XAVIER COLLEGE PREPARATORY HIGH SCHOOL SUMMER READING 2020
Dear Incoming AP Literature Senior,
We hope that this letter finds you well and anticipating the end of a rewarding year. We hope that you will have many good experiences and make many good decisions before we see you again in August. One of those decisions we would like to help you with is the decision to remain engaged in some kind of academic activity this summer. It is our belief that encouraging students to read year-round is a key element in the development of lifelong learners. While the summer is certainly time to be away from school, we hope that it is not a time to stop reading, thinking, and growing.
Required Books:
● How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster (2014 Revised Edition) ● The Awakening by Kate Chopin
You will have two (2) assignments this summer:
Assignment #1: You will read two books this summer (see below). These required works will be part of the overall theme of the year, Literature Through a Critical Theory Lens, where we will focus on the introduction to contemporary critical theory, by applying common approaches to literary analysis - psychoanalytic/Freudian; feminist/gender criticism; new historicism; Marxism; mythological/archetypal; critical race theory; and post-colonial criticism - to various works of literature.
1) How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster (2014 Revised Edition) - In order to start our journey of looking at literature through a critical theory lens, we will read through Foster’s classic guide to help us discover hidden truths by looking with the eyes - and the literary codes - of the ultimate professional reader - the college professor. What does it mean when a literary hero walks down a dusty road? When he hands a drink to his companion? When he’s drenched in a sudden rain shower? Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, Foster will provide us with a broad overview of literature that we will use as a literary companion text throughout our reading journey this year.
Summer assignment link (due the first day of class): As you read along with the book, you will be expected to complete the attached reading/questions packet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iBZ-Vh9ITbX2QH7hCEA9T7U2T482-Na6zE8xJiFF6GU/edit
2) The Awakening by Kate Chopin - As you read this classic novel, you will create a “What/How Chart” (pdf attached) - As literary analysts, every time we analyze we are attempting to answer two essential questions: 1. What is the author trying to say or accomplish through the text (theme/overall meaning)? 2. How is the author trying to get that message across (narrative style, form, literary devices, characterization, etc.)? To help us practice this basis for literary analysis, I want you to create the following chart for Kate Chopin’s classic novel, The Awakening. Summer Assignment link (due the first day of class): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UCtpHz7vVo1si9ePk-CZf_qQeL8csUh2FdQAyAL9grE/edit
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Assignment #2: You will also complete a note card assignment. As you did last year with rhetorical terms, you will do the same with literary/poetic terms/dramatic conventions. Rules: the key terms will be on one side of the card, while the definitions and examples will be on the other side. These note cards will be turned in the first day of class and you have an exam to verify knowledge of this content in August. These terms will be used throughout the year. These cards will be due the first day of class, graded, and then returned to you so that you are able to use them throughout the year in preparation for the AP Literature and Composition Exam.
The format should be as follows: 1) Side one of the card must have the number of the term in the top left corner, and the term itself in the middle of the card. 2) Side two of the card must have the definition of the term, then a space, then at least one example of the term used in actual text. You may acquire examples from any book or other resource, but please make sure that you understand the meaning of the term based on the example(s) you provide.
3) Be sure to study each of the 111 Literary terms, backwards and forwards. You will have a test on them, where you will identify the terms, in the context of a chosen poem, the first week of class. If you have any questions, please email Mrs. Eldridge: [email protected] AP Literature & Composition Literary/Poetic Terms/Dramatic Conventions
1. Allegory - a story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities.
2. Anagnorisis – This describes a revelation of sorts that happens to a character, often helping the character to make sense of things and better his or her lot. This sort of device is very important in the Existential framework.
3. Alliteration - the repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds at the beginning of words that are close together.
4. Allusion - reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or another branch of culture.
5. Ambiguity - Deliberately suggesting two or more different, and sometimes conflicting, meanings in a work.
6. Anaphora - Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row. 7. Antagonist - Opponent who struggles against or blocks the hero, or protagonist, in a story. 8. Anticlimax - The intentional use of fancy language to describe the trivial or commonplace, or a sudden transition from a significant thought to a trivial one in order to achieve a humorous or satirical effect.
9. Antithesis - a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas, as in: Man proposes; God disposes. Antithesis is a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness.
10. Anti-hero - Central character who lacks all the qualities traditionally associated with heroes. May lack courage, grace, intelligence, or moral scruples.
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11. Apostrophe - Calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place or thing, or a personified abstract idea.
12. Archetype - An idealized model of a person, object, or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned, or emulated.
13. Aside - A comment made by a stage performer that is intended to be heard by the audience but supposedly not by other characters.
14. Assonance - The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds especially in words that are together. Example: “Do not go gentle into that good night.”
