Reading Suggestions for AP Lit Class

[bluelightstar]

Hi, I am new here. This is my first year teaching AP English Literature, and I would like some input as to what works I should teach before the exam in May. This is the suggested list that was given to me by our English Department Chair, and we have already done a few of these.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot - We've done this one.
Dante's The Inferno - Finished this and completed a project.
Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment - This is the novel that we're on now, but we should be finished this upcoming week.

The other works that I am supposed to choose from are Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, The Tempest by Shakespeare, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, and Fences by August Wilson.

Of those works, I have decided that we will almost definitely read The Stranger, Beloved, and The Things They Carried, and I'm leaning towards teaching Heart of Darkness as well.

Which works do you think would be best for 12th grade AP English Lit students? Thanks!

[aswelch]

Well, the only play you have done is from Absurdism. This isn't a really representitive sample of Theatre. I really think it would be good to do any of the other plays. Personally, I like them all but you are covering racial issues in Heart of Darkness so we can leave Fences out to make the decision easier. After that...I guess it depends on which direction you want to take the class. Gender issues in A Doll's House, Colonialism, magical realism, and the issue of "the other" in The Tempest, and Oedipus Rex is classical and touches on many other issues as well. I personally have studied Oedipus and Doll's House to death so I would go for The Tempest.

I don't know if any of that helps but it's what I would do. Then again my main interest in the Lit field is Theatre. (I'm student teaching for English Education in Spring '09 :D )

[mahhag]

I would recommend "The Things They Carried". We studied this, among others, during my 12th grade regular English class. I haven't read One Hundred Years of Solitude, but the AP classes did, and most of the students whom I talked to about it hated it.

[grittylit]

wuthering heights and a dolls house are great novels, and there are some really interesting discussions/ questions that can be allocated to both novels.

[Etienne]

They hated A Hundred Years of Solitude? That surprises me! Really I would recommend this book to anyone! And not only it's a great piece of literature, but is very accessible too!

[rmd]

Fences is an excellent contemporary American play and can lead to a fruitful discussion about life and expectations.

The Heart of Darkness, which is a great short novel, might prove to be a little slow going; however, you could also show the class the film Apocalypse Now, which is loosely based on Conrad's novel.

Ibsen's play, A Doll's House, is an easy read and provides a good basis for discussion of male and female roles in society.

[crazefest456]

Although I deeply disliked Wuthering Heights, I have to admit that it is very important for the students to read this...The literary techniques I learned from this novel have helped in my SAT IIs and hopefully my AP...

[Admin]

As I recall from taking the AP english test there weren't really any questions from specific books, rather it was more about reading comprehension and the understanding of topics. As such the books you use to teach might be less important than the concepts you teach.

But it was awhile ago so I may be misremembering.

[blackbird_9]

Why not hold a vote? Seeing as your students are AP, they probably already have a passion for literature. Thinking back to my AP class in high school, I'm positive my class mates and I would have been totally capable of making an educated decision on what works we would want to delve into. It also might give the students the incentive to really care about their studies in your class. Just a suggestion. I guess it could depend on the class though. Sometimes teachers do know best. :)

[aabbcc]

I am in what would correspond to grade 12 in your school system, and have gone through what would correspond advanced literature classes in your system, so perhaps I can say a word or two about a couple of works I have read off your suggested list.

Oedipus Rex we studied in the equivalent of grade 9 (we called it first year of lycée) - as our Literature studies were approached chronologically in high school, we started with classical antiquity, so pretty much 90% of the things we read that year were from that period.
Oedipus Rex was one of the crucial works we studied. Of course, it had more sense in the context of everything else we studied (not only in literature, but also in Greek and Latin classes, and also in history because we studied classical antiquity that year) than you are probably going to be able to reconstruct in non-classical (I assume?) school, but it still remains one of the crucial works of western civilisation - not to mention it being a prototype of tragedy as such. We read quite a few ancient plays that year, but we were always returning to that one as an exemplary model; also, this work is an excellent choice because of its "cultura generale" status, as we say here - it is simply a work you cannot neglect, in the intellectual circles it is one of the "assumed" books (assumed to have been read), and its themes are universal and have been repeating themselves throughout European psyche, and art, during centuries (and are in fact still present). I highly recommend you include this work. I would also suggest Antigone, Medea or Electra, if your class reacts well on this work and shows desire to learn more about ancient plays. Or if you decide they should. :D

On the other hand, I am not sure whether I would suggest Nora (A Doll's House) to be read. We did read it, but honestly, more than in possess of some great artistic value, this work is quite pretentious. We studied it in the context of the development of Europan theatre, somewhere about the end of last year, and I was quite irritated by it (as was most of the class - and, what a surprise, particularly those kids who had at least amateur-ish relations to theatre and performance art!), I even had a thesis on why the work sucked (:D). Of course, it does open a couple of discussable (to say so) topics, but its importance in the overall context is mainly overrated.
If you really want Ibsen in the curriculum, perhaps Hedda Gabler is a better choice. Though I do not like Ibsen at all, I would prefer to have studied that, and I never really figured out why they have been forcing Nora for generations instead. Probably the habit ;)

One Hundred Years of Solitude I did not read for school, but outside of school. I believe it is suggested on the list of elective readings this year, but I doubt anyone will take it. Most of my class has read at least some Marquez in their free time, but hardly anyone likes him. Maybe it is just us, though, and maybe it is a coincidence that none of us quite likes him. So I cannot quite say that I suggest studying it at school, reading out of school for your own joy, yes, recommend it to your students, but if I were you, I would not study it as a part of my class. So that would be another negative recommendation.

The Stranger, in the other hand, is what I believe to be an excellent choice, particularly in this age - we studied it this year, and most of us had the feeling it really came well-placed (unlike most of the things we studied :D), particularly with existentialist philosophy we studied in some other classes at the same time (though, I know, Camus never wanted to identify himself as existentialist... but that is another debate). It is rather known work, read by many, again an assumed "must" in some circles, and it goes rather well accepted amongst high school and university students. I wholeheartedly recommend this one.
If your students like it, you might wish to add Sartre's Nausea, to get something essentially similar, but at the same time so drastically different in every aspect.

I hope I helped at least a bit, even though this is a tardy reply.:yawnb: