FreedomHigh School
12th Advanced Placement Literature and Composition
2012-13Summer Reading Assignment
Mrs. LoPresti
Welcome to AP Lit and Comp! I’m excited that you have chosen to take a challenging and intellectually fulfilling course. In order to prepare you for a year of critical reading as well as writing, I highly recommend that you embrace the Summer Reading assignment (despite the fact that it is not mandatory) and look at it as an opportunity to begin your advanced study of literature prior to the school year. It is understandable that the last thing you will want to do is read and (gasp!) write during your summer vacation, but I have found that those students who take part in this Summer Reading assignment are more prepared and focused and are ultimately those students who excel in this course. I know that you are just as ambitious as those who have shared in this course before you. With that said, please read through the following assignment and do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns now or this summer. My information is below. Happy reading (and writing!!!)!
Required Text:
Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
“What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey?. Shares a meal? Gets drenched in a sudden rain shower? Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface—a symbol, maybe, that remains elusive, or an unexpected twist on a character—and there's that sneaking suspicion that the deeper meaning of a literary text keeps escaping you.
In this practical and amusing guide to literature, Thomas C. Foster shows how easy and gratifying it is to unlock those hidden truths, and to discover a world where a road leads to a quest; a shared meal may signify a communion; and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just rain. Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, How to Read Literature Like a Professor is the perfect companion for making your reading experience more enriching, satisfying, and fun.” (Amazon.com)
Select one of the following:
Wise Blood—Flannery O’Conner
Catch 22—Joseph Heller
Invisible Man—Ralph Ellison
Great Expectations—Charles Dickens
Gulliver’s Travels—Jonathan Swift
The Trial—Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis—Franz Kafka
The Winter’s Tale—William Shakespeare
The House of Seven Gables—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Brave New World—Aldous Huxley
Wide Sargasso Sea—Jean Rhys
All the Pretty Horses—Cormac McCarthy
Bless Me, Ultima—Ruldolfo A. Anaya
Ceremony—Leslie Marmon Silko
The Color Purple—Alice Walker
Emma—Jane Austen
Heart of Darkness—Joseph Conrad
The Piano Lesson—August Wilson
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—James Joyce
The Portrait of a Lady—Henry James
Song of Solomon—Toni Morrison
The Tempest—William Shakespeare
Their Eyes Were Watching God—Zora Neale Hurston
Twelfth Night—William Shakespeare
As I Lay Dying—William Faulkner
Bleak House—Charles Dickens
Cat’s Cradle—Kurt Vonnegut
Jane Eyre—Charlotte Bronte
The Optimist’s Daughter—Eudora Welty
The Turn of the Screw—Henry James
Waiting for Godot—Samuel Beckett
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—Edward Albee
An American Tragedy—Theodore Dreiser
Another Country—James Baldwin
The Awakening—Kate Chopin
The Bluest Eye—Toni Morrison
The Diviners—Margaret Laurence
The Grapes of Wrath—John Steinbeck
House Made of Dawn—N. Scott Momaday
Light in August—William Faulkner
M. Butterfly—David Henry Hwang
Medea—Euripides
The Merchant of Venice—William Shakespeare
Middlemarch—George Eliot
Moll Flanders—Daniel Defoe
Murder in the Cathedral—T.S. Eliot
Native Son—Richard Wright
Othello—William Shakespeare
The Sun Also Rises—Ernest Hemingway
Winter in the Blood—James Welch
A Passage to India—E.M. Forster
Antony and Cleopatra—William Shakespeare
A Tale of Two Cities—Charles Dickens
The Woman Warrior—Maxine Hong Kingston
Anna Karenina—Leo Tolstoy
Things Fall Apart—Chinua Achebe
A Streetcar Named Desire—Tennessee Williams
The Great Gatsby—F. Scott Fitzgerald
MansfieldPark—Jane Austen
A Farewell to Arms—Ernest Hemingway
The Age of Innocence—Edith Wharton
Alias Grace—Margaret Atwood
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man—James
Weldon Johnson
Daisy Miller—Henry James
Ethan Frome—Edith Wharton
A Gathering of Old Men—Ernest J. Gaines
Go Tell It On the Mountain—James Baldwin
The Handmaid’s Tale—Margaret Atwood
Hedda Gabler—Henrik Ibsen
Much Ado About Nothing—William Shakespeare
Our Town—Thornton Wilder
Ragtime—E. L. Doctorow
Sister Carrie—Theodore Dreiser
Slaughterhouse Five—Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Falling on Cedars—David Guterson
Sula—Toni Morrison
The Things They Carried—Tim O’Brien
Assignments
The entire assignment will be due the first week of school during our second class meeting. Assignments should be completed in the following order:
- Carefully read Foster’s text. You will incorporate his suggestions for reading literature into your own readings.
