The Course
An AP English course in literature and composition engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students consider a work's structure, style, and themes as well as such smaller-scale elements as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone.
Prerequisites and Goals of the Course
The course includes intensive study of representative works from various genres and periods, concentrating on works of recognized literary merit. The pieces chosen invite and reward rereading and do not, like ephemeral works in such popular genres as detective or romance fiction, yield all (or nearly all) of their pleasures of thought and feeling the first time through. Students should be enthusiastic readers.
Reading in an AP course is both wide and deep. This reading necessarily builds upon the reading done in previous English courses. In this AP course, students read works from several genres and periods—from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century, as well as antiquity — but, more importantly, they get to know a few works well. They will read deliberately and thoroughly, taking time to understand a work's complexity, to absorb its richness of meaning, and to analyze how that meaning is embodied in literary form. In addition to considering a work's literary artistry, students will reflect on the social and historical values it reflects and embodies. Careful attention to both textual detail and historical context will provide a foundation for interpretation, whatever critical perspectives are brought to bear on the literary works studied.
A method for the approach to such close reading will involve the following elements: the experience of literature, the interpretation of literature, and the evaluation of literature. By experience, it means the subjective dimension of reading and responding to literary works, including pre-critical impressions and emotional responses. By interpretation, it means that the analysis of literary works through close reading to arrive at an understanding of their multiple meanings. By evaluation, it means both an assessment of the quality and artistic achievement of literary works and a consideration of their social and cultural values. All three of these aspects of reading are important for the AP course in English literature and composition. Moreover, each corresponds to an approach to writing about literary works. Writing to understand a literary work will involve writing response and reaction papers, along with annotation, free writing, and keeping some form of a reading journal. Writing to explain a literary work will involve analysis and interpretation and may include writing brief focused analyses on aspects of language and structure. Writing to evaluate a literary work will involve making and explaining judgments about its artistry and exploring its underlying social and cultural values through analysis, interpretation, and argument.
In short, students in the AP English literature and composition course will read actively. The works taught in the course require careful deliberative reading, and the approach to analyzing and interpreting the material involves students learning how to make careful observations of textual detail, establish connections among their observations, and draw from those connections a series of inferences leading to an interpretive conclusion about a piece of writing's meaning and value.
Writing is an integral part of the AP English Literature and Composition course and exam. Writing assignments focus on the critical analysis of literature and include expository, analytical, and argumentative essays. Although critical analysis makes up the bulk of student writing for the course, well-constructed creative writing assignments may help students see from the inside how literature will be written. Such experience, sharpen their understanding of what writers have accomplished and deepen their appreciation of literary artistry. The goal of both types of writing assignments is to increase students' ability to explain clearly, cogently, even elegantly, what they understand about literary works and why they interpret them as they do.
Because the AP course depends on the development of interpretive skills as students learn to write and read with increasing complexity and sophistication, the AP English Literature and Composition course is intended to be a full-year course.
* Students who take this course will receive 3 college credits for the 1 term, only, that credit is being granted via the St. John's College Extension program.
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Download the full AP Course Catalog and Criteria (.doc)
* Denotes college credit granted via the St. John's College Extension Program.
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