Advanced Placement Literature and Composition Syllabus

Denver School of the Arts

Gregg Painter
gregg_painter@dpsk12.org

The Advanced Placement Literature and Composition course at Denver School of the
Arts is designed to give the students linguistic, reading and analytical tools they may not
have been called upon to use fully in high school courses, skills they will be expected to
have in good colleges.

These include:

1. The ability to read more complex material, especially older British writers with their
more complex syntactical structures. Although perhaps not as useful on the AP test,
important and unusual modern writers are also presented to the class, as the purpose of an
introductory college literature and composition class is to present students with a wide
range of reading material, from the ancient Greeks to the post-modern devotees of
semiotic theory.

2. The ability to write using more complex and varied syntax and diction. This I see as
the core of the course, as I have seen hundreds of very bright students whose writing does
not reflect their intelligence or their analytical skills, as evidenced in discussion.

I blame the red-penned RO (run-on) scold for their deficiencies of syntactical variety.
Their sentences are too often twelve to fifteen words in length. They have, by and large,
not learned how to use the semicolon, which is not just a punctuation mark, but a
linguistic device used to show a sophisticated relationship between similar ideas, often
subordinating one observation to another larger point. Nor have they realized how
powerful the short sentence can be in creating exciting prose.

The function of paragraphing is lost on many of them, and its concomitant indication of
long and logical patterning of an argument. Beyond this, adding the transitional devices
traditionally used at the end and beginning of paragraphs is emphasized.

Although not as vital to the speedy AP test, various means of structuring essays, such as
leading up to the main thesis instead of beginning with it, developing creative and
compelling introductions and conclusions, and a host of other structures which they both
read and write, are introduced to them. (My professor friends despise the five-paragraph
essay, so we consider that ancient history in our AP class.)
3. Despite an aversion to analysis among many of our artists (this is Denver School of
the Arts, and practicing artists often rely more on The Muse than the left brain for
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creation of art), rigorous attention to the text at hand is required at every stage of the
course. Discussion of various approaches to analysis is encouraged, including challenges
to the concept of analysis itself. Effective use of quotations embedded in sophisticated
defense of original theses is something we expect every student to be able to do
reflexively by the end of the year.

This is one aspect of AP Lit and Comp which distinguishes it from our typical high
school literature classes, where more creative, individual, and heartfelt responses to
works of literature are encouraged. (Not that we neglect emotional responses to poems
and stories and novels in our AP class, nor do we neglect to view the writer primarily as
an artist.)

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The following breakdown of the course’s content is based on two-week units, as we

operate on the “block system” with 90-minute classes, each class meeting approximately
five times per two-week period. Relevant short stories are mentioned, although they are
subject to change based on the instructor’s whims or what is relevant and compelling in
contemporary short-story collections, The New Yorker, Granta, and the usually too-
strange McSweeny’s.

The poetry is not detailed below, as we read at least one hundred poems during the
course, usually from our primary text (Literature, Roberts and Jacobs, Prentice-Hall) or
from our secondary text (Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense, Harcourt, Brace and
Jovanovich), as well as from other contemporaneous sources.

(A section on the novels we simultaneously read follows this chronology.)

The literature we read is treated many different ways. Discussion, either as a whole class,
half a class, or in small groups is indispensable and is usually paired with either a small
bit of pre-discussion writing, a larger analytical piece of writing, and/or oral presentation.

We have about twenty years worth of practice tests on hand, and these are the prompts
for much of the student writing we do. They are synched to our current area of study.
For example, early in the year we tend to work on essays whose questions don’t call for a
lot of literary terminology which we have yet to cover.

These practice essays are often paired with useful student essays (good and bad) and AP
readers’ comments on the essays. The College Board material is invaluable in this
regard.
Essays are read and parsed more thoroughly by the instructor than are essays in other
H.S. classes, and copious comments are of course designed to individualize the program
and maximize the writing and thinking growth of each student.
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Creative writing is a less common though no less important component of the course.
Mimetic writing, for example, often gives the student a more holistic and intuitive view
of how the writer does what she does in producing her art. Less strictly analytical writing
can also sometimes connect the student as a person to the work being studied.

Weeks 1-2:

First Day: a practice AP Test, including an essay and a multiple-choice test, undertaken
to let students know the kind of examination they will be taking in May as well as the
perspective from which we will be viewing literature.

These weeks also serve as a time to contextualize the coming year’s investigation, by
looking at the origins and present-day role of literature in human society. Evolutionary
aesthetics (as promulgated in philosopher Frederick Turner’s Beauty, for example) will
be one of the primary focuses of this unit. Federico Garcia Lopez’s “The Irrestible
Beauty of All Things” is included here.

Primarily, we examine, as we do all year, the nature of literary analysis of the type that is
expected of them on the AP test and in college in general. Reading critical analyses of
works we are reading provides a good compass for them to orient their thinking in this
regard.

Weeks 3-4

The Short Story. Carver’s “Neighbors” and Kincaid’s “What Have I Been Doing Lately”
are read and discussed as examples of wildly different variations of the short story.

Poetry, concentrated on more in the later sections of the course but never neglected in any
given two-week period, is also introduced, with plenty of student input and a plethora of
divergent examples of the form.

Weeks 5-6: Plot

“The Destructors,” by Hardy
“The Japanese Quince” by Galsworthy

This is a point where student creative writing can be useful, having them develop the bare
bones of a plot for a short story/novella, including conflict, character growth, etc., writing
one scene from the piece in detail.
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Plot in poetry is more rare outside of older epic poetry, reasons for which are discussed.

Weeks 7-8: P. O. V.

“Haircut” by Lardner. Great example of a story written from the POV of an unreliable
narrator.

“Hills Like White Elephants” by Hemingway. The ultimate in third person objective
POV.

Poems where the speaker is obviously not the poet are read here.

Weeks 9-10: Character

“Paul’s Case” by Cather

“Tears, Idle Tears” by Bowen

Poems primarily about characters; psychological representation in poetry.

Weeks 11-12: Setting

“The Portable Phonograph,” by Clark

“The Secret Sharer” by Conrad

Poems from the battlefield to the pasture to the attic: importance of setting in poetry.

Weeks 13-14
15-16; Tone and irony
“Rape Fantasies” by Atwood
“The Loons” by Laurence
“Hammon and the Beans” by Paredes
“The Guest” by Camus

Tone is an almost constant element of our analysis of a piece of fiction or poetry, and is
consistently present in AP test questions.

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As fish can hardly describe water, we have a problem with identifying irony, as it has
become the psychic sea in which we swim in modern Western society, especially in the
sarcastic/ironic teen culture. Irony in all its forms is also a topic we keep coming back to.

Weeks 17-18: Denotation, connotation, style, diction, syntax

“The Poor Aunt Story” by Haruki Murakami

“A &P” by Updike

Much poetry (including, of course, Graves’ “The Naked and the Nude.”)

Weeks 19-20: Imagery, symbolism, allegory, personification

Again, a lot of poetry, but it should be noted that a lot of these literary terms have already
been introduced by necessity in discussions of Song of Solomon, for example.

Weeks 21-22: Figurative Language, paradox, over/understatement, metonomy,

synechdoche, metaphor, allusion

More poems!

Weeks 25-26; Prosody: Meter, rhyme and sound, especially in poetry. Although this
aspect of poetry is not the crucial aspect of study it was a hundred years ago (especially
the ability to name metrical forms), it is still a vital topic to visit. Of special concern –
and this really applies to all the literary devices we learn – is the ability to connect
discussion of the device to the central intent/theme of the poem/poet.
Weeks 27-28: Form and pattern.

At about this juncture, they are given a brief encyclopedia of literary terms and are tested
on them. These terms constitute the main “content” in terms of specific elements of
knowledge to be studied. Directing students to be able to stick to the text and control
their own prose in doing so – including their use of transitions, parallel construction,
compelling work choice, appropriate structure, etc. – remains the backbone of this course.

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Weeks 29-30: Test prep and whatever else we may have missed!

Various strategies to maximize one’s score on the AP test are examined.

Weeks 31-36: Depending on the calendar, all or part of Goethe’s Faust is read. (A work
of dubious use for the AP Lit test.) Also of little use for the test, but possibly useful as a
preview of what they may encounter in college, we undergo a closer examination of
various literary schools that have sprung up like mushrooms (or toadstools, depending on
your point of view) in the latter half of the twentieth century. More grad-school criticism
is read here.

Novels:

Again, simultaneous with the units detailed above, students will be reading novels on
their own time. Activities related to these novels will be undertaken within and without
the walls of the classroom.

Song of Solomon

A great way to start the year. Kids usually enjoy this one, and it is almost always of use
on the AP Lit test’s Open Question. We end this novel with two activities. First, a
creative response to the book, ranging from paintings to interpretive dance. Second, an
examination of several essays published on the book. (Allen, Dixon, Falore, others.)
Students read these essays and report back to the class on them, that way establishing an
idea of how many ways a book can be read without spending the time it would take to
read all of the material written on Song of Solomon.