15. Asyndeton - Commas used without conjunction to separate a series of words, thus emphasizing the parts equally: instead of X, Y, and Z...the writer uses X,Y,Z.
16. Black Humor – By definition, black humor describes a form of comedy that sources from the pathetic absurdity of human suffering and human existence.
17. Blank Verse - Poetry written without rhymes, but which retains a set metrical pattern, usually iambic pentameter.
18. Cacophony - Unpleasant sounds in the jarring juxtaposition of harsh letters or syllables which are grating to the ear, usually inadvertent, but sometimes deliberately used in poetry for effect.
19. Caesura - a pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, usually indicated by the sense of the line, and often greater than the normal pause.
20. Catharsis - A sudden emotional breakdown or climax that consists of overwhelming feelings of great pity, sorrow, laughter, or any extreme change in emotion.
21. Chiasmus - In poetry, a type of rhetorical balance in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first, but with the parts reversed.
22. Cliche - A word or phrase, often a figure of speech, that has become lifeless because of overuse.
23. Conceit - an ingenious and fanciful notion or conception, usually expressed through an elaborate analogy, and pointing to a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things. A conceit may be a brief metaphor, but it also may form the framework of an entire poem.
24. Conflict - In any play, conflict between characters and internal conflicts within particular characters drive the plot.
25. Consonance - In poetry, when words appearing at the ends of two or more verses have similar final consonant sounds but have final vowel sounds that differ, as with "stuff" and "off."
26. Couplet - Two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry.
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27. Denouement – the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.
28. Deus ex machina - Any artificial device or coincidence used to bring about a convenient and simple solution to a plot.
29. Devices of Sound - the techniques of deploying the sound of words, especially in poetry. Among devices of sound are rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia. The devices are used for many reasons, including to create a general effect of pleasant or of discordant sound, to imitate another sound, or to reflect a meaning
30. Dialect - A way of speaking that is characteristic of a certain social group or of the inhabitants of a certain geographical area.
31. Diction - The choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and figurative language in a literary work; the manner or mode of verbal expression, particularly with regard to clarity and accuracy.
32. Didactic Poem - a poem which is intended primarily to teach a lesson. The distinction between didactic poetry and non-didactic poetry is difficult to make and usually involves a subjective judgement of the author’s purpose on the part of the critic or the reader.
33. Dramatic Irony - An occasion in a play, film, or other work in which a character’s words or actions convey a meaning unperceived by the character but understood by the audience.
34. Elegy - a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet’s meditations upon death or another solemn theme.
35. End-Stopped - a line with a pause at the end. Lines that end with a period, a comma, a colon, a semicolon, an exclamation point, or a question mark are end-stopped lines.
36. Enjambment - The continuation of the sense and, therefore, the grammatical construction of a sentence beyond the end of a line of poetry.
37. Epigraph - A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme.
38. Epiphany – a moment of sudden revelation or insight.
39. Epistrophe - Device of repetition in which the same expression (single word or phrase) is repeated at the end of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences.
40. Euphemism - The substitution of an comfortable or inoffensive expression to replace one that might offend or suggest something unpleasant.
41. Euphony - Harmony or beauty of sound which provides a pleasing effect to the ear, usually sought-for in poetry for effect.
42. Exposition - In drama, the presentation of essential information regarding what has occurred prior to the beginning of the play.
43. Extended Metaphor - an implied comparison, which is carried throughout a stanza or an entire poem.
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44. Farce - A type of comedy in which ridiculous and often stereotyped characters are involved in silly, far-fetched situations.
45. Feminine rhyme - a rhyme of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed, as “waken” and “forsaken” and “audition” and “rendition.” Feminine rhyme is sometimes called double rhyme.
46. Foil - A character who acts as contrast to another character.
47. Foreshadowing - The use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in a plot .
48. Frame Narrative - A story within a story, within sometimes yet another story.
49. Free Verse - Poetry that does not conform to a regular meter or rhyme scheme.
50. Genre - A category of literary work which may refer to both the content of a given work — tragedy, comedy, pastoral — and to its form, such as poetry, novel, or drama. This term also refers to types of popular literature, as in science fiction or detective story.
51. Heroic Couplet - two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit.
52. Hubris - Excessive pride or ambition that leads to a character’s downfall.
53. Hyperbole - A figure of speech that uses an incredible exaggeration or overstatement, for effect.
54. Imagery - The use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, a thing, a place, or an experience.
55. In Medias Res - “In the midst of things” – standard of epic poetry where the action begins in the middle instead of at the beginning.
56. Interior Monologue - Writing that records the thinking that goes on inside a character’s head; it is coherent as if the character were talking.
57. Internal Rhyme - Rhyme within a line of poetry instead of at the end.
58. Juxtaposition - Poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed next to one another, creating an effect of surprise and wit.
59. Kenning - A compound poetic phrase substituted for the usual name of a person or thing.
60. Litotes - A form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form.
61. Local Color - A term applied to fiction or poetry which tends to place special emphasis on a particular setting, including its customs, clothing, dialect and landscape.
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62. Lyric Poem - any short poem that presents a single speaker who expresses thoughts and feelings. Love lyrics are common, but lyric poems have also been written on subjects as different as religion and reading. Sonnets and odes are lyric poems.
63. Masculine rhyme - rhyme that falls on the stressed and concluding syllables of the rhyme words. Examples include “keep” and “sleep,” “glow” and “no,” and “spell” and “impel.”
64. Metaphor - A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things WITHOUT the use of such specific words of comparison as like, as, than, or resembles.
65. Meter - The repetition of sound patterns that creates a rhythm in poetry.
66. Metonymy - A figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing, is referred to by something closely associated with it.
67. Mood - The emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene.
68. Motif - A recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout a work (or in several works by one author), unifying the work by tying the current situation to previous ones, or new ideas to the theme.
69. Naif – a naive or ingenuous person.
70. Narrative poem - a non-dramatic poem which tells a story or presents a narrative, whether simple or complex, long or short. Epics and ballads are examples of narrative poems.
71. Objective Correlative – the artistic and literary technique of representing or evoking a particular emotion by means of symbols that objectify that emotion and are associated with it.
72. Onomatopoeia - The use of words whose sounds echo their sense.
73. Oxymoron - A figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase.
74. Paradox - A statement which contains seemingly contradictory elements or appears contrary to common sense, yet can be seen as true when viewed from another angle.
75. Parallelism- a similar grammatical structure within a line or lines of poetry. Parallelism is characteristic of Asian poetry, being notably present in the Psalms, and it seems to be the controlling principle of the poetry of Walt Whitman
76. Parody - A work that makes fun of another work by imitating some aspect of the writer’s style.
77. Persona - The narrator in a non first-person novel. The author’s creation--the voice “through which the author speaks.”
78. Personification - A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes.
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79. Poetic foot- a group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it.
80. Polysyndeton - Sentence which uses a conjunction with NO commas to separate the items in a series.
81. Protagonist - the central character in a story, the one who initiates or drives the action.
82. Pun - A “play on words” based on the multiple meanings of a single word or on words that sound alike but mean different things.
83. Quatrain - a poem consisting of four lines, or four lines of a poem that can be considered as a unit.
84. Refrain - a group of words forming a phrase or sentence and consisting of one or more lines repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza.
85. Rhyme - close similarity or identity of sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse.
86. Rhythm - the recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables.
87. Satire - A work that uses mockery, humor, and wit to criticize and cause change in human nature and institutions.
88. Scansion - a system for describing the meter of a poem by identifying the number and the type(s) of feet per line.
89. Sestet- a six-line stanza.
90. Simile - A figure of speech that makes an explicitly comparison between two unlike things, using words such as like, as , than, or resembles.
91. Soliloquy - A long speech made by a character in a play while no other characters are on stage.
92. Sonnet - normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem. The conventional Italian, or Petrarchan sonnet is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg; the Spenserian sonnet is rhymed abab bcbc cdcd,ee
93. Stanza - usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme.
94. Stream of Consciousness - A style of writing that portrays the inner (often chaotic) workings of a character’s mind.
95. Structure - the arrangement of materials within a work; the relationship of the parts of a work to the whole; the logical divisions of a work. The most common units of structure in a poem are the line and stanza.
96. Style - the mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expression of an author.
97. Subplot - A secondary plot that runs alongside the main action of the play.
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98. Suspension of Disbelief - A willingness of a reader or viewer to ignore minor inconsistencies or unbelievable behavior so as to enjoy a work of fiction.
99. Symbol - A person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself and that also stands for something more than itself.
100. Synecdoche - A figure of speech in which a part represents the whole.
101. Syntax - the ordering of words into patterns or sentences.
102. Tercet - a stanza of three lines in which each line ends with the same rhyme.
103. Terza rima - a three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc,etc.
104. Theme - the main thought expressed by a work.
105. Tone - The attitude a writer takes toward the subject of a work, the characters in it, or the audience, revealed through diction, figurative language, and organization.
106. Tragic Flaw - In a tragedy, the quality within the hero or heroine which leads to his or her downfall.
107. Tragic Hero - A prevalent feature of the Elizabethan theatre.
108. Understatement - the opposite of hyperbole.
109. Verbal Irony - When the intended meaning of a statement differs from the apparent meaning.
110. Verisimilitude - In a literary work, verisimilitude is likeness to the truth, such as the resemblance of a fictitious work to a real event, even if it is a far-fetched one.
111. Villanelle - a nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets and a final quatrain. The villanelle uses only two rhymes which are repeated as follows: aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa.
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