- Your Choice:
Choose one of the novels or plays listed above and performall of the following activities:
a. As you read the novel, record your thoughts and interpretation of the text. You will want to discuss your personal response to the actions, characters, author’s style, and so on. You must have 10 journal entries (at least 250-300 words minimum) total.
b. Create a poster that provides the title of the book, the author’s name, the main and secondary characters’ names, the publisher and date of publication, and the genre. The illustration on your poster should provide an image that represents the novel. For example, you may want to consider illustrating symbols, themes, characters, setting, or crucial aspects of the plot. Please do not simply copy the book’s cover; rather, allow your interpretation to drive your artistic impression of the piece.
- Choose 10 significant quotations from the text. Write a 5-10 sentence discussion for each quotation detailing how it reflects the theme(s) of the novel.
A Few Notes:
Everything you write will need to include textual evidence. This means you should always use direct quotations from the works that support your ideas and opinions regarding the novel. Also, if you choose to cite HTRLLAP, you will also need to use quotation marks and page numbers.
Avoid mere plot summary.
Take care with your writing; this should not be informal, but I expect you to show me how well you can craft an essay.
All work must be typed, double spaced using 12 point Times New Roman font.
If you have any questions regarding the assignment, please see me prior to June 18. You may also email me at .
AP Scoring Model
Top Scores9-8
A 90-100 / These are well-written papers which respond fully to the question asked. The best papers show a full understanding of the issues and support their points with appropriate textual evidence and examples. Writers of these essays demonstrate stylistic maturity by an effective command of sentence structure, diction, and organization. The writing need not be without flaws, but it should reveal the writer’s ability to choose from and control a wide range of elements of effective writing.
Upper Scores
7—B+: 87-89
6—B: 80-86 / These essays also respond correctly to the questions asked but do so less fully or less effectively than the essays in the top range. Their discussion may be less thorough and less specific. These essays are well-written in an appropriate style but reveal less maturity than the top papers. They do make use of textual evidence to support their points. Some lapses in diction or syntax may appear, but the writing demonstrates sufficient control over the elements of composition to present the writer’s ideas clearly.
Middle Score
5
C: 70-79 / These essays respond to the question, but the comments may be simplistic or imprecise; they may be overly generalized, vague, or inadequately supported. These essays are adequately written, but may demonstrate inconsistent control over the elements of composition. Organization is attempted, but it may not be fully realized or particularly effective.
Lower Scores
4-3
D+: 67-69 / These essays attempt to deal with the question, but do so either inaccurately or without support or specific evidence. They may show some misunderstanding or omit pertinent analysis. The writing can convey the writer’s ideas, but it reveals weak control over diction, syntax, organization. These essays may contain excessive and distracting spelling and grammatical errors. Statements are seldom supported with specific or persuasive evidence, or inappropriately lengthy quotations may replace discussion and analysis.
