HoD

You should be finished with Part I of Heart of Darkness.  Please finish Part II by Friday and Part III by next Tuesday.

Lear Materials

Here are the King Lear discussion questions and quotation activity.

New Book

Please find another independent reading book.  It must be by an author listed on the handout I provided at the beginning of the year.

King Lear Progress

We have finished reading Act I of King Lear.  A good etext of the play can be found here. 

Reminder

Reminder: you must be finished reading your independent reading book by tomorrow!

Resources about Negative Capability and Abstraction

Here is the important part of John Keats's letter of 21 December 1817.

Also, here is an article about understanding abstract art.  The ideas here don't just apply to visual arts. 

Waiting for Godot Discussion Questions

We have finished reading the play; here are some questions to answer:

1. What do Vladimir and Estragon represent/symbolize?  Are they interchangeable, or are there important differences?
2. What does Pozzo represent/symbolize?  (the pipe, the chicken, the bones, the vaporizer, his eventual blindness)
3. What does Lucky represent/symbolize?  (the rope/leash, the picnic basket, the stool?)
4. What does Godot represent/symbolize?  What are they waiting for?  Why do they continue to wait?
5. Why do the boys appear?  What function do they serve?  (think about the things they say)
6. What does the tree represent/symbolize?  What about the few leaves that appear in the second act?
7. What do the hats represent/symbolize?
8. What do the boots represent/symbolize?
9. How is the play a “tragicomedy?”
10. What does the play mean?  What is Beckett trying to say?
11. Do you think this play would make more sense with subsequent readings?  What about a live viewing?
12. Did you like it?  Did you hate it?  Why?  Think about your answer.
13. Did you find it interesting?
14. Like it or not, what did you gain from reading it?
15. Imagine you had to write an essay about this play in which you had to address the theme.  What would you write?

Godot, Act I

We have finished reading Act I of Waiting for Godot.

Consider the following:
What could the characters symbolize?
The tree?
Objects?
The Setting?

What, exactly, is the plot?
How is the play structured?
What is the significance of Lucky's speech?

 

Changing Genres

Imagine you are making a movie based on The Grapes of Wrath.  It will be feature-length, so you will have to cut scenes from the novel.  What do you cut?  Why?  How do these cuts change the structure?  What about the characters?  Does it improve the story?  Weaken it?  What about the interchapters?  What do you do about them?  Most mainstream films contain a three act structure.  What would you do about that?  What images would you emphasize?

Friday's In-School Field Trip

This Friday, we will be taking an in-school field trip to the LGI for a discussion with Susan Shillinglaw, a notable Steinbeck scholar.  The trip will take place during period 4.

Students in my class during period 4 should report directly to the LGI; additionally, students in my 7th period AP class should report to the LGI during that period.  Please be sure to notify your period 4 teacher.

Dictionary Exercise

Today's classwork:

Choose a brief passage from The Grapes of Wrath.  It can be a short paragraph or part of a longer paragraph.  Copy the passage into your notebook, and then use a dictionary to look up every word.  (You don’t need to look up articles, prepositions, and the like)  Look at all the definitions of each word, how its meaning changes in different contexts, and its origins.  What does this new knowledge illuminate about the text?  Does it an another level (or levels) of meaning?

Grapes of Wrath Update

Remember, the Poughkeepsie Read activities kick off this Friday and continue until November 22nd.

Here are some questions:
1. Is there an antagonist in the novel?
2. Which characters are foils of Tom Joad?  Of each other? What traits are emphasized?
3. Analyze the ways landscapes are described.

Make sure you are keeping up with the reading schedule.

Independent Reading Assignment Finish First Book by November 16th

In order to fulfill requirements for this class, you will select and read independent reading books.  Your selections should be made from the following list of authors, as they are considered appropriate for AP English Literature and Composition.  Please do not read one of the books listed on my course syllabus, and do not choose a book you have already read.  You may, however, read authors you have already read.  If you are choosing to read a book that is taught at Arlington as part of any other course, you must check with me.

