilbigap.blogspot.com. I highly suggest that you register for the blog and ‘follow’ it, since this will result in your receiving an email notification when new posts are made.

Contact information: The best way to contact me is through Skedula, the online grading system we'll be using this semester. (You'll receive more information on this shortly.) I can also be reached at pvilbig@schools.nyc.gov. Or by phone: 718 724-8560.

Key Course Dates:

(Subject to change, but this should give you a rough idea of how the semester will proceed.)

September 17: Timed Test #1 (Hamlet)

September 24: Timed Test #2 (Hamlet)

October 4: Shakespeare paper due

October 15: Short answer test (Bible)

October 22: Timed Test #1 (Bible)

October 30: Rough Draft, Rappaccini’s Daughter Essay due

November 1: Final Draft, Rappaccini’s Daughter Essay due

November 26: Timed in class essay (The Sound and the Fury)

November 27: Rough Draft, Sound and Fury essay due

December 2: Final Draft, Sound and Fury essay due

December 20: Short paper #1 due (Crime and Punishment)

January 2: Short paper #2 due (Crime and Punishment)

January 3: Timed in class essay (Crime and Punishment)

January 14: Timed in-class essay #1 (poetry, using prior AP exam)

January 21: Timed in-class essay #2 (poetry, using prior AP exam)

February 3: Poetry Essay due (first day of second semester)

Second semester dates to be added as addendum at a later date.

A.P. English Course Syllabus 2013-2014

Course Introduction

Advanced Placement English is an annual class taught to only the best English students in lieu of another senior English class. In both degree of difficulty and in quantity of material read, it is far more demanding than any other English class taught at Midwood. Students taking the course will be expected to interpret the nuances of language in order to achieve comprehension, to learn to see how symbol, metaphor, tone, setting, and point of view create meaning. While students may have achieved high grades in the past by identifying plot and theme, they will now be expected to analyze how language creates meaning and to think about that meaning in more complex ways.

Advanced Placement English is challenging and rewarding. Students taking the course should not be primarily interested in achieving college placement or credit (although this may happen for some of them—but only some!), but instead in the rewards of careful and rigorous study to produce a widened background and a deepened comprehension.

The class demands literate writing ability. Students write several timed essays in class and several multi-page papers at home. These formal responses include analytical papers addressing: 1) how writers employ language to achieve effects in their works; 2) the social, cultural, or historical ramifications of the works. Argumentative essays that focus on the particular elements of artistry and style writers employ to create a work’s aesthetic merit will also be assigned. In addition, students will write more informal assignments, including personal responses and reader’s notebook entries. At-home papers and responses will undergo a workshop process, in which early drafts are evaluated and receive feedback from small student groups and from me, and final papers are reviewed and rewritten based on my comments. Your workshop group will review your rewrite, where you’ll again receive feedback from me and your group. All formal written work will be assessed for complexity of thought and for correctness and complexity of language. This class will include specific lessons focused on the use of effective rhetoric, the development of each writer’s unique voice, the establishment of appropriate tone, and a growing awareness of and capacity to employ differing tones based on the purpose of a piece of writing and its intended audience. By the end of the school year your own diction, syntax, sentence complexity, and awareness of tone should be considerably improved.

As minimum requirements for entering the class, students must love to read and do it as a leisure activity, in addition to reading what is assigned them for school.

Students who have not previously read The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Tale of Two Cities (preferably, although another major work by Dickens will do), will be instructed to read them during the summer before they begin taking the class. These seminal works of literature are basic background material.

This course is designed to comply with the curricular requirements described in the most recent AP English Course Description.

With each work we study, students will note the unique diction and syntax of the author and be asked to write informal assignments making use of new vocabulary and sharing their insights about diction and syntax in their readers’ notebooks.

Although reading assignments may vary from year to year, the selections for the calendar year 2013-2014 follow, as an indication of the extent and difficulty of the course:

1.     Hamlet (purchased as will be another Shakespeare play to be announced)

2.      Several of the books in the Old and New Testament with related poetry and short fiction

3.      The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner (purchased)

4.     Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky

5.     The Secret Sharer, Conrad

6.     Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier

7.     Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

8.     The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald

9.     Heart of Darkness, Conrad

10.   The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

11.  A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

12.  Poetry throughout the school year.

In addition, students will use as reference books Literature: an Introduction to Reading and Writing (6th edition) and Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.

