AP Literature Course Plan

Summer Reading: C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength (or, for regular students, The Great Divorce)

Some quarter reading and notes may extend into the quarter following.

Q1: Anglo-Saxon to Early Renaissance (500-1500)

• Reading 
• That Hideous Strength 
• Caedmon
• Beowulf
• Chaucer 
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 
• Spencer

• Writing: Narrative, College Application Essay, Q1 THE, CWP #1
• Grammar: Course Ethics (plagiarism, devices, sharing, etc.), Punctuation, MLA
• Notes: Anglo-Saxon, Middle Ages,  Literary Timelines, College Application Essay Writing

Q2:  Renaissance Writings (late 1500s to mid 1600s)

• Reading:
•  Shakespeare (one comedy, one tragedy: King Lear or Hamlet or Othello, The Tempest)
• John Milton
• John Donne
• Robert Herrick
• Andrew Marvell
• Sir Francis Bacon
• Bunyan

• Writing: Descriptive CWP (Christmas Blessing), Contest Writing, Scholarships, Semester I Final ICE
• Grammar: Punctuation; rewriting techniques
• Notes: Beautiful, Good, and True Reading Questions; Shakespeare; Renaissance and following

Q3: Late Renaissance to Romantic (late 1600s to 1850)

• Reading:
•  Francis Bacon
• Jonathan Swift
• Samuel Johnson
• William Blake, S.T. Coleridge (The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner), Wordsworth
• Byron, Shelley, Keats
• Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
• Grammar: Usage
• Notes: Augustan, Neoclassical, Romantic, The Birth of the Novel, poetry forms

Q4: Victorian to Modern (1837 to present), 

• Reading:  
• Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
• Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness)
• John Ruskin
• Chesterton (Tales of the Long Bow)
• Tolkien
• C.S. Lewis (That Hideous Strength or The Great Divorce)
• T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land, "Journey of the Magi")
• Paul Muldoon
• Seamus Heaney
• Esolen (Quo Vadis). 
• Writing: Argumentative (Persuasive), Résumé, Contest Writing, Semester II Final ICE
• Grammar: College Forms 
• Notes: Victorian, Modern, poetry forms, The Modern Problem, The Christian Answer