·         If you select an author from the Drama list, you must read TWO different plays by the same playwright.

·         If you select short stories, as opposed to novels, you should choose an anthology of stories by the same author.

·         Some books on the AP independent reading bookshelf in room 2425 are not by authors listed here.  However, those books are appropriate for this assignment. 

·         Assignment details will be given when the reading is completed.

DRAMA:

Aeschylus, Edward Albee, Aristophanes, Amiri Baraka, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Anton Chekhov, William Congreve, Euripides, Goethe, Oliver Goldsmith, A.R. Gurney, Lorraine Hansberry, Lillian Hellman, David Henry Hwang, Henrik Ibsen, Eugene Ionesco, Ben Jonson, David Mamet, Christopher Marlowe, Arthur Miller, Moliere, Sean O’Casey, Eugene O’Neill, Harold Pinter, Luigi Pirandello, Jean-Paul Sartre, William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Sam Shepard, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Sophocles, Tom Stoppard, Luis Valdez, John Webster, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, August Wilson

FICTION (Novel and Short Story)

Chinua Achebe, Kingsley Amis, Rudolfo Anaya, Sherwood Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, James Baldwin, John Barth, Saul Bellow, Jorge Luis Borges, Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Albert Camus, Raymond Carver, Willa Cather, Cervantes, Sandra Cisneros, John Cheever, Anton Chekov, Kate Chopin, Colette, Joseph Conrad, Julio Cortazar,  Stephen Crane, James Fenimore Cooper, Lydia Davis, Anita Desai, Don Delillo, Charles Dickens (not A Christmas Carol), Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, Ralph Ellison, Louis Erdrich, William Faulkner, Henry Fielding, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, E.M. Forster, John Gardner, Nikolay Gogol, Gunter Grass, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Hesse, Zora Neale Huston, Aldous Huxley, Kazuo Ishiguro, Henry James, Ha Jin, James Joyce, Yasunari Kawabata, Franz Kafka, William Kennedy, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Maxine Hong Kingson, Joy Kogawa, Milan Kundera, Margaret Laurence, D.H. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Naguib Mahfouz, Bernard Malamud, N. Scott Momaday, Thomas Mann, Katherine Mansfield, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Bobbie Ann Mason, Cormac McCarthy, Carson McCullers, Herman Melville, Toni Morrison, Bharati Mukherjee, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabokov, Flannery O’Connor, Cynthia Ozick, Katherine Anne Porter, Marcel Proust, Aleksandr Pushkin, Thomas Pynchon, Jean Rhys, Philip Roth, Jean-Paul Sartre, Leslie Marmon Silko, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Jonathan Swift, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Mark Twain, John Updike, Leon Uris, Luis Valenzuela, Alice Walker, Evelyn Waugh, Eudora Welty, Edith Wharton, John Edgar Wideman, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Wolfe, Virginia Woolf, Richard Wright

(Revised 9/2015)

Writing Contest

Here is the information about the Voice of Democracy writing contest.

Grapes of Wrath Ebook

Here is an ebook version of The Grapes of Wrath.   Please use it if you do not have your copy and need to complete your reading.

Reading Schedule for the Poughkeepsie Read/ Grapes of Wrath

Reading Schedule

for The Grapes of Wrath

Date      Pages to Have Completed

 9/22     1-13 (Chapters 1-2)

9/23      14-30 (Chapters 3-4)

9/25      31-60 (Chapters 5-6)

9/28      61-66 (Chapter 7)

9/29      67-85 (Chapter 8)

9/30      86-114 (Chapters 9-10)

10/1      115-122 (Chapters 11-12)

10/2      123-162 (Chapters 13-15)

10/5      163-192 (Chapter 16)

10/6      193-200 (Chapter 17)

10/7      201-230 (Chapter 18)

10/8      231-239 (Chapter 19)

10/9      240-284 (Chapters 20-21)

10/13    285-324 (Chapter 22)

10/14    325-330 (Chapter 23)

10/15    331-349 (Chapters 24-25)

10/16    350-405 (Chapter 26)

10/19    406-431 (Chapters 27-28)

10/20    432-435 (Chapter 29)

10/21    436-455 (Chapter 30)

This novel is part of the Poughkeepsie Read. 

