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AP Literature Course Outline
Unit 1: Introduction to Course
2 weeks
• Course expectations
• Introduce Reader Response Journals and complete practice journals on given poems, short stories, and longer texts
• Introduce Reading Record Cards and the Book Analysis
• Take a practice exam (for baseline data)
• How to annotate and analyze literature (handout and practice, in-class and out)
Unit 2: Fiction, the basics AND The Short Story
6 weeks
Stories Studied: The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, What I Have Been Doing Lately by Jamaica Kincaid, A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell, Araby by James Joyce, A Worn Path by Eudora Welty, The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin, First Confessions by Frank O’Connor, Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Everyday Use by Alice Walker
Elements of Focus: Characterization, Point of View, Symbol, Allegory, Humor, Irony, Tone, Mood, Setting, Structure, Style, Plot, Conflict
Essential questions:
• How does the interaction of rhetorical strategies contribute to the theme of a work?
• What are common dualities presented in literature and how do they impact the overall meaning of the work?
• How do specific literary elements such as plot, conflict, characterization, point of view, symbol, allegory, humor, irony, etc. impact a work as a whole?
• How do authors reflect the historical or societal values at the time in which they wrote through their literary works?
Unit 3: The Novel: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstine
3 weeks
• Students will prepare questions for in-class discussions
• Students will have an in-class timed writing with an AP quality prompt.
• Students will write an essay that argues whether the various features (especially the narration, characterization, syntax, figurative language, and symbolism) in Frankenstein work together to create a powerfully socially conscious book or contrast to lead to an ineffective work.
Unit 4: The Prose and Free Response Essay and Multiple Choice Exam
3 weeks
•Students will be given the chance to practice the multiple choice section of the AP exam.
• Students will learn and discuss techniques to facilitate high scores on the exam.
• Students will be writing essays to practice for the prose and free response essay on the AP exam.
Unit 5: Dramatic and Epic Literature
7 weeks
Texts Studied: selections from The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf translated by Burton Raffel, Grendel by John Gardner, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Key Concepts and Questions:
• You will study how the concept of hero has developed historically and through different societies.
• You will examine how heroes and tragedies are related.
• You will study the conventions and techniques of drama and epic poetry and examination of how these conventions and techniques have been used by poets and dramatists.
• You will participate in several acting exercises that will help you consider different ways of playing and scene and the significance of emphasis, repetition, and tone, as well as physical interpretation in communicating the meaning of a scene to an audience.
• As part of our study of Hamlet, you will read and discuss Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. We will consider how Stoppard promotes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to main characters and the interaction of his play with Hamlet.
Unit 6: Poetry and the Poetry Essay
6 weeks
• Annotation of poetry
• Exploration of poetry techniques, including but not limited to: denotation, connotation, imagery, metaphor, simile, symbolism, paradox, allusion, tone, mood, etc. and musical devices such as alliteration, consonance, assonance, rhyme, rhythm, meter, etc.
• Examination of how poets reveal characteristics of specific literary periods in their work.
• Examination of how social and cultural values can be displayed in a poetic work.
Authors Studied: Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Francesco Petrarch, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, A.E. Housman, William Butler Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, William Carlos Williams
Unit 7: Non-Fiction and Satire
2 weeks
Non-Fiction Studied:
• Daniel Defoe, from An Academy for Women
• Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
• Joseph Addison, from The Spectator
• Samuel Johnson, On Spring and On Idleness
Satire Studied:
• Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal and from Gulliver’s Travels
• Geoffrey Chaucer, selections from The Canterbury Tales
• Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
• Sir Thomas More, Utopia
• Students will write several essays examining the stylistic techniques used in satire.
Unit 8: The American Dream
3 weeks
Texts Studied: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Key Questions and Concepts:
• What is Gatsby’s representation of the American Dream?
• Is Gatsby great?
Unit 9: Exam Preparation and Exam
2 weeks
• Review of texts covered during the year using reading record cards and class discussion.
• Practice multiple-choice questions and essay exams.
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