Every student will keep a reader’s notebook. Every nightly reading assignment will be followed by specific homework questions to be handed in twice weekly and an informal reader’s reaction recorded in the notebook. Students will note intellectual and emotional reactions to developments in plot, theme, and authors’ use of language, including selected new vocabulary words and uses. I’ll review these notebooks twice a month and will comment on students’ notebook observations. In addition students have the following required tasks:

·       Bi-weekly quizzes on advanced literary terms and their application to poetry and prose

·       Timed essays using AP style questions

·       Revisions of graded essays to provide a chance to reframe ideas and improve technical skills, including improving writing vocabulary

·       Personal Response essays (a more informal opportunity for self-expression)

·       Persuasive essays (intended to spark debate; students will learn the rhetorical strategy of “procatalepsis” whereby the writer raises and answers potential objections to his own argument, thereby strengthening his position against attack).

·       Creative Writing (modeling Sonnets, villanelles, concrete poetry etc.; writing a parody of a selected author’s style, and /or a prose modeling Faulkner’s stream of consciousness).

Class Schedule

Unit 1- Introduction to course based on close readings of several poems: Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and Shakespeare, Sonnets 20, 73, and 116. This week introduces and expands on the following terms: denotation, connotation, meter, rhyme scheme, assonance, consonance, alliteration, sibilance, metaphor, allusion, synecdoche, metonymy. Students will study the poets’ words carefully to unlock the layers of connotative meaning and discover the relationship between the poems’ forms and their meanings. (one week)

Unit 2 - Hamlet (Folger’s edition). The play is approached from several levels: as representative of the five-act form of Shakespearian tragedy; as a dramatic staging of several themes: thought vs. action, the nature of family responsibility, doubling (dramatic foils), revenge, incest; and as a masterpiece of metaphoric language. Besides examining moments in which the text produces clear meanings, we will also carefully analyze those sections where meanings are in dispute or are open to multiple interpretations, and we will look at how variants in language among our sources for the plays potentially change meaning (and lead to intense controversies). In addition, we will begin a discussion in this unit about what constitutes artistic merit and quality. Why is Hamlet regarded as a masterpiece? The concept of the literary canon will be introduced.

Prior to the assignment of the first paper, several lessons on writing correct and complex expository English will be given. Among the topics covered will be writing the introductory sentence and paragraph, with stress placed on creating a complex sentence that simultaneously introduces the main concerns of the paper and includes specifics. Students will be divided into four-person workshops to mutually aid one another in building complex sentences from notes based on specific questions about metaphoric language.

On the last day of the play’s reading, the class studies Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” speech, contrasting Macbeth’s musings on life and death with Hamlet’s. (three weeks)

As a transition to Unit 3, we do a close reading of three of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, contrasting Donne’s use of sonnet form with Shakespeare’s.

Unit 3 - Selections from Genesis, Exodus 1-21; Leviticus 19; 2 Samuel 11 & 12; Isaiah 1-5, 42, 58; Ezekial 17-18; all of Mathew; John, 11. This study concentrates on the myriad symbols emerging from the bible. Students are asked with each reading assignment to note symbols (for example: number symbolism, water symbolism, phallic symbolism) as well as to study the document as a reflection of an ancient, oral tradition. We will see the interconnectedness between Old and New Testament traditions, which is why we read selections from the prophets before reading Mathew. We will understand the parables as a form of allegory. We deliberately read the King James edition because of its enormous influence on the writers of much of English literature, while noting that newer translations may be more faithful to the original Hebrew and Greek.

In several cases we will compare earlier and later translations and focus on controversies or debates involving translation and interpretation of texts. Societal issues such as nation building, incest, sexual inequality, righteousness, and the importance of family and clan are discussed. In addition we’ll read excerpts from Mìlton’s Paradise Lost and two short stories, Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” Each of those stories is studied in relationship to biblical themes and for the complexity of its own language. (four weeks)

As we conclude this unit, we spend several days on Gwendolyn Brooks’s poetry, moving from the religiously motivated poems to those that deal with social issues, particularly those that involve race and class. This prepares us for:

Unit 4 - Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury. We begin with a two-day discussion of “A Rose for Emily.” The discussion introduces Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha Saga and its attendant social concerns. We discuss the importance of understanding the difference between the narrative voice and the author’s own viewpoint, and we stress several examples of metaphoric and symbolic language in the story.

