Required Summer Reading for Students Admitted to This Class
All students must read Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, and Luke from the King James version of the Bible as well as ONE of the 18th/19th century books (Section I) and ONE of the 20th century books (Section II) listed below. The four books from the Bible will form the course’s first major unit of study, so it is imperative that you read and annotate them with care and complete the attached biblical allusions assignment. Click 'READ MORE' for details ...
In addition, you should, if possible, buy both books you choose from the following lists. In preparation for the essay you will write during the first week of school, you must underline important and interesting passages in all the reading selections and make frequent, copious marginal notes. Look for the important social and historical ideas and connections as well as how the author uses language to develop theme, character, and plot. Use large post-it notes for anything you cannot fit into the margins of the book. (If you must get the book from a library, use numerous post-it-notes for all your annotations and comments.) In addition, you should record on separate paper a minimum of fifteen significant quotations per book and explanations of their significance (with page references). Your biblical allusions assignment, annotated books and your lists of quotes will be collected on the first day of class.
During the first week of school, you will be able to use your marked-up books and lists of quotations for an in-class essay exam in which you will be expected to analyze the relevancy of these books to the study of English literature and composition. For this essay you will need to understand these books' language, stylistic devices, theme(s), and literary merit. Failure to satisfactorily complete the summer reading assignment (both the book annotation and the in-class essay) will result in your removal from the entire Honors/Advanced Placement program.
Section I: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries:
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part I
John Milton, Paradise Lost PLUS Paradise Regained
Voltaire, Candide PLUS Moliere, The Bourgeois Gentleman
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile OR The New Heloise OR The Social Contract
James Boswell, The London Journal
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice OR Emma
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment OR The Brothers Karamazov
Charles Baudelaire, Prose Poems PLUS Thomas de Quincy, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles OR Jude the Obscure
Emile Zola, Germinal
Joseph Conrad, Nostromo
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents OR The Interpretation of Dreams
Section II: Twentieth Century:
James Joyce, Ulysses
Virginia Woolf, Orlando OR Mrs. Dalloway OR The Waves OR The Years
E.M. Forster, Passage to India OR Howard's End
D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers OR Women in Love
Ernest Hemingway, A moveable Feast PLUS To Have and to Have Not
George Bernard Shaw, The Devil's Disciple OR Man and Superman PLUS Tom Stoppard, Travesties
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf OR Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game)
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia OR The Road to Wigan Pier
Berthold Brecht, Threepenny Opera PLUS Caucasian Chalk Circle OR The Stories of Mr. Keuner
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hunded Years of Solitude
Gunther Grass, The Tin Drum
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason OR The Reprieve OR Troubled Sleep
Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy (Night, Dawn, and The Accident)
Raymond Queneau, Zazie in the Metro PLUS Eugene Ionesco, The Bald Soprano
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
| < Prev |
|---|
