Assignments over break!

Please finish reading Hamlet over break!

Also, please write your Citizen Kane analysis essay and submit through Turnitin!

Assignment:

Please spend a few paragraphs analyzing Kane as a character.  What drives him?  What helps to explain him?  What are some ironies or larger themes that he embodies?  How do minor characters and their relationships help to define him?

Please spend a paragraph analyzing at least one specific short story technique:  symbolism, point of view, narrative chronology, tone, setting, irony, etc.  Make sure to provide evidence of your technique and analyze the specific effects this creates.

Please spend a few paragraphs analyzing at least two specific applications of film techniques:  camera shot, camera angles, lighting, editing, mis-en-scene, music, sound, movement, etc.  Make sure to identify and describe the technique and explain the effects this creates.

You finished assignment should be 3-5 pages double spaced.  If you refer to ANY outside resources, please be sure to cite them appropriately and include a works cited.  You may organize this in any way, but please be sure to use an academic voice.

An approximate screen play is available here if you would find it helpful for identifying quotations or scenes.

Hamlet Act I scenes i and ii due Tuesday/Wednesday

Please read Act One, scenes 1 and 2 for Tuesday/Wednesday.

Short Short Story Quiz Thurs/Fri

In addition to our discussion of Metamorphosis on Thursday/Friday, we will be taking a short, short story quiz on the following stories:

The Yellow Wallpaper 
Araby 
Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
Young Goodman Brown 
Good Country People
 Metamorphosis
Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
Recitatif


Please be prepared by knowing the authors of each story, main interpretive ideas we discussed, and evidence we used in supporting those interpretations.

Metamorphosis reading due Monday! and VOMWEW make up

Please read the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka for Monday.  Remember that this is categorized as a novella--too short to be a novel but to long to be a proper short story.  Therefore, plan your reading carefully and break it down into sections.  The best translation is available in your red book, but if you are bookless, you will be able to find a link to the text online.


If you missed the VOMWEW (Very Old Man With Enormous Wings) free write, please review the Essay Hack slideshow in the previous post.  Then, consider for the VOMWEW story, what commentary Marquez makes about mankind.  (Mankind is ____ and _____ and _______.)

Please write for twenty minutes in response to this topic using as many essay hacks as you see fit and referencing specific details from the story (not as quotations, but just specific things that happened.)  This is not assessed other than being completed, so enjoy and think some thoughts without worrying about a grade.

Reading due Thurs/Friday

Please read this story available here for Thursday/Friday.  Give special thought to what the reader knows and what the reader doesn't know and how this ambiguity is important for the reader's experience.

This is a longer story and best spread out over two nights of reading.

Essay Hack Information

Here is the slideshow on how to hack your analysis essays and make them awesomer.

Prose Outlines due Monday, 12/2

You will be completing TWO prose outline assignments and submitting them to Turnitin.  Please do things in the following order.

Please read this excerpt and think about it:  Middlemarch

Please look at the concept and example: Prose Outline Frame and Explanation

Please read these four passages:

Johnny

Belinda

The Street

Mayor

Then, complete a prose outline for TWO of them and submit it through Turnitin.

Prose passage for discussion

Prose Passage (Isabel)

Reading due Thurs/Fri

Please read the delightfully weird story "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor for Thursday/Friday and look for existential elements.

Reading due Tues/Weds

Please read the short short story "Araby" by James Joyce.

PLEASE LOOK AT THIS

Here are some examples of different devices and some analysis for your preparation for your poetry essay on Monday.  Please excuse any typos and try to focus your reading on noticing HOW the effect of each quotation is explained.

Due Thurs/Fri

Please make sure you have read the delightfully weird short story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (beginning on 258?) for Thursday/Friday.  You will definitely want to try to apply some of your Psychoanalytic Techniques to make sense of this one.

Also please make sure that you turn in a copy of your college admissions essay by Friday.

Short Story for Tues/Wed

Please make sure you have read "The Yellow Wallpaper" for Tuesday/Wednesday.  Your focus should be on characterization and what evidence you can use to support your characterization claims.

Homework for Thursday/Friday

Please read the essay "Once More to the Lake" by EB White in your lit books.  Then, make sure your books come with you to class for Thursday/Friday.

Poetry Test Studying

Below  is a copy of the placement.  Your own copies should be here on Monday.

A link to a poetry test Kahoot is available here.  Please disregard any questions on poetry time periods.