Beowulf

Hey, everyone’s got to read this sometime in their life! (Is there a grammatical problem
with the use of “their” here instead of the more proper “his or her?” Well, that is one
more thing that can come up in class: the changing nature of language and the
prescritivist/descriptivist gap in linguistic theory and practice.)

Grendel

Another student favorite. We read three chapters a week. Lots of discussion about
Gardner’s shifting stylistic devices and the many philosophical, sociological,
psychological and theological ideas contained in the book.

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Macbeth

Mostly read aloud and parsed in class.

We view and discuss the Polanski film.

We read several post-grad essays on the play, one of which calls into question the whole
premise of the evil king and his even more ruthless wife as villains. This essay’s premise
is that “tanistry,” as it was practiced in Scotland at the time, precluded direct hereditary
lineage as the primary method for assigning kingship (positing that Duncan’s naming of
Malcolm as his successor was contrary to law/custom), so that Macbeth was in effect
performing his duty in killing Macbeth. Students are then asked to re-evaluate the play in
terms of this article and look for textual evidence contradicting this premise.

Crime and Punishment

We begin by researching Russia in the 1860’s, the history or the czars, socialism,
conditions in St. Petersburg, and various philosophies including nihilism and
existentialism (admittedly not officially designated as such at the time!), some of which
we already acknowledged in our discussion of Grendel.

We end by writing a research paper on the book, using traditional MLA annotation,
requiring a thesis, argument supported by academic research, etc.

“One-offs”

Many assignments are given to break the routine and stimulate student thought.
Some examples:
 - Examination of poems by Paz, Neruda, and the early Surrealists that are resistant
to ordinary analysis.
- Reading Patricia Highsmith’s short story with its audacious ending and its thesis
in the title: “The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, The Trouble with the World.”
- Reading sui generis prose, such as Donald Barthelme or Ben Marcus.
- Using techniques of literary analysis to unpack implications about man’s role in
the universe in Erroll Morris’ non-fiction film, “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.”
- Taking a look at parody and satire, old and new.
- Doing timed writing assignments, such as being given ten minutes to summarize
Raskolnikov’s published essay on the criminal mind.
- Peer editing.
- Typing up, copying and distributing student work back to them.

Following is the nuts and bolts syllabus the students and parents receive…

• Advanced Placement Literature

• Gregg Painter

This course appears at first glance to be a “test prep” class, but given the nature of the
test, that’s not a bad thing. The AP literature exam, given in May, is a rigorous test of a
student’s ability to read a text closely and write about it cogently. These skills are in
keeping with the spirit of any literature class, of course, but the level at which students
are expected to perform is significantly higher. Aside from the usual reading, writing and
discussion (more of which revolves around poetry than most high school courses), the
curriculum includes the study of terms and methods used in the analysis of literature.
It is a college level course, and students are expected to speak up in our discussions as if
they were taking a seminar course.

Novels and Plays

Song of Solomon (Morrison)

Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
Beowulf
Grendel (Gardner)
Macbeth
One student-selected novel

Students are requested to procure their own copies of the novels, from libraries,
bookstores, etc. If this is not possible, we have a few extra copies to lend out.

The Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of Crime and Punishment is available in

bookstores, and a very good one, but any translation is OK. The Seamus Heaney
translation of Beowulf, likewise, is the most recent, the most available, and is a much
more compelling read than older translations. We will be reading Macbeth out loud in
class, and we may possibly have enough to go around. Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
is the first book we’ll be reading. Please procure a copy soon.

Homework

Most of the homework will be of two types: reading novels and finishing written work
begun in class. Reading schedules will be given for each novel, and posted on my
website.

Grades

Grades are based primarily on written work, including tests, and secondarily on class
participation. Check on your students’ grade through Infinite Portal or email me with
questions.
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Tests

May be given at any time over the assigned material.

Other info:

Make-up work

Work from excused absences must be made up within one week after
return to class for full credit. It is the student’s responsibility to obtain
the work.

Late work

Work turned in a day or two late will have one grade taken off. After
that, work will receive half-credit at most (50%, an F). If you are
involved in a performance/show/etc. that interferes with your turning
homework in on time, write an explanatory note at the top of the
paper and you will receive full credit for your work. Talking to me
beforehand would also be helpful.

Missing work
Turn in all your work. The computer averages in missing work as a
zero.

Contacting me

E-mail is the best way to get in touch with me. From the DSA home
page (http://dsa.dpsk12.org/), go to “Academics,” where you can click on
my e-mail address (Gregg_Painter@dpsk12.org).

What’s going on in the classroom?

You can find out what we’re currently working on by logging on to the
DSA home page, then clicking on “academics,” “language arts,” and “Gregg
Painter.” I will update the page every week or two.