AP Resources

The AP lit exam is Thursday, May 8, 2008.

Here are some resources...

http://ozpk.tripod.com/AP

This is a site with multiple AP resources, including sample test questions

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/52272_apenglocked5_30_4309.pdf

College Board sample test. There are two tests on this site; one is the Language exam and one it the Lit.

http://www.angelfire.com/fl/apenglishlit/index.html

This is an AP class website with many, many resources, including sample test questions.

Terms to know for take-home test

When writing the take-home test, I expect your answers to the poetry questions to reflect fluency with poetic terms you have learned throughout the year, as well as the following terms specifically:

extended metaphor

dramatic framework

allusion

rhetorical stress

figurative language

3 types of irony

paradox

lesson or moral of poem

thought or main idea of poem

speaker

occasion

persona

voice

Here is a link to a Glossary of Poetic Terms: http://www.poeticbyway.com/glossary.html

The following poems will be included:

Owen - Dulce Et Decorum Est p. 7

Frost - Acquainted With the Night p.256

Eliot - Journey of the Magi p.145

Milton - On His Blindness p.140-141

Shelley - Ozymandias p. 121

Your analysis should include an accurate interpretation of meaning, as well as references to poetic terms and devices used in the poem.

DATE: 4/10/08 DUE: 4/14/08
The test will be given to you on Thursday 4/10/08.
It will be due on our first day of class after the break 4/14/08.
You will be writing three-four essays.

Please time yourself as you write and notate your time after each essay.

Friday's Class: Assignments

The AP English Literature Exam is scheduled for May 8.
We have about one month to prepare.
It's time to put the pedal to the metal, people.

I would like to schedule a voluntary poetry / lit review session after school, at a location that is convenient to you: Starbucks, Joe's, Barnes & Noble....or I am open to suggestions. (I'd offer my house, but it's quite a hike from Webster. )

Everyone should have read up to page 200 of Light in August by Tuesday.

Please be prepared to discuss the plot, themes, characters. Especially the following-

The burden of the past
Race
Search for identity
Innocence

Does the similarity in the character's names add to or confuse the story?
What do you think of Joe Christmas?
What does Faulkner's descriptions of Joe's relationships with women say thematically ?

Also, read the poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen in your Sound and Sense book. Answer question 1-4. This is for credit.

Nest week please be prepared to discuss the novel, as well as answer practice AP questions in class.

This may include a 40-minute block to write practice essays.

Yesterdays' Poetry Powerpoint: Terms

Poetic Terms.
Alas, they are not all that interesting, but you do have to know them for the AP exam.

Yesterday, we talked about the following terms in poetry:

Dramatic Framework- situation ( whether actual or fictional, realistic or fanciful) in which author places his/her characters to express a theme .
Examples were: Frost's "Out,Out-";Eliot's "Prufrock"

Rhetorical Stress- stressing of words or syllables as to emphasize meaning & sentence structure.
What examples of this have we seen in poetry thus far?

Also, know the three types of irony and in what works to find them. :
Verbal irony- what is said is the opposite of what is meant
Dramatic irony -author implies a different meaning than what is written
Situational irony -differential between actual circumstances and what should be appropriate

Our next group of poetic terms will include:

Fixed form - a traditional patterns that is applied througiut the whole poem.
In French poetry, these would include rondeaus, villanelles, ballades, triolets, etc.
In English poetry, there are two major forms: villanelles and sonnets

Sonnet- a poem of 14 lines,with iambic pentameter

Petrarchan or Italian sonnet- consists of an octave ( eight lines) and a sestet (six lines) which act as a division of thought within the poem.

English or Shakespearean sonnet- Consists of three quatrains (four lines) and a rhyming couplet (two lines). These units also mark a division of thought.

Villanelle- consists of 5 three-line stanzas (tercets) and a four-line concluding quatrain. First and third line of first stanza are repeated refrian.

Light in August : Colloquial Language

Faulkner uses dialectical language of the South to really immerse the reader in the environment of Yoknapatawpha County. It's an auditory experience- as if Faulkner want us to catch all the nuances of Southern life.

What do you think of his use of dialect in the book? Which specific examples stand out as memorable?

On page 76, Faulkner is using the narrator to explain what Gail Hightower sees coming down the street from his front window on a Sunday night :

"But on a Sunday evening, and with the echo of the phantom hooves still
crashing soundlessly in the duskfilled study, he watches quietly the puny,
unhorsed figure moving with that precarious and meretricious cleverness of
animals balanced on their hinder legs....."


Faulkner uses a combination of e.e. cummings-type poetic language, in "duskfilled", and "unhorsed", coupled with higher-level vocabulary words like "precarious" and "meretricious", then throws in a colloquialisms like "hinder legs" just so you know you're still in backwoods Mississippi.

See if you can find examples of colloquial language Faulkner uses that sticks in your mind.