In this course, students are engaged in the careful reading of literary works. Through such study, they sharpen their awareness of literature, language and their understanding of the writer's craft. They develop critical standards for the appreciation of any literary work. To achieve these goals, students consider and explore the structure, meaning, and value of each work and its relationship to contemporary experience as well as to the time in which it was written. Students are prepared to take the AP examination to earn college-level credits.
Summer reading is required.
The AP Literature and Composition course at Mt. Ararat combines a fairly traditional study of British Literature with a more theory-based focus on the process of literary interpretation and analysis. Most students in the course have completed a year of AP Language and Composition in the 11th grade and build on language awareness developed there. This quarter introduces the analytical tools of the course, by examining works in terms of both didactic and aesthetic considerations, and in terms of the degree to which a text allows itself to be subject to rational analysis. The final test for the quarter asks students to apply the concepts of the course to a set of new short materials-cartoons, poems, short stories, parables. Selected poetry Cartoons from artists such as Larson, Steinberg, Chast, Koren, Ziegler, and Steig Short fiction from writers such as Kafka, Barthelme, Calvino, Sontag.