B day homework for Friday

Please read pages 506-510 in your lit book about how to "put everything together" that we've learned about poetry!

Form Slideshow

The form slide show is available here.

Poetry Practice 2 Due Monday

Please complete the poetry practice that is available here and post on Turnitin.  Your practice poem should come from your red book, but if you realize you don't have your book, you can use another book of poetry you might have, or search the internet for a poem that you think has relative "literary merit." 

Thurs/Friday Homework and Translation and Allusion Practice

Poems available here.

Please make sure you have read both texts and are prepared with your text to answer the question:  What does this art do and what should it do?

Please read read book pages 472-492 which should cover sound devices and rhythm and meter.

Old Timey Poetry Due Monday, 10/14

Here is the link to complete for your old timey poetry assignment.

The Landlady

Please refer to poem here.

Century Quilt

Poem available here.

Due October 7th

Please break down this task over the next several days and weekend.

The essay slideshow from in class is available here.

You will be writing your first take home essay which will be submitted to Turnitin no later than Monday, October 7th, at 10:00 pm.

The poem that you are all writing your first poetry essay on is available here. Please write your essay on this poem. I will not accept essays written on a different poem for this assignment. This poem is also available in your red book on page 533. ("The Starry Night", by Robert Fagles.)

Device Slideshows

New:  Syntax Slideshow.  Please review today when you are done with your assessment.

Previous:

Diction
Imagery
Figurative Language

Due Thurs/Fri

Please check here for information about the assignment that is due on Thursday/Friday.

If you need the page numbers for the syntax reading, they are  465-472.

Slideshows from class will be posted soon!

Due Monday, 9.23

Here is the homework assignment for Monday.  Sorry for the delay posting.

Assignments 9/16-9/20

There is no homework that is due on Monday.  However, you will probably like to get a start on other assignments for the week.

Due Tuesday/Wednesday

Please complete the three poem interpretation assessment practice available here.  Preferably, you can fill in the printed form, but if you do not have access to a printer, write your responses on a piece of paper.

Due Thursday/Friday

Please read the sections on diction (436-444 and imagery (444-451) in your book.

Homework due 9/12 or 9/13

Please read the document "The Happy Synergy of Interpretation and Analysis" which is available here.  You will also be reading about figurative language in your lit book (451-457).  Please pay special attention to the terms introduced to you in italics and be looking for these devices as you read the sample poems.

Handout needed in Class

Here is the handout that you will need for class today.

Assignments due Tues/Wed 9/9 and 9/10

Please read the following document on how to use questioning to help you develop an interpretation of a poem. It is available here. This is a really helpful tool that you may want to print out and have as a resource.

Then, complete the "mad lib" assignment which is available here. Instructions on what to do are available at the top of the page.

Welcome to AP Lit!!!

Welcome again to AP Lit!!! This year is going to be amazing!

Below are your first two assignments; they are quite simple!

Assignment 1: Have a parent guarding review the syllabus available here and return a signed sheet that acknowledges your understanding of the class policies.

Assignment 2: Read the three poems available here and think thoughts about them. If you wish, you may print them out and mark your thoughts on them, but that's not required.

That's it!

Final Exam Information

Final Exam Question Breakdown:--

20 Character Description/Quotation matching (WH, CK, TFA)

10 Wuthering Heights Timeline Questions

10 Things Fall Apart Timeline Questions

12 Wuthering Heights True/False Questions

2 Short Answer Questions (Portrait, CK)

1 Novel "slightly longer response" question

Portrait Reading

EVERYBODY please read chapter 1 of Portrait for Tuesday/Wednesday. Chapter 1 Notes

You are finding plot references that fit in the following categories: (Make sure these are recorded on a turninable piece of paper)

Water imagery
Bird/Flight
Name/Identity
Word Fascination
Hand/Eye Imagery
Women
Isolation
Religion/Politics

Then, you will read your group's focus chapter and be prepared to discuss/present/lead information during Thursday/Friday. Your presentation/discussion should include additional examples for our categories above in addition to your interesting original thoughts from this chapter. Summaries and notes are available below.

Chapter 2

(no summary needed-you read chapter 1!)

Chapter 2 notes


Chapter 3

The previous chapter ends with an adolescent Stephen paying a visit to a prostitute. We understand this and other sinful behavior continues at the beginning of Chapter 3. At about this time, Stephen's school has a church retreat that presents the young men with some ideas about the end (death and hell). Wow, there are a lot of descriptions about hell! How does the sensory imagery impact Stephen? And what is so important about his creepy goat men vision at the end of the chapter?

Chapter 3 Notes

Chapter 4

The previous chapter ends with Stephen making confession, which absolves him from all of his sins, so Stephen is is a pretty holy place for a lot of chapter 4 which catches the attention of his priests. Note the internal conflict this creates for him and how the image of the girl at the beach is like really important. Can this really be like the most important part of this book? Seriously?

Chapter 4 Notes

Chapter 5 A (end before "towards dawn he awoke")

Stephen has now decided to attend the university, instead of joining the priesthood. How's that working out for him at the beginning of this chapter? How does he feel about his fellow students? And what philosophical concepts does he debate with the dean of studies in the classroom?

Chapter 5 notes


Chapter 5 B (Begin at "towards dawn he awoke."

Stephen has been at the university having philosophical discussions with people and sometimes going to class. But now he is inspired to write a poem! He does! What do you notice about the imagery? He talks about a lot of stuff with Cranly--this is important. And yes, he reveals so mommy issues. What does Stephen decide at the end of the novel? And how does it wrap everything up?

(see link for chapter 5 notes above)

Due Tuesday 5/21 or Wednesday 5/22

Please read through chapter 79 of Cat's Cradle for Tuesday/Wednesday.

Assignments!

Please make sure you have read chapters 1-36 of Cat's Cradle by Thursday 5/9 or Friday 5/10.


See information about the optional* Citizen Kane essays below.


*Optional means you will not get a zero on the assignment if you choose not to do it, but you will also not have points added in the grade book that might help boost your grade. You must submit the essay by the due date: you may not opt to do the essays after the due date if you become unhappy with your grade. If you consult online sources for these essays you MUST include proper citations and a works cited page.

Citizen Kane Essays: Due by Friday, 5/24 on Turnitin.


Device Analysis

Please write a 2 page minimum (typed, double-spaced) reflection paper on the use of a minimum of 3 film techniques in Citizen Kane. Please describe the specific technique and analyze its effect and how its use contributes to the meaning of the film. There are no structural requirements for the paper, but the paper should be written in formal voice.

Character Analysis

Write a character analysis paper focusing on Charles Foster Kane. Again, it will be in formal voice, 2 pages, double-spaced, but no structure requirements. Consider discussing Kane's influences, motivations, desires, fears, relationships with others, etc. Do your best to use some quotations or near quotations from the movie.



End of the year reflection essays due 6/3
Final Reflection Essays: Due by Monday, June 3rd at 10:00pm.

Review "Game"

Review game slips are available here.

The slideshow from class today is available here.

Review sheets!

Here is a link to review sheets.


Review Sheets

Study a bit this weekend, but remember to rest, relax, and take care of yourself.

Review Sheet Information

6th period, be patient: we'll talk about this on Wednesday. Remember to use your notes and your brains and not take from online sources.

Information is available below.

Each review sheet must address the following:

Title of Work
Author
Approximate Time Period
Main Characters: Names and Relationships
Brief Plot Summary
Handy Plot References
A Meaning of the Work as a Whole
Relevant Literary Techniques
If I write on this work, I will be sure to mention(what analytical mic drops are you hoping to include)...
Quintessential Quote(s) [Easy to memorize, sure to impress]



A Condensed Example (Yours will be more detailed; mine is quite poor, but I want to at least give you a sense of the different categories.)

Title: Metamorphosis Author:
Franz Kafka Time: Early Modern
Characters: Gregor-Salesman and Bug
Grete: Sister and aspiring musician
Mr. Samsa, Mrs. Samsa, Charwoman, Lodgers

Plot Summary: No time or space— but self explanatory. Can be done as bullet points.(Do not plagiarize!)

Handy Plot References: Rocking to get out of bed, desire to go to work, never miss a day, arrival of boss, attempt to communicate, picture with girl, saving furniture, apple attack, walking on walls, lodgers, sister playing violin, sight failing and not seeing the hospital...

Meaning of Work as a Whole: The essential alienation of mankind from a world that seems to value only the material contributions he can make.

Literary Techniques: Narrative voice, symbolism,

I will be sure to mention: Symbolism: picture frame, apple, music, bug. Lack of explanation for transformation, Gregor’s desire to keep working.

Quotations: “When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams…” “Was he an animal…”

Practice Essays due 4/30 or 5/1

Please complete the two passage analysis essays as if you were writing them for the AP test. That means in pen, handwritten, and back-to-back (preferred) 40 minutes each (80 minutes total)

Prior to doing so, you should review:

Previous poetry or prose essays
Poetry Place mat
Poetry class notes
Poetry slide shows
Prose class notes
Prose prospectus assignment (from the fall and Victorian)

In your essays, focus on:

Poetry:

Complex interp elements
Variety of devices
Insights and speculations


Prose:

Complex response to prompt question
Lots of short quotations
Insights and speculations

Reading due Monday

Please read through chapter 7 of Things Fall Apart.

Homework due 4/11 or 4/12

Please complete this assignment on the back of the paper that we started outlining the "attempts to shield loved ones prompt"

Prompt 1:

Choose an implausible or strikingly unrealistic incident or character in a work of fiction or drama of recognized literary merit. Write an essay that explains how the incident or character is related to the more realistic of plausible elements in the rest of the work. Avoid plot summary.

I have chosen to write this essay on the "ghost child Catherine" that Lockwood encounters at the beginning of the novel. Please complete the assignment based on this.

STEP 0: Number off what the prompt is asking you to do.

Plot references:

Brainstorm a list of all other relevant plot references that you think would fit in this essay.

Analytical Ideas:

Brainstorm a list of all INTERESTING (see slideshow in previous post) things that you could say about this topic.

Connection:

Use a connecting phrase to connect these ideas to a MOWAAW statement.

Prompt 2:

Ironically, sometimes the circumstances surrounding a character’s death yield important insight into how these characters lived their lives. Select such a death and analyze how the death of this character reveals important insights and helps to develop the meaning of the work as a whole.

I have chosen to write on the death of Catherine. Please complete the assignment based on this.

Repeat the same process as above.

Open Ended Writing Lesson Resources

Here are some resources from our open ended writing lesson.

Before and after body paragraph revision for analysis and connecting to prompt and MOWAAW
Effective use of plot references example
Standard vs. Flair introduction (both are okay)
Wuthering Heights practice prompts and numbering the prompt

Reading due Thursday/Friday

Please read through chapter 26 of Wuthering Heights.

Happy Spring Break Reading!

Your minimum reading requirement of Wuthering Heights over Spring Break will be through Chapter 20. Of course, please feel free to read more than this to get ahead of the game.


Continue to pay attention to the conflict of society vs. instinct, parallel characters, femininity vs. masculinity, DOGS, and your focus topics that you selected from the slideshow.


Happy reading!

Homework due 3/18 and 3/19-20

Due Monday

We will be doing a study of four 19th century prose passages to get us ready for Victorian Era passages. Please print* this packet that you will use for marking the text. I'm sorry that it is so long!

*If you need to conserve paper, please change to a smaller font before printing. If you can't print, please read the passages online and do the assignment as best you can on a separate sheet of paper. OR, you can copy the passages into a new Google Doc, do your annotations in a different color, and then invite me into your document. Whatever works best for you, your printer, and your parents asking you why the printer always needs ink.

1. Read all passages and mark the text writing down insights into character, inferences, identifying quotations, or anything that would help you develop a complex response to the prompt.

2. Re-read the passage that you are to become an expert on. (Listed by alpha below). Expect that you will be asked to make a comment about your focus passage in class, so make sure you have extra fancy insights for this one. You will need to write down one turn-in-able insight about your passage. (Take me through your claim(s),the quotation(s) that support this, and, why this is interesting.

3. Be prepared to turn your all 4 marked texts in for points.

A-H: Passage 1
I-M: Passage 2
N-R: Passage 3
S-Z: Passage 4

Due Tuesday or Wednesday

Please read through this introduction slideshow on Wuthering Heights.

Then, read chapters 1-8 of Wuthering Heights.

This text is free domain, so if you don't remember to pick up a paper copy, it is available for free on the internet.

Weekend Reading and Drama Test Information

A-Day: Finish Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for Tuesday.


B-Day: Act I of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for Monday.

Finish Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for Wednesday.