Lowest Scores
D: 60-67 / These essays fail to respond adequately to the question. They may reveal misunderstanding or may distort the interpretation. They compound the problems of the Lower Score papers. Generally these essays are unacceptably brief or poorly written. Although some attempts to answer the question may be indicated, the writer’s view has little clarity and only slight, if any, evidence in its support.
Literary Terms
There will be a quiz during the second week of school on these terms. Become familiar with not only the definition, but examples demonstrating the use of the term.
1. Allegory-The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, orpictorial form.
2. Alliteration-The repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of several words in a line of poetry. ie.Marilyn Monroe
3. Ambiguity-When an author leaves out details/information or is unclear about an event so the reader will use his/herimagination to fill in the blanks.
4. Anaphora-Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines in a poem.
5. Anecdote-A short story or joke told at the beginning of a speech to gain the audience’s attention.
6. Antagonist-The protagonist’s adversary.
7. Anti-climatic-When the ending of the plot in poetry or prose is unfulfilling or lackluster.
8. Apostrophe- When a character speaks to a character or object that is not present or is unable to respond
9. Assonance-The repetition of the same vowel sound in a phrase or line of poetry.
10. Blank verse-Name for unrhymed iambic pentameter. An iamb is a metrical foot in which an unstressed syllable isfollowed by a stressed syllable. In iambic pentameter there are five iambs per line making ten syllables.
11. Climax-The turning point in the plot or the high point of action.
12. Colloquial language-Informal, conversational language. Colloquialisms are phrases or sayings that are indicative of aspecific region.
13. Connotation-An idea or meaning suggested by or associated with a word or thing, ie. Bat=evil.
14. Convention-An understanding between a reader and a writer about certain details of a story that does not need to beexplained.
15. Consonance-The repetition of consonant sounds in a phrase or line of poetry. The consonant sound may be at thebeginning, middle, or end of the word.
16. Couplet-Two rhyming lines in poetry.
17. Deus ex machina-Term that refers to a character or force that appears at the end of a story or play to help resolveconflict. Word means “god from a machine.” In ancient Greek drama, gods were lowered onto the stage by amechanism to extricate characters from a seemingly hopeless situation. The phrase has come to mean any turn ofevents that solve the characters’ problems through an unexpected and unlikely intervention.
18. Diction-Word choice or the use of words in speech or writing.
19. Denouement (day-new-mon)-The final resolution or clarification of a dramatic or narrative plot.
20. Doppelganger-The alter ego of a character-the suppressed side of one’s personality that is usually unaccepted bysociety. ie. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson- Mr. Edward Hyde (hide) is Dr.Jekyll’s evil side
21. Elegy-A poem or song composed especially as a lament for a deceased person.
22. Emotive language-Deliberate use of language by a writer to instill a feeling or visual.
23. Enjambment-The continuation of reading one line of a poem to the next with no pause, a run-on line.
24. Epic-An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a legendary or traditionalhero.
25. Epilogue-A short poem or speech spoken directly to the audience following the conclusion of a play, or in a novel theepilogue is a short explanation at the end of the book which indicates what happens after the plot ends.
26. Epiphany-Sudden enlightenment or realization, a profound new outlook or understanding about the world usuallyattained while doing everyday mundane activities.
27. Epistolary-Used to describe a novel that tells its story through letters written from one character to another.
28. Euphemism-The act of substituting a harsh, blunt, or offensive comment for a more politically accepted or positive one.(short=vertically challenged)
29. Euphony-A succession of words which are pleasing to the ear. These words may be alliterative, utilize consonance, orassonance and are often used in poetry but also seen in prose.
30. Expansion-Adds an unstressed syllable and a contraction or elision removes an unstressed syllable in order tomaintain the rhythmic meter of a line. This practice explains some words frequently used in poetry such as th’ in placeof the, o’er in place of over, and ‘tis or ‘twas in place of it is or it was.
31. Fable-A usually short narrative making an edifying or cautionary point and often employing as characters animals thatspeak and act like humans.
