Critical survey: what do critics say about this book, and how do they affect your thinking? Arrive at a significant thesis, and support it in dialectic with professional critics (2500-3500 words).
For your term paper in this class, you'll choose an acknowledged masterpiece of the Renaissance, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, or Modernism to READ or REREAD. For what it's worth, here's a list of some great books that have influenced writers who write today... and here's a list compiled from other greatest hits booklists... you can't go wrong, really, with these. Below, you'll find the College Board's idea great literature, as evidenced by the fact that they cited them on the AP Literature exam. The numbers in parentheses are the years of the exams on which they were cited.
Choose a book to READ or REREAD. It should be one that fills you with genuine curiosity, and one that you can get your hands on. That's important too.
You will already have written about two literary eras. The book should be from a third.
Anna: Slaughterhouse Five
Audrey: The Great Gatsby
Torria: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Geny: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Kacie: To Kill a Mockingbird
Cliona: The Handmaid's Tale
Georgia: The Sun Also Rises
The point is to enter into the critical conversation that has been raging about this book since its publication. The more admired the book is, the more likely you'll find fascinating criticism about it. So you'll compile a working bibliography of 8-12 critics whose articles are helpful to you in thinking about this work. You'll write summaries and responses to at least six of the articles. You'll develop your own argument about the book, and support your point of view in relation to the criticism you've read.
A list of books the College Board likes:
A
Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner (76, 00)
Adam Bede by George Eliot (06)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (80, 82, 85, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 99, 05, 06, 07)
The Aeneid by Virgil (06)
Agnes of God by John Pielmeier (00)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (97, 02, 03)
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (00, 04)
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (00, 02, 04, 07)
All My Sons by Arthur Miller (85, 90)
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (95, 96, 06, 07)
America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan (95)
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (81, 82, 95, 03)
The American by Henry James (05, 07)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (80, 91, 99, 03, 04, 06)
Another Country by James Baldwin (95)
Antigone by Sophocles (79, 80, 90, 94, 99, 03, 05)
Anthony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare (80, 91)
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler (94)
Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer (76)
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (78, 89, 90, 94, 01, 04, 06, 07)
As You Like It by William Shakespeare (92 05. 06)
Atonement by Ian McEwan (07)
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson (02, 05)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin (87, 88, 91, 92, 95, 97, 99, 02, 04, 07)
B
"The Bear" by William Faulkner (94, 06)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (90, 99, 01, 03, 05, 07)
A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul (03)
Benito Cereno by Herman Melville (89)
Billy Budd by Herman Melville (79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 99, 02, 04, 05, 07)
The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter (89, 97)
Black Boy by Richard Wright (06)
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (94, 00, 04)
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya (94, 96, 97, 99, 04, 05, 06)
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (07)
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (95)
Bone: A Novel by Fae M. Ng (03)
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan (06, 07)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (89, 05)
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (79)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevski (90)
C
Candida by George Bernard Shaw (80)
Candide by Voltaire (80, 86, 87, 91, 95, 96, 04, 06)
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (06)
The Caretaker by Harold Pinter (85)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (82, 85, 87, 89, 94, 01, 03, 04, 05, 07)
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (01)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams (00)
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (94)
The Centaur by John Updike (81)
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (94, 96, 97, 99, 01, 03, 05, 06, 07)
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (71, 77, 06, 07)
"Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau (76)
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (06)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 05)
Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje (01)
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton (85, 87, 91, 95, 96, 07)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski (76, 79, 80, 82, 88, 96, 99, 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05)
"The Crisis" by Thomas Paine (76)
The Crucible by Arthur Miller (71, 83, 86, 89, 04, 05)
D
Daisy Miller by Henry James (97, 03)
Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel (01)
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (78, 83, 06)
"The Dead" by James Joyce (97)
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (86)
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (86, 88, 94, 03, 04, 05, 07)
Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty (97)
Desire under the Elms by Eugene O'Neill (81)
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler (97)
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (06)
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence (95)
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (79, 86, 99, 04)
A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen (71, 83, 87, 88, 95, 05)
The Dollmaker by Harriet Arnot (91)
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (01, 04, 06)
Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia (03)
Dutchman by Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones (03, 06)
E
East of Eden by John Steinbeck (06)
Emma by Jane Austen (96)
An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen (76, 80, 87, 99, 01, 07)
Equus by Peter Shaffer (92, 99, 00, 01)
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (80, 85, 03, 05, 06, 07)
The Eumenides by Aeschylus (in The Orestia) (96)
F
The Fall by Albert Camus (81)
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (99, 04)
The Father by August Strindberg (01)
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (90)
Faust by Johann Goethe (02, 03)
The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton (76)
Fences by August Wilson (02, 03, 05)
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (03)
Fifth Business by Robertson Davis (00, 07)
The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (07)
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (03, 06)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (89, 00, 03, 06)
G
