Synthesis of Course Material #1 - Literature

In the class so far we've read two novels (Ceremony and Pride & Prejudice), several plays (The American Dream, Death of a Salesman, Hamlet, and bits of The Importance of Being Earnest), and many poems. We also read Foster's How to Read Literature like a Professor, some Greek mythology and parts of the Bible as our summer work before the course started. We've gone through them all, close reading and annotating and then discussed the works as a whole in class. We started out annotating all together, helping each other out with The American Dream, our first attempt at close reading. By the time we got to Pride & Prejudice, though, we annotated completely on our own and discussed a bit in class. It's wonderful to recognize how much progress we've made since our first go at annotation. I love getting to look at so many different kinds of literature and the techniques authors use to tell their stories. It's very satisfying to finally come to some conclusion about the author's ultimate themes and messages. I haven't disliked any of the texts we've read although I wouldn't call The American Dream one of my favorites. The most nerve-racking thing, I think, as we start to look ahead to the AP test, is whether or not we're going to be able to remember these texts to answer our open prompts. The good news, I guess, is that most of what we've read could be applied to any number of prompts they could throw at us because there is so much good stuff in all of them. Besides the novels and plays, we've done a lot of poetry so far, as they often show up on closed prompts. I've always been a novels girl but this class has given me a new appreciation for poetry. I've just never really spent much time on it until now. Rossetti's "Promises Like Pie-Crust" and Collins's"The History Teacher" are two of my new favorites. Overall, I've really enjoyed the literature we've looked at and feel like I've learned a lot about the texts themselves and the way we approach them.