32. Feminine ending-Term that refers to an unstressed extra syllable at the end of a line of iambic pentameter.
33. Figurative language-Speech or writing that departs from literal meaning in order to achieve a special effect or meaning.Speech or writing employing figures of speech.
34. Flashback- When a character remembers a past event that is relevant to the current action of the story
35. Flat character-A literary character whose personality can be defined by one or two traits and does not change over thecourse of the story. Flat characters are usually minor or insignificant characters.
36. Foil-A character that by contrast underscores or enhances the distinctive characteristics of another.
37. Folklore-The traditional beliefs, myths, tales, and practices of a people, transmitted orally.
38. Foot: The metrical length of a line is determined by the number of feet it contains.
Monometer: One foot
Dimeter: Two feet
Trimeter: Three feet
Tetrameter: Four feet
Pentameter: Five feet
Hexameter: Six feet
Heptameter: Seven feet
The most common feet have two to three syllables, with one stressed.
39. Iamb-An iambic foot has two syllables. The first is unstressed and the second is stressed. The iambic foot is mostcommon in English poetry.
40. Trochee-A trochaic foot has two syllables. The first is stressed and the second is unstressed.
41. Dactyl-A dactylic foot has three syllables beginning with a stressed syllable; the other two unstressed.
42. Anapest-An anapestic foot has three syllables. The first two are unstressed with the third stressed.
43. Foreshadowing- Clues in the text about incidents that will occur later in the plot, foreshadowing creates anticipation inthe novel.
44. Free verse-Type of verse that contains a variety of line lengths, is unrhymed, and lacks traditional meter.
45. Genre-A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content.
46. Gothic novel-A genre of fiction characterized by mystery and supernatural horror, often set in a dark castle or othermedieval setting.
47. Heroine-A woman noted for courage and daring action or the female protagonist.
48. Hubris- Used in Greek tragedies, refers to excessive pride that usually leads to a hero’s downfall.
49. Hyperbole-A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or comic/dramatic effect.
50. Illocution-Language that avoids meaning of the words. When we speak, sometimes we conceal intentions or side stepthe true subject of a conversation. Writing illocution expresses two stories, one of which is not apparent to thecharacters, but is apparent to the reader. For example, if two characters are discussing a storm on the surface it may seem like a simple discussion of the weather, however, the reader should interpret the underlying meaning-that therelationship is in turmoil, chaos, is unpredictable. As demonstrated the story contains an underlying meaning or parallelmeanings.
51. Imagery-The use of vivid or figurative language to represent objects, actions, or ideas.
52. In medias res-A story that begins in the middle of things.
53. Inversion-In poetry is an intentional digression from ordinary word order which is used to maintain regular meters. Forexample, rather than saying “the rain came” a poem may say “came the rain”. Meters can be formed by the insertionor absence of a pause.
54. Irony-When one thing should occur, is apparent, or in logical sequence but the opposite actually occurs. Example: Aman in the ocean might say, “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.”
Dramatic Irony: When the audience or reader knows something characters do not know
Verbal Irony: When one thing is said, but something else, usually the opposite, is meant
Cosmic Irony: When a higher power toys with human expectations
55. Masculine ending-Stressed extra syllable at the end of a line.
56. Memoir-An account of the personal experiences of an author.
57. Meter-The measured arrangement of words in poetry, as by accentual rhythm, syllabic quantity, or the number ofsyllables in a line.
58. Metaphor-A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designateanother, thus making an implicit comparison; this comparison does not use like or as.
59. Metonymy-The use of a word or phrase to stand in for something else which it is often associated. ie. Lamb meansJesus
60. Motif-A dominant theme or central idea.
61. Narrator-Someone who tells a story.
First person: The narrator is a character in the story
Third person objective: The narrator does not tell what anyone is thinking; the “fly on a wall”
Third person limited: The narrator is able to tell the thoughts of one character