Essays and Articles
Maya Angelou “Graduation”
Robert Frost “Out, Out-” and analysis
*Ralph Waldo Emerson “The Apology”
George Orwell “Shooting an Elephant”
*Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. “The Themes of Science Fiction”
William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow”
William Wordsworth “The World is Too Much with Us”
Amanda Gorman "The Hill We Climb"
Poems
Tom Wayman “Did I Miss Anything?” (handout)
Richard Wilbur “The Death of a Toad” (handout)
e e cummings "anyone lived in a pretty how town"
Robert Browning “My Last Duchess”
*Emily Dickinson poems, such as: “Route of Evanescence” and “Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac”
Robert Frost “Out, Out—“
*Ben Jonson “To Celia”
Sylvia Plath “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”
William Shakespeare “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”
William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow”
Short Stories
Kate Chopin “Desiree’s Baby” (handout)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” (
Nathaniel Hawthorne “Young Goodman Brown” (handout)
Ernest Hemingway “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” (handout)
"Hills Like White Elephants"
Oscar Wilde “The Model Millionaire”
Novels
George Eliot Silas Marner (excerpt)
Charles Dickens The Christmas Carol
Nathaniel Hawthorne Scarlet Letter
Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol
*Thomas Hardy, from Tess of the D’Urbervilles (excerpt)
George Orwell 1984
Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye
Drama
Susan Glaspell Trifles
Ben Jonson Volpone
William Shakespeare Hamlet
*William Shakespeare Twelfth Night (excerpt)
Sophocles Oedipus the King
Areas of Literary Criticism
Psychoanalysis; Archetypal/Jungian; Marxism; Feminism/Gender Studies
Overview of Ecocriticism, Deconstruction, Post-Structuralism, New Historicism
A typical week in AP English includes a reading assignment each night (and weekends), and one writing assignment. Some writing assignments are shorter, including notes, outlines and reader response; other assignments may be longer, particularly the formal essays. Occasionally there will be timed in-class writing, typically on the subject of the readings that we are currently studying in class or a sample AP exam prompt. In addition, students are expected to learn and incorporate new vocabulary assigned with during each unit of study. The intensive focus on analysis of literature will require that students bring pithy questions to every class.
Some Suggested Reading Lists, etc: https://danellsimons.wixsite.com/aplit