AP English Literature & Composition Summer Reading

AP English Literature & Composition 2012-13 Summer Reading Because the AP English Literature and Composition test consists of multiple-choice and essa...
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AP English Literature & Composition 2012-13 Summer Reading Because the AP English Literature and Composition test consists of multiple-choice and essay sections on both prose and poetry, your two summer reading tasks will be to prepare for and to do both types of assessments. MULTIPLE-CHOICE:

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

During the first week of your return to school, you will take a multiple-choice test on this sly example of a dystopia. Read and annotate the novel closely in order to prepare yourself. The exam will ask questions about plot, character, point of view, tone, allusion, structure, grammar and vocabulary*. Below is an example of a ‘character’ question based on the first chapter of the novel: 1. The speaker in this part of the novel we eventually learn has been assigned the name Offred, but her real name is (A) (B) (C) (D) (E)

Alma Janine Dolores Moira June

Note that there are 15 sections to the novel, beginning and ending with the title, Night, as well as the Historical Notes—which are an actual part of the novel, not something separate from it. Consequently, expect to answer 40 questions on this assessment. Some questions, without quotations from the novel—like the one above—will require your being familiar with the overall content of the novel. Others will have passages from the novel provided, which will call upon not only your understanding of the meaning of the text but also your understanding of the literary techniques and structure used. Here is an example of such a passage-included question: 2. The Angels stood outside with their backs to us. They were objects of fear to us, but of something else as well. If only they would look. If only we could talk to them. Something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some tradeoff, we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy. In the above passage, what literary technique or method does the author use to create the novel’s setting? (A) (B) (C) (D) (E)

Limited omniscient narrative Irony Symbolism Omniscient narrative Irony and satire

*I have included a list on the next page of the different types of multiple-choice questions you will be asked. These are exactly like the types of multiple-choice questions you will face on the AP exam next year.

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*Types of Multiple-Choice Questions. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

The dramatic situation is… The speaker of the poem is…The passage is addressed to… According to the speaker… The subject of the first verb in the passage is… (grammar) The tree in the first verse is an allusion to… (Allusions refer to well known subjects outside the text or add meaning to the passage itself; they can be literary, biblical, mythological, historical.) The main subject of the passage is… In the second paragraph, the author is chiefly concerned with… In line 15 the meaning of the word “sophistry” is…(vocabulary) The dominant device used in the description of the setting is… The effect produced by the chromatic imagery is… The technique of using the same word to begin each verse creates… In the first sentence of the second paragraph, it can be inferred that… The author uses the reference to water to suggest… The speaker uses this literary device to…(common figures of speech and rhetorical devices are apostrophe, anaphora, alliteration, conceit, diction, hyperbole, metaphor, metonymy, paradox, personification, oxymoron, onomatopoeia, simile, synecdoche) The word “fumbling” modifies… All of the following literary devices are used EXCEPT… The passage as a whole suggests… The diction in the third paragraph can be BEST described as… The antecedent of the pronoun “its” is… The rhetorical purpose of lines 1-4 is… The argument of the passage is…The function of the first line in the third verse is to… The author uses a series of questions to…the author uses parallel stucture to…(syntax questions ask how words are arranged and ordered) The structure or form of the poem is…(iambic pentamenter, blank verse, sonnet, free verse, sestet, octave, couplet, quatrain, ode) The style of the speaker is both….and…. The tone of the speaker in the second paragraph is best described as…The tone of the poem changes most noticeably in line… The first two paragraphs establish…(a Roman Numeral question) I. II. III.

The speaker’s perspective The self-assertive nature of the speaker The speaker’s position of power

(A) (B) (C) (D) (E)

I only II only I and II only II and III only I, II, and III

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ESSAY: The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran Your task for this poetic tome will be to read the entire text and then pick any one of the separate poems within it and write an essay that has two distinct but related parts. The first part of the essay will identify and analyze a central idea or theme within the individual poem and explain how the author uses literary devices to convey this meaning. Note that the central idea is NOT the topic of the poem. For example, in the poem On Pain, the central idea of the poem is not pain but what fundamental point—in your opinion—the author (or speaker) is making about pain. Some literary devices you might want to consider in analyzing how the speaker conveys his central idea are sound devices such as alliteration, assonance and consonance; rhetorical devices such as anaphora, antithesis, polysyndeton and rhetorical questions; or image devices such as metaphor, metonymy, personification, simile, symbol and synecdoche. The second part of the essay will explain how this individual poem supports or contributes to the meaning or purpose of the work as a whole. This will require you to link the meaning or purpose of the poem you have chosen to the meaning or purpose of other poems within the text. Please analyze at least two other poems to establish this thematic parallel; in addition, you should include a discussion of literary devices the speaker uses in these two other poems that parallel the poem of your choosing. At a minimum, this should be a 5 paragraph essay: an introduction that identifies the author, the title, the speaker and the poems that will be analyzed (you do NOT need a hook); a paragraph for each poem in which you analyze both the meaning and the devices; and a conclusion. You may prefer to break up your discussion on each poem into 2 paragraphs—one about the meaning of the poem, the other about the devices used to reveal the meaning—which would expand it to 8 paragraphs. That choice I will leave to you. Regardless, my expectation is that you will have a one sentence thesis statement in bold at the end of your introductory paragraph that combines or connects both parts of your essay. The essay will be due the first day of class, NO exceptions! Late essays will receive a ZERO! Please adhere to your MLA Handbook 7th Edition guidelines when quoting the text (found on pp. 95-96); your line breaks for short quotations should be determined by the capitalized words that begin the lines, NOT by how they are printed in your text version. For example, in my text in the poem On Love, the print is laid out like this: “And when he speaks to you believe in / him, / Though his voice may shatter your dreams / as the north wind lays waste the garden” (11). However, I would actually quote it this way instead: “And when he speaks to you believe in him, / Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden” (11). For a longer quotation, it appears this way in print in my text: Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and Shake them in their clinging to the earth. (11) However, I would quote it this way: Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. (11)

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Please include a bibliography for the Gibran edition you use. DO NOT USE ANY secondary sources about either Gibran or his work for this paper; the AP assessments preclude this possibility anyway, so you may as well get used to having a transaction and interaction with a text on your own, right from the outset! You may, however, consult a reputable reference on literary devices; if you do, please include this resource in your bibliography. Below is a short list of some of the less familiar devices you may wish to analyze. ANAPHORA: A rhetorical device in which several successive lines, phrases or clauses begin with the same word or words. Walt Whitman, for example, uses the word ‘ever’ at the start of each line in his poem “Song of Myself”: “Ever the hard sunk ground, /Ever the eaters and drinkers…” Khalil Gibran, in The Prophet, uses anaphora to emphasize love’s purposeful presence in our lives in the chapter “On Love”: “Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself / Love possesses not nor would it be possessed.” (Another form of anaphora is polysyndeton, which involves the repetition of conjunctions to begin lines. Gibran, for example, uses ‘and’ frequently to begin his lines: “And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart, / And your fragrance shall be my breath, / And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.”) ANTITHESIS: A figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, phrases, clauses or ideas. Its intent is to create a balance of one term against another for impressiveness and emphasis. Note how the following example of antithesis is expressed in grammatically parallel form: “Man proposes, God disposes.” Gibran, in The Prophet, frequently uses antithesis in order to elucidate the spiritual balance needed to cope with the often disparate life events we experience. For example, in the chapter “On Reason and Passion”, Almustafa says that each is a manifestation of the divine— though different in kind: “God rests in reason /…God moves in passion.” ASSONANCE: The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds in words that are close together. Assonance differs from exact rhyme in that it does not repeat the consonant sound following the vowel. The words face and base rhyme, while the words face and fade are assonant. Assonance is also like alliteration in that it can occur at the beginning of words. Assonance is particularly effective when imagery is included, and it can also create musical and rhythmic effects as in this line from Lord Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott; the repetition of the short ‘a’ sound creates a rhythmic effect that mimics the action being described: An abbot on an ambling path. CONSONANCE: The repetition of middle and final consonant sounds after different vowel sounds. The words east and west, dig and dog, turn and torn, and Shakespeare’s famous “struts and frets his hour upon the stage” (from Macbeth) are examples of consonance. Jason, in Black Swan Green, describes his skating around the pond as “a stone on the end of a string.” METONYMY: A figure of speech in which something obviously related to a thing or suggested by it is substituted for the thing itself. You are using metonymy if you call the judiciary “the bench,” the monarchy “the crown,” or the presidency “the White House.” An example from Genesis is, “From the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.” In this case, “sweat” represents that with which it is closely linked: the concept of hard labor. Shelley describes the concepts of “birth” and “death” as travelling “from the cradle to the grave.” The saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword” substitutes persuasion and violence with images that suggest these terms. Note that something concrete usually substitutes for something abstract and that one whole thing takes the place of another whole thing. SYNECDOCHE: A figure of speech in which an important part of something represents and includes the whole. When someone is described as having great wheels, we are referring to his or her impressive automobile. Synecdoche is also used when the image of a part of the human body refers to the entire person or to a group of people. When a captain calls, “All hands on deck,” all sailors are to be present, not just their hands; and when a singer croons, “I left my heart in San Francisco,” the whole concrete person is meant, not just the blood-pumping organ. Ergo, Helen of Troy is “the face that launched a thousand ships.” Note that one concrete image is usually used in place of another. Thrall, William Flint, Addison Hubbard, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook To Literature. New York: Odyssey Press, 1960. Print.

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