During the reading of the novel, particularly during the confusing opening two sections, students are asked to recognize time changes in the narratives and to focus on how each boy’s diction illustrates his obsessive concerns and illuminates character traits of the other people in the story. (three weeks)

Unit 5 - Crime and Punishment. In this unit we study Dostoevsky’s success in writing a psychological novel more than thirty years before Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. We examine the techniques that make readers sympathetic to Raskolnikov, despite his many disagreeable qualities. We note the many ways each character is a representation of the myriad facets of Raskolnikov’s character and note how doubling is used throughout the novel to indicate the theme of divided self. We closely examine the first of Raskolnikov’s dreams (the dream of the beaten horse) to indicate how it stands for virtually all of the relationships in the novel. We discuss the psychology of the criminal mind, including Freud’s dream theory, and the frequent use of Christian symbolism related to Sonia’s role in Raskolnikov’s redemption.

We supplement the doubling motif by reading Conrad’s The Secret Sharer and watching Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. (four weeks including vacation time)

Unit 6 - Intensive poetry unit. We undertake an intensive exploration of 200 years of language poetry. Individual students are assigned to read and lead discussions of poetry by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Arnold, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Hardy, Eliot, Cummings, Williams, Stevens, Frost, Auden, Jarrell, Ginsburg, Rich, Plath, Sexton, and Heaney. During the unit, we study three essay questions on poetry from previous AP tests. Two are answered as timed in-class exams. The whole unit is preparation for the largest assignment of the year, which the students accomplish over intersession: (four weeks)

Unit 7 – Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain. After initial discussions of the civil war setting and the story of Odysseus, we begin a process in which students are asked to initiate all lessons. Their homework sheet begins this way: For all reading assignments, you will note examples of language you believe are rich in imagery, metaphor, or symbolism and further conclude how these devices may be related to themes in the novel, either those we have already noted or new ones. At least once during the reading of the novel you will be expected to prepare a brief explication of a chapter, or section of a chapter. You will then lead a class discussion on the examples of language use you’ve selected, and how language develops theme, character, and other important elements of the narrative. (three weeks)

Unit 8 - Song of Solomon. This unit focuses on the metaphors and symbols Morrison uses to write a novel that addresses issues of race, gender, class, and family dynamics. We supplement our reading by watching Episode One of the Eyes on the Prize television series, reading Gwendolyn Brooks’ “Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till,” viewing stunning photographs of the Birmingham demonstrations of 1963, and reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.” We often read aloud pages of the book that capture the entertaining diction of several of the characters. When we have completed the novel, we read the “Song of Solomon” from the Old Testament and discuss its relevance, as well as the biblical origins of most of the novel’s names. (three weeks)

At this point we spend a week on intensive AP Test review, using past AP essay questions and short answers from the course description book.

Unit 9 - The Great Gatsby. This one-week unit features close examination of the obvious symbols such as the green light, the eyes of Dr Eckleburg, the houses of Gatsby and the Buchanans, and the more detailed metaphoric description of both people and places. (one week)

Unit 10 - Heart of Darkness and The Poisonwood Bible. Students will examine two novels set in Africa. Conrad’s use of light and dark to illuminate the darkness of human behavior returns us to themes in The Secret Share and Crime and Punishment. This also opens up discussion of imperialism as a political darkness in human nature. Marlow’s simultaneous identification with and repulsion for Kurtz is explored through Conrad’s masterful use of chiaroscuro. The way Kingsolver is able to tell her story through five distinct narrative voices is compared with the multiple narrations of The Sound and the Fury. Students prepare for the lessons by selecting language which illustrates the character of each narrator. Often the girls are talking symbolically without knowing it, though both Adah and Orleana are intentionally rnetaphoric. Political issues about the history of Africa, the Congo in particular, are addressed by readings from Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost and by lessons on Cold War politics. (four weeks)

Unit 11 – A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan. For the course’s final unit, we will read Egan’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize winning novel. In our work, we’ll continue our discussion of multiple narrative viewpoints addressed already in Kingsolver and Faulkner, and we’ll examine closely the novel’s complex structure of time shifts, comparing Egan’s approach with that found in Faulkner, Frazier, and Morrison, among others. This discussion of time shifts will lead us to examine how the novel’s time structure plays a role in developing its thematic commentary on time itself, and the role that loss, nostalgia, and change play in the lives of the characters. Students will also read selected passages from the opening section of Proust’s Swann’s Way—an important influence on Egan and her novel.

In addition, we’ll examine how Egan uses language to reinforce the novel’s theme of authenticity and its relationship to pop culture, and how music, used as a symbol, plays a role in the development of that theme. We will further discuss how Egan’s efforts to make sense of the emerging socially fractured world, shaped by the Internet and social media, compares to the efforts of earlier writers we studied to address important moral and social issues in their times. We’ll further note how Egan’s use of new communication technologies as narrative devices in her novel raises questions about the author’s and the text’s ambivalence about such technologies. (four weeks)