Summer Reading: Oedipus

We are writing about the Oedipus plays today.  Please see me if you are absent for this. 

Our summer reading assessment for the other book your read will take place next Monday, September 28th.

Update

We are continuing with our practice AP exam today.  We will discuss the multiple choice section and, time permitting, begin looking at the essays. 

Please finish the Oedipus plays by September 21st.  You will be assessed on that day. 

Welcome!

Welcome to English 12AP!  You will find assignments, reminders, and resources on this page.  Please use it!

Reminder

Please remember that Canterbury Tales projects are due Wednesday.  If you are doing the creative writing option, please make sure you have a printed copy of your tale.  If you are doing the video project, please make sure your physical copy is playable or that your upload has actually been uploaded.

Also, please make sure you have read the general prologue and the tales told by the following pilgrims:

Knight
Miller
Reeve
Wife of Bath
Pardoner
Nun's Priest

Canterbury Tales

Please read the Reeve's tale.  You should have read the General Prologue, The Knight's Tale, and the Miller's Tale.

Also, here are the guidelines for the Canterbury Tales project.

Canterbury Tales Project

Mr. Broomhead

Option #1: Your task is to retell one of The Canterbury Tales with a group of 3-5 students.  If you are choosing to create a video of the tale, you may work with students from any one of my AP English courses.  If you are choosing to present a live performance, you may only work with students from your period.

·         The performance may be live (with costumes and props) or recorded to video. 

·         All group members MUST participate in the performance.  If you are making a video, the role of cameraperson needs to be shared. 

·         All group members must contribute to the script.

·         You may have “special guests” who are not group members.

·         You must use a minimum of SIXTEEN lines of Middle English at some point in the presentation.

·         Presentations should be about 10-15 minutes long.

·         Your score will be based upon:

§  Thoroughness of conveying plot AND theme of the tale

§  Creativity and quality

Option #2:  You will write an original Canterbury Tale.  You can choose to have one of the actual pilgrims tell the tale, or you may create your own pilgrim and have him or her tell it.  Please remember that the tale should reflect the person who is telling it.  Your tale should be about 3-5 pages long.  If you work with more than one person, each person will be responsible for at least 3-5 pages of material.

All projects are due June 3rd.

Canterbury Tales

Congratulations!  You have taken the AP exam.  We will begin work on The Canterbury Tales tomorrow.

There are many more tales than those in the book we are using.  Here is a good edition of some of them.  

They are also (untranslated) in this document.  This file also contains the more obscure tales, such as those told by Chaucer himself.

AP Exam

The AP Exam is this Wednesday.

Please report to gyms 8 and 9 by 7:30 am.  Do not report to class first.  Make sure you have pens and pencils; leave your phone and all other materials elsewhere.

Make sure your know your literary terms and that you know several works of high-quality literature very well.

AP Exam Review

Please make sure you are reviewing for the AP exam.  It is coming up soon.  Additionally, study for your literary terms test; that is on May 1st, and you are responsible for knowing all of the terms found in the packet (available on this website-- see the sidebar).

In class, we will continue to focus on the exam.

Another reminder: independent reading essay is in class on Friday.  If you are absent, you will have to make it up when you return.

Macbeth Word Trace

1. Choose a word: good, blood/bloody, time, say, fear, hand(s), great, see, sleep, thought, look, eyes, heart, night, death, live, nature, love, etc.

2. Use a concordance (http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance/)  to find every instance in which the word is used in Macbeth.  Reread those scenes.