A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines (00)
A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee (04, 05)
Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen (00, 04)
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (71, 90, 94, 97, 99, 02)
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien (01, 06)
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford (00)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (95, 03, 06)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (79, 80, 88, 89, 92, 95, 96, 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 07)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (82, 83, 88, 91, 92, 97, 00, 02, 04, 05, 07)
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (83, 88, 90, 05)
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (87, 89, 01, 04, 06)
H
The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill (89)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (88, 94, 97, 99, 00)
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (03)
Hard Times by Charles Dickens (87, 90)
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (71, 76, 91, 94, 96, 99, 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 06)
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene (71)
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (79, 92, 00, 02, 03, 05)
Henry IV, Parts I and II by William Shakespeare (80, 90)
Henry V by William Shakespeare (02)
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter (78, 90)
House Made of Dawn by N Scott Momaday (95, 06)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (04, 07)
The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (89)
I
The Iliad by Homer (80)
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (06)
In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien (00)
In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (05)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (76, 77, 78, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 01, 03, 04, 05, 07)
J
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (78, 79, 80, 88, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 00, 05, 07)
Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee (99)
J.B. by Archibald MacLeish (81, 94)
Joe Turner's Come and Gone by August Wilson (00, 04)
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (97, 03)
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding (99)
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (71, 76, 80, 85, 87, 95, 04)
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (82, 97, 05, 07)
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (77, 78, 82, 88, 89, 90, 96)
K
King Lear by William Shakespeare (77, 78, 82, 88, 89, 90, 96, 01, 03, 04, 05, 06)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseinii (07)
L
A Lesson before Dying by Ernest Gaines (99)
Letters from an American Farmer by de Crevecoeur (76)
Light in August by William Faulkner (71, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 95, 99, 03, 06)
The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman (85, 90)
Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill (90, 03, 07)
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (77, 78, 82, 86, 00, 03, 07)
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (85)
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh (89)
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (95)
"Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot (85)
Lysistrata by Aristophanes (87)
M
Macbeth by William Shakespeare (83, 99, 03, 05)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (80, 85, 04, 05, 06)
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (87)
Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw (79, 96, 04, 07)
Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (81)
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (03, 06)
Master Harold...and the Boys by Athol Fugard (03)
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (94, 99, 00, 02, 07)
M. Butterfly by David Henry Wang (95)
Medea by Euripides (82, 92, 95, 01, 03)
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers (97)
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (85, 91, 95, 02, 03)
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (78, 89)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (95, 04, 05, 07)
Middle Passage by V. S. Naipaul (06)
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare (06)
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (90, 92, 04)
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (89)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 89, 94, 96, 01, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07)
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (76, 77, 86, 87, 95)
Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao (00, 03)
The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie (07)
Mother Courage and Her Children by Berthold Brecht (85, 87, 06)
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (94, 97, 04, 05, 07)
Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw (87, 90, 95, 02)
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (97)
Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot (76, 80, 85, 95, 07)
"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning (85)
My Antonia by Willa Cather (03)
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (03)
N
Native Son by Richard Wright (79, 82, 85, 87, 95, 01, 04)
Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee (99, 03, 05, 07)
1984 by George Orwell (87, 94, 05)
No Exit by John Paul Sartre (86)
No-No Boy by John Okada (95)
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevski (89)
O
Obasan by Joy Kogawa (94, 95, 04, 05, 06, 07)
The Odyssey by Homer (86, 06)
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (77, 85, 88, 00, 03, 04)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (01)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (05)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (89, 04)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (01)
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (06)
The Optimist's Daughter by D. H. Lawrence (94)
The Orestia by Aeschylus (90)
Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf (04)
Othello by William Shakespeare (79, 85, 88, 92, 95, 03. 04, 07)
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (90)
Our Town by Thornton Wilder (86, 97)
Out of Africa by Isaak Dinesen (06)
P
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (01)
Pamela by Samuel Richardson (86)
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster (71, 77, 78, 88, 91, 92, 07)
Paradise Lost by John Milton (85, 86)
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (06)
Père Goriot by Honore de Balzac (02)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (90, 05, 07)
Phaedre by Jean Racine (92, 03)
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson (96, 99, 07)
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (02)
The Plague by Albert Camus (02)
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (97)
Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal (02)
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James ( 88, 92, 96, 03, 05, 07)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (76, 77, 80, 86, 88, 96, 99, 04, 05)
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (95)
Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall (96)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (83, 88, 92, 97)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (90)
Push by Sapphire (07)
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (03, 05)
R
Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow (03, 07)
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (87, 90, 94, 96, 99, 07)
The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope (81)
Redburn by Herman Melville (87)
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (00, 03)
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (07)
Richard III by William Shakespeare (79)
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (76)
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (03)
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (90, 92, 97)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (81, 94, 00, 04, 05, 06)
S
Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw (95)
The Sandbox by Edward Albee (1971)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (71, 77, 78, 83, 88, 91, 99, 02, 04, 05, 06)
Sent for You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman (03)
A Separate Peace by John Knowles (82, 07)
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (97)
Silas Marner by George Eliot (02)
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (87, 02, 04)
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (91, 04)
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson (00)
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (81, 88, 96, 00, 04, 05, 06, 07)
Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (77, 90)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (77, 86, 97, 01, 07)
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence (96, 04)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (79, 82, 86, 04)
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (91, 92, 01, 04, 07)
The Street by Ann Petry (07)
Sula by Toni Morrison (92, 97, 02, 04, 07)
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood (05)
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (85, 91, 95, 96, 04, 05)
T
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (82, 91, 04)
Tarftuffe by Moliere (87)
The Tempest by William Shakespeare (71,78, 96, 03, 05, 07)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (82, 91, 03, 06, 07)
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zorah Neale Hurston (88, 90, 91, 96, 04, 05, 06, 07)
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (91, 97, 03)
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (04)
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (06)
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (90, 00, 06)
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (77, 86, 88)
Tracks by Louise Erdrich (05)
The Trial by Franz Kafka (88, 89, 00)
Trifles by Susan Glaspell (00)
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (86)
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (92, 94, 00, 02, 04)
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (85, 94, 96)
Typical American by Gish Jen (02, 03, 05)
U
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (87)
V
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith (06)
Victory by Joseph Conrad (83)
Volpone by Ben Jonson (83)
W
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (77, 85, 86, 89, 94, 01)
The Warden by Anthony Trollope (96)
Washington Square by Henry James (90)
The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot (81)
Watch on the Rhine by Lillian Hellman (87)
The Way of the World by William Congreve (71)
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (06)
We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates (07)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee (88, 94, 00, 04, 07)
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (89, 92, 05, 07)
The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen (78)
Winter in the Blood by James Welch (95)
Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare (82, 89, 95, 06)
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor (82, 89, 95)
Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston (91)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (71,77, 78, 79, 83, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 99, 01, 06, 07)Z
The Zoo Story by Edward Albee (82, 01)
Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez (95)
Most Frequently Cited 1970-2007
20 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
17 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
14 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
14 Moby Dick by Herman Melville
13 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski
13 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
12 King Lear by William Shakespeare
12 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
12 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
11 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
11 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
10 The Awakening by Kate Chopin
10 Billy Budd by Herman Melville
10 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
10 Light in August by William Faulkner
9 Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
9 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
8 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
8 Candide by Voltaire
8 Othello by William Shakespeare
8 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
8 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zorah Neale Hurston
7 Antigone by Sophocles
7 Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
7 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
7 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
7 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
7 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
7 Native Son by Richard Wright
7 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
6 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
6 Beloved by Toni Morrison
6 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6 The Crucible by Arthur Miller
6 Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
6 A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
6 An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
6 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
6 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
6 Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
6 Obasan by Joy Kogawa
6 Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
6 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
6 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
6 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
6 The Tempest by William Shakespeare
6 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
5 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
5 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
5 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
5 The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
5 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
5 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
5 Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot
5 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
5 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
5 Sula by Toni Morrison
5 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
5 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
5 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee