AP English Literature and Composition
English Literature and CompositionTest date and time Exam Date: May 13
Exam timing Students will be given 45 minutes to read and respond to Question 1 and then 5 minutes to upload their response. Questions Question 1 (45 mins.) % of exam weight (rounded) 100% Question name Prose Fiction Analysis Question description This question presents students with a passage of prose fiction of approximately 500–700 words, and assesses students’ ability to do the following:
Corresponding free-response question (FRQ) type in the course and exam description binder
Units eligible for 2020 exam Units 1–7 Units not included in 2020 exam Units 8–9 Make-up test date and time Date: June 2
The following interchange, excerpted from an 1852 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, occurs when two characters who have been living on the Blithedale farm—a community designed to promote an ideal of equality achieved through communal rural living—are about to part ways. Read the passage carefully. In a well-written essay, analyze how Hawthorne portrays the narrator’s attitude towards Zenobia through the use of literary techniques.
Her manner bewildered me. Literally, moreover, I was dazzled by the brilliancy of the room. A chandelier hung down in the centre, glowing with know not how many lights; there were separate lamps also, on two or three tables, and on marble brackets, adding their white radiance to that of the chandelier. The furniture was exceedingly rich. Fresh from our old farm-house, with its homely board and benches in the dining-room, and a few wicker chairs in the best parlor, it struck me that here was the fulfillment of every fantasy of an imagination, revelling in various methods of costly self-indulgence and splendid ease. Pictures, marbles, vases; in brief, more shapes of luxury than there could be any object in enumerating, except for an auctioneer’s advertisement—and the whole repeated and doubled by the reflection of a great mirror, which showed me Zenobia’s proud figure, likewise, and my own. It cost me, I acknowledge, a bitter sense of shame, to perceive in myself a positive effort to bear up against the effect which Zenobia sought to impose on me. I reasoned against her, in my secret mind, and strove so to keep my footing. In the gorgeousness with which she had surrounded herself — in the redundance of personal ornament, which the largeness of her physical nature and the rich type of her beauty caused to seem so suitable — I malevolently beheld the true character of the woman, passionate, luxurious, lacking simplicity, not deeply refined, incapable of pure and perfect taste. But, the next instant, she was too powerful for all my opposing struggles. I saw how fit it was that she should make herself as gorgeous as she pleased, and should do a thousand things that would have been ridiculous in the poor, thin, weakly characters of other women. To this day, however, I hardly know whether I then beheld Zenobia in her truest attitude, or whether that were the truer one in which she had presented herself at Blithedale. In both, there was something like the illusion which a great actress flings around her. “Have you given up Blithedale forever?” I inquired. “Why should you think so?” asked she. “I cannot tell,” answered I; “except that it appears all like a dream that we were ever there together.” “It is not so to me,” said Zenobia. “I should think it a poor and meagre nature, that is capable of but one set of forms, and must convert all the past into a dream, merely because the present happens to be unlike it. Why should we be content with our homely life of a few months past, to the exclusion of all other modes? It was good; but there are other lives as good or better. Not, you will understand, that I condemn those who give themselves up to it more entirely than I, for myself, should deem it wise to do.” It irritated me, this self-complacent, condescending, qualified approval and criticism of a system to which many individuals — perhaps as highly endowed as our gorgeous Zenobia — had contributed their all of earthly endeavor, and their loftiest aspirations. I determined to make proof if there were any spell that would exorcise her out of the part which she seemed to be acting. She should be compelled to give me a glimpse of something true; some nature, some passion, no matter whether right or wrong, provided it were real. “Your allusion to that class of circumscribed characters, who can live in only one mode of life,” remarked I, coolly, “reminds me of our poor friend Hollingsworth.* Possibly, he was in your thoughts, when you spoke thus. Poor fellow! It is a pity that, by the fault of a narrow education, he should have so completely immolated himself to that one idea of his; especially as the slightest modicum of common-sense would teach him its utter impracticability. Now that I have returned into the world, and can look at his project from a distance, it requires quite all my real regard for this respectable and well-intentioned man to prevent me laughing at him — as, I find, society at large does!” Zenobia’s eyes darted lightning; her cheeks flushed; the vividness of her expression was like the effect of a powerful light, flaming up suddenly within her. My experiment had fully succeeded. She had shown me the true flesh and blood of her heart, by thus involuntarily resenting my slight, pitying, half- kind, half-scornful mention of the man who was all in all with her. She herself, probably, felt this; for it was hardly a moment before she tranquillized her uneven breath, and seemed as proud and self-possessed as ever. * a charismatic member of the Blithedale community who assumes a leadership position Wheeler High School
Senior Project modifications Modifications to required hours—due Friday, April 17th (as part of Portfolio)
Modifications to Portfolio—due Friday, April 17th to ELA teacher Only FOUR required documents are as follows:
***Please note: MENTORS must email the completed Mentor Evaluation Verification form to [email protected] by Friday, April 3rd, 2020. If you have additional questions or concerns, make sure to email your senior English teacher. They will direct you to me if they cannot answer your question. Make sure to follow the chain of command: your senior English teacher, Senior Project lead (Ms. Wickham), Senior Project administrator (Mr. Ealy), Wheeler High School principal (Mr. Gillihan). Wit Essay Prompts
Choose one of the following prompts and write about Wit (and be brilliant because we both know you can be): Prompt A: In Wit, some of the most significant events are mental or psychological: for example, awakenings, discoveries, or changes in consciousness. In a well-organized essay, describe how the author manages to give these internal events the sense of excitement, suspense, and climax usually associated with external action. Do not merely summarize the plot. Prompt C: Often in a work of literature there emerges a ‘key’ scene that presents an important thematic moment, or action, or decision around which the rest of the work seems to be built; everything else in the work either leads up to that scene or away from it. Describe one such scene from Wit; then show with specific examples from the work as a whole that the scene you have described is the thematic center of the play. Do not merely summarize the plot. Mrs Dalloway (published on 14 May 1925[1]) is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post–First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.Created from two short stories, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister", the novel addresses Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host that evening. With an interior perspective, the story travels forward and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. In October 2005, Mrs Dalloway was included on Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since Time debuted in 1923.[2]
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about her choice of husband; she married the reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh, and she "had not the option" to be with a close female friend, Sally Seton. Peter reintroduces these conflicts by paying a visit that morning. Persuasion is the last novel fully completed by Jane Austen. It was published at the end of 1817, six months after her death. The story concerns Anne Elliot, a young Englishwoman of 27 years, whose family is moving to lower their expenses and get out of debt. They rent their home to an Admiral and his wife. The wife’s brother, Navy Captain Frederick Wentworth, had been engaged to Anne in 1806, and now they meet again, both single and unattached, after no contact in more than seven years. This sets the scene for many humorous encounters as well as a second, well-considered chance at love and marriage for Anne in her second "bloom". The novel was well-received in the early 19th century. Greater fame came later in the century, continued in the 20th century, and through to the 21st century. Much scholarly debate on Austen's work has since been published. Anne Elliot is noteworthy among Austen's heroines for her relative maturity. As Persuasion is Austen's last completed novel, it is accepted as her most maturely written novel showing a refinement of literary conception indicative of a woman approaching forty years of age. Unlike Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion was not rewritten from earlier drafts of novels that Austen had originally started before 1800. Her use of free indirect discourse in narrative was by 1816 in full evidence.
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning Launch Audio in a New Window
BY JOHN DONNE As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say The breath goes now, and some say, No: So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined, That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do. And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun. |
AuthorDr. C teaches AP Lit Archives
April 2020
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