Drama Test Information:

Works covered: Oedipus, Hamlet, Tartuffe, A Doll’s House, Death of a Salesman, A Raisin in the Sun, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

 Authors of all of the plays

 All character names (correct spelling preferred—or at least close)

 Drama Terms
o aside, soliloquy, monologue, dramatic irony

 Greek Drama Terms, development of, and general knowledge
o Hubris, harmartia, peripeteia, epiphany, catharsis, stichomythia
o Aristotle and Aristotelian Unities (Time, location, plot)
o Thespis, Aeschylus, Sophocles

 Shakespearean Drama Terms and general knowledge
o Groundlings, foil, blank verse, prose

Test format:

100 Questions (Multiple Choice! Can you believe it?)

 23 True/False Questions
 5 event timeline questions for each play
 Quotations identification
 Term identification
 Author Identification
 Character Identification

Practice Quotation ID's below:

1. Almost everyone who goes bad in early in life has a mother who’s a chronic liar.

2. My, my, what lovely lacework on your dress!
The workmanship’s miraculous, no less.
I’ve not seen anything to equal it.

3. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows.

4. Let me go home. Bear your own fate, and I’ll
Bear mine. It is better so: trust what I say.

5. Tomorrow I’m going home—I mean, home where I came from. It’ll be easier up there to find something to do.

6. It’s hard to be a faithful wife, in short,
To certain husbands of a certain sort,
And he who gives his daughter to a man she hates
Must answer for her sins at Heaven’s gates.

7. If he doesn’t buckle down, he’ll flunk math!

8. Set your mind at rest.
If it is a question of soothsayers, I tell you
That you will find no man whose craft gives knowledge
Of the unknowable.

9. If only we two shipwrecked people could reach across to each other.

10. There’s a vast difference, so it seems to me,
Between true piety and hypocrisy:
How do you fail to see it, may I ask?
Is not a face quite different from a mask?

11. Thus I associate myself with the oracle
And take the side of the murdered king.

12. …I oughta be makin’ my future. That’s when I come running home. And now, I get here, and I don’t know what to do with myself.


Answers

Death of a Salesman Act II Reading due 2/19 (A) and 2/20 (B)

I'm doing my best to get your two class periods "unflipped". (I'd really like A day to be back first in the rotation.)

I'm hoping that this will do it.

Also, at long last, here is the assignment if you missed the Tartuffe Introduction.

Remember, if you had any absences from 1/28-2/8, your makeup work is due Friday, 2/15!

Reading due 2/8 and 2/12

Please finish a Doll's House for next class.

Reading due 2/5 and 2/6

Please read Act I of "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen. The best version is available in your book, but an online version is available here.

Please plan on having the play finished by Friday.

Due Tuesday 1/29 or Wednesday, 1/30

Please read the background information and Act I of Tartuffe for Tuesday/Wednesday. (1059-1071) Please look for instances of humor and irony.

Here's a link to an online version, but the one in your book is much better!

For Thursday/Friday:

Please have the play finished.

And, here's a link in French, for you Francophiles out there.

Final Essay

Here are some strategies for writing a Shakespearean passage analysis essay.

Marking the text due Thursday/Friday and Finals Information

Please complete a marking the text activity (due 1/10 or 1/11) for the passage below.


Hamlet, Act IV, Scene IV



How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!



Final Exam Information

Your final will consist of a fill-in-the-blank objective test and an essay on a Shakespearean passage. More specifics are below.


Objective Component--fill in the blank (90 Questions)


 Poetry Terms
 Poetry Time Periods (basic characteristics of; no identifying quotations)
 Names of Poets of major poems studied in this course (Think papers and discussions)
 Drama Terms
o aside, soliloquy, monologue, dramatic irony

 Greek Drama Terms, development of, and general knowledge
o Thespis, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Dionysus, unities of drama rheseis, stichomythia, hubris, hamartia, perepeteia, epiphany, catharsis
 Shakespearean Drama Terms and general knowledge
o monologue, soliloquy, aside, foil, irony, blank verse, prose.
 Literary Criticism
o New Criticism
o Psychoanalytic Criticism
 Freud’s theories of development
 Short Story Titles
o Quotation Identification: Identify the title
 Short Story Authors
 Short Story and Drama Characters
o Quotation Identification: Identify the speaker
 Short Story Terms
o Point of View, (1st, 3rd lim, 3rd omnisc.) Direct/Indirect Characterization, Internal/External Conflict, foreshadowing
 Existentialism
o Basic Principles and important Writers of…
 Sentence Structures
o periodic, cumulative, etc. (not the fancy ones like anaphora, etc)



Semester 1 Reading List

Poetry(lots)

Living Like Weasels

Yellow Wallpaper
Young Goodman Brown
Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
Recitatif
Metamorphosis
Good Country People
Araby
Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

Oedipus
Hamlet