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AP English Literature and Composition Summer Assignment, 2020-2021AP English Literature and Composition Students,I am looking forward to working with you this year to engage in the important, challenging, and immensely enjoyable task of studying literature. While this course will help prepare students for the AP English Literature and Composition Exam, the overall goal of this course is to help students become effective and confident readers, writers, listeners, speakers, and viewers. Since this is an AP course, the workload is challenging and expectations are high; consequently, time management skills are crucial. However, students will find that their hard work, fortitude, and dedication will be beneficial, rewarding, and gratifying. Further, as this is a college-level course, some texts will cover more mature content and language, so an appropriate level of maturity is expected from students.The summer assignment for AP Literature and Composition is designed to prepare you for the college-level reading demands of this course. The purpose of the AP English Literature Summer Assignment is to keep reading and analyzing skills sharp and help students prepare for the class in the fall and the AP English Literature Exam in the spring.The goal of the AP English Literature and Composition course is described below:"An AP English course in Literature and Composition should engage 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 should 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. Students should 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 should consider the social and historical values it reflects and embodies. Careful attention to both textual detail and historical context should provide a foundation for interpretation, whatever critical perspectives are brought to bear on the literary works studied" (The College Board).Overview/RationaleThe first part of the summer assignment is designed to help you prepare for college and the AP Literature Exam, where skills developed by avid reading are essential. Only the well-read student can respond intelligently to any essay question on the AP exam; therefore, summer reading is vital to your success. The summer assignment for AP Literature not only indicates your willingness to work hard, but it also measures your commitment to the course. Therefore, I’d like you to read the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Through this text, we are going to explore the bildungsroman. The term is a combination of two German words – bildung, which means “education”, and roman, which means “novel” – and it is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of a character in his/her formative years.The purpose of the summer reading assignment is complex:-To help build confidence and competence as readers of complex text-To give you, when you enter the class in the fall, an immediate basis for discussion of literature elements such as theme, characterization, viewpoint, symbolism, plot structure, setting, etc.-To set up a basis for comparison with other works we will read during the year-To provide you with the beginnings of a repertoire of works you can write about on the AP Literature exam next spring-To establish the mindset of a lifelong learner-To offer you the experience of the intellectual depth and rigor of college level coursework-To expand your repertoire of works of “recognized literary merit” in preparation for the AP exam.First: Read the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Please have the novel read before the school year begins in the fall. On this page you will find helpful background information that will help deepen your connection with the text.Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, a sleepy small town similar in many ways to Maycomb, the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird. Like Atticus Finch, the father of Scout, the narrator and protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee’s father was a lawyer. Among Lee’s childhood friends was the future novelist and essayist Truman Capote, from whom she drew inspiration for the character Dill. These personal details notwithstanding, Lee maintains that To Kill a Mockingbird was intended to portray not her own childhood home but rather a nonspecific Southern town. “People are people anywhere you put them,” she declared in a 1961 interview.Yet the book’s setting and characters are not the only aspects of the story shaped by events that occurred during Lee’s childhood. In 1931, when Lee was five, nine young black men were accused of raping two white women near Scottsboro, Alabama. After a series of lengthy, highly publicized, and often bitter trials, five of the nine men were sentenced to long prison terms. Many prominent lawyers and other American citizens saw the sentences as spurious and motivated only by racial prejudice. It was also suspected that the women who had accused the men were lying, and in appeal after appeal, their claims became more dubious. There can be little doubt that the Scottsboro Case, as the trials of the nine men came to be called, served as a seed for the trial that stands at the heart of Lee’s novel.Lee began To Kill a Mockingbird in the mid-1950s, after moving to New York to become a writer. She completed the novel in 1957 and published it, with revisions, in 1960, just before the peak of the American civil rights movement.Critical response to To Kill a Mockingbird was mixed: a number of critics found the narrative voice of a nine-year-old girl unconvincing and called the novel overly moralistic. Nevertheless, in the racially charged atmosphere of the early 1960s, the book became an enormous popular success, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and selling over fifteen million copies. Two years after the book’s publication, an Academy Award–winning film version of the novel, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, was produced. Meanwhile, the author herself had retreated from the public eye: she avoided interviews, declined to write the screenplay for the film version, and published only a few short pieces after 1961. Further Historical Context: : Discussion: Be prepared to discuss the following essay prompts when we return to class in the fall. These prompts will be our first discussion grade, which will help guide us into our first timed writing assignment. (You do NOT need to write an essay over the summer, just read over the prompts and be ready to discuss and apply them to the novel when we return to class.)PROMPT 1. In his 2004 novel Magic Seeds, V. S. Naipaul writes: “It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That’s where the mischief starts. That’s where everything starts unravelling.”Select a novel, play, or epic poem in which a character holds an “ideal view of the world.” Then write an essay in which you analyze the character’s idealism and its positive or negative consequences. Explain how the author’s portrayal of this idealism illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.PROMPT 2. In literary works, cruelty often functions as a crucial motivation or a major social or political factor. Select a novel, play, or epic poem in which acts of cruelty are important to the theme. Then write a well-developed essay analyzing how cruelty functions in the work as a whole and what the cruelty reveals about the perpetrator and/or victim.PROMPT 3. A bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, recounts the psychological or moral development of its protagonist from youth to maturity, when this character recognizes his or her place in the world. Select a single pivotal moment in the psychological or moral development of the protagonist of a bildungsroman. Then write a well-organized essay that analyzes how that single moment shapes the meaning of the work as a whole.PROMPT 4. In a novel by William Styron, a father tells his son that life “is a search for justice.”Choose a character from a novel or play who responds in some significant way to justice or injustice. Then write a well-developed essay in which you analyze the character’s understanding of justice, the degree to which the character’s search for justice is successful, and the significance of this search for the work as a whole.PROMPT 5. Many works of literature deal with political or social issues. Choose a novel or play that focuses on a political or social issue. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the author uses literary elements to explore this issue and explain how the issue contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.PROMPT 6. In some works of literature, childhood and adolescence are portrayed as times graced by innocence and a sense of wonder; in other works, they are depicted as times of tribulation and terror. Focusing on a single novel or play, explain how its representation of childhood or adolescence shapes the meaning of the work as a whole.THIRD: TERMS TO KNOW :The link will take you to a list of terms we will be discussing throughout the school year. Please focus on the unfamiliar terms over the summer break. You will be expected to know and apply these terms throughout our study of literature during the school year. feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns: email Rachel.Bostic@ ................
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