3.  Analyze the word in context.  How does the use of the word connect to the themes of the play?  What is being communicated?

Macbeth Progress

We are moving through Macbeth at a good pace.  We are currently finishing Act IV and should get into V today.

Macbeth Reading

We are on Act II of Macbeth-- Banquo's ghost has appeared.  Please make sure you are up to date.

Macbeth

We are beginning Macbeth today.  If you are superstitious, you may call it "The Scottish Play."

Blade Runner Essay

We are going to finish reading the critical essay on Blade Runner today.  See me if you don't have a copy.

A Few Definitions

Here are some brief definitions of a few terms from J. A. Cuddon’s A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory.  Do any of these apply to The Stranger?  What about other books we have read this year?

Existentialism (“Pertaining to Existence”):  “An important feature of atheistic existentialism is the argument that existence precedes essence […] for it is held that man fashions his own existence and only exists by so doing, and, in that process, and by the choice of what he does or does not do, gives essence to that existence.”

Nihilism:  “…denotes a radical or extreme radical attitude which denies all traditional values, and, not infrequently, moral values as well.”

Theatre of the Absurd: “Mathematically, a surd¹ is that which cannot be expressed in finite terms of ordinary numbers of quantities.  Hence irrational rather than ridiculous.  It is in the mathematical sense that the ‘philosophy’ of the absurd has been mostly expressed.  But it is a pervasive attitude rather than a system of thought.”

^1: technically, a root that is irrational

_The Stranger_ Sample Essays

Here are three essays from previous AP exams.  Consider how you would apply The Stranger to each one.

2009:   Edward Said has written that “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Yet Said has also said that exile can become “a potent, even enriching” experience.

Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. You may choose a work from the list below or one of comparable literary merit. Do not merely summarize the plot.

2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, "Literature is the question minus the answer." Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes' observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author's treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

2003, Form B. Novels and plays often depict characters caught between colliding cultures -- national, regional, ethnic, religious, institutional. Such collisions can call a character's sense of identity into question. Select a novel or play in which a character responds to such a cultural collision. Then write a well-organized essay in which you describe the character's response and explain its relevance to the work as a whole.

Also, here are the discussion questions from the other day:

1. How is Meursault affected by his mother's death?
2. What is the purpose of Salamano and his dog?
3. How is Meursault an "outside?" What about his other associates?
4. Why does Meursault shot the Arab?
5. How does the murder affect Meursault?
6. How does imprisonment affect Meursault?

The Stranger-- Symbols and Motifs

Today we will discuss motifs and symbols in The Stranger.  Please continue reading the novel; today you will read chapter four and read an additional chapter per day.

Two Translations of The Stranger

Today we are looking at two different translations of The Stranger.  If you are absent, please make sure to get the materials from me.

Also, since we lost one day, we will move the reading schedule for the novel accordingly.  Therefore, you should read the first chapter of Part II over the weekend.

Call for Submissions

Student Creative Expression Exhibit. This is an annual event that is connected to GLSEN and Hudson Valley No Name Calling Week. It is open to ALL students, any grade.

This year’s theme is CELEBRATE KINDNESS and  the exhibit will be held at the Henry A. Wallace Center at The FDR Presidential Library from Feb 22-27th.

Here is the link.

Reading Schedule for The Stranger

Here is the reading schedule for The Stranger.  Please read the chapters on the days they are assigned.

DATE:    CHAPTER(S):

Part I:
1/30         1
2/2           2 and 3
2/3           4 and 5
2/4           6

Part II:
2/5          1
2/6          2
2/9          3
2/10        4
2/11        5

Library Research Project

We will be in the library during class time on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week.

Mr. Broomhead

English 12AP

tbroomhead@acsdny.org

http://english12apmrbroomhead.blogspot.com/

Poetry Paper

For this assignment, you will explicate a poem by one of the poets listed below.  You will use published literary criticism to enhance your explication, so be sure to choose a “canonical” poem. 

Your explication will be a 6-8 page, typed, double-spaced research paper.  You must use at least five cited sources; they may be articles from books, journals, or databases.  Sparknotes, Wikipedia articles, Cliff’s Notes, and the like are not acceptable.  There are some useful internet resources; I have links to some of them on my webpage.

·         Please provide a copy of the poem with your paper.

·         Please print a copy of your paper.  Electronic copies will not be accepted. 

·         Your paper must meet MLA guidelines.

The Poets:

A.R. Ammons; Matthew Arnold; Margaret Atwood; John Ashbery; W.H. Auden; Aphra Behn; John Berryman; Elizabeth Bishop; William Blake; Anne Bradstreet; Gwendolyn Brooks; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Robert Browning; George Gordon, Lord Byron; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Billy Collins; Hart Crane; Robert Creeley; e.e. cummings; H.D. (Hilda Doolittle); James Dickey; Emily Dickinson; John Donne; John Dryden; Paul Laurence Dunbar; T.S. Eliot; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Robert Frost (NOT “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “The Road Not Taken”); Allen Ginsberg; Thomas Hardy; Seamus Heaney; George Herbert; Robert Herrick; Geoffrey Hill; Gerard Manley Hopkins; Langston Hughes; Ben Jonson; James Joyce; John Keats; Kenneth Koch; Philip Larkin; D.H. Lawrence; Denise Levertov; Amy Lowell; Robert Lowell; Andrew Marvell; Herman Melville; Edna St. Vincent Millay; John Milton; Marianne Moore; Frank O’Hara; Sylvia Plath; Edgar Allen Poe (NOT “The Raven”); Alexander Pope; Ezra Pound; Adrienne Rich; Edwin Arlington Robinson; Theodore Roethke; Christina Rossetti; Muriel Rukeyser; Anne Sexton; William Shakespeare; Percy Bysshe Shelley; Sir Philip Sidney; Stevie Smith; Gary Snyder; Edmund Spenser; William Stafford; Wallace Stevens; May Swenson; Sarah Teasdale; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Dylan Thomas; Robert  Penn Warren; Phillis Wheatley; Walt Whitman; Richard Wilbur; William Carlos Williams; William Wordsworth; James Wright; William Butler Yeats

·         Rough drafts are due: 17 February

·         Final drafts are due: 2 March

Please do not plagiarize.

Frankenstein Essay

Reminder: we will be writing about compassion and sacrifice in Frankenstein tomorrow and Friday.

Frankenstein Discussion Topics

Parallel characters

hatred
parents/children
revenge
revolt
binary opposition
pride
ambition
compassion

loneliness
sacrifice
responsibility
"being human"
intelligence/wisdom
science/black magic

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU ARE FINISHED WITH THE BOOK

Books that Influence "The Monster"

John Milton: Paradise Lost

Plutarch: Lives

Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther

C.F. Volney: Ruins of Empires

What are these books about?  What are the “big ideas?” How do these ideas influence the “monster?”  Compare what the “monster” says about the books (118-119 and 128-131) to what you discover. What is the relationship between these works and Frankenstein as a whole?

Reading Schedule for the Rest of Frankenstein

date   read to   chapters

1/5    152         12-14

1/6    169         -17

1/7     190        -19

1/8     209        -21

1/9     236        -24 and the Afterward

Here's "Mutability," by Percy Shelley

                  I.

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;

    How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver,

Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon

Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:—

                                         II.

Or like forgotten lyres whose dissonant strings

    Give various response to each varying blast,

To whose frail frame no second motion brings

    One mood or modulation like the last.

                                        III.

We rest—a dream  has power to poison sleep;

    We rise—one wandering thought pollutes the day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep,

Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:—

                                       IV.

It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,

    The path of its departure still is free;

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;

    Nought may endure but Mutability.

Source: The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: The text carefully revised by William Michael Rossetti, Volume 3 (John Slark, 1885)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241616