In the past few weeks we have covered quite a bit of material. We have
learned about existentialism, critical lenses, literary movements, The American Dream, theatre of the
absurd, how to write an AP essay, and we also expanded on analyzing literature
using DIDLS. Something that was of particular interest to me was how to write
the AP essay. Before that lesson, I had no idea how much thought had to go into
the directions of the prompt alone. Realizing
that you must first identify the three parts that the prompt is asking, for
before even beginning to analyze the piece, is something that I never would
have considered. In the past, essay prompts have been pretty straight forward—find
commonalities between multiple works, explain how a certain character changes
over time, etc. Never had I been asked to analyze the author’s motives for
writing things in a certain way. Because of this, I found myself lost when it
came to devising a thesis for the sample essay that we were shown in class—regardless
of knowing the three things that the readers will be looking for. I look
forward to further expanding on how to do this in class.
Last year in British Literature,
we spent some time learning about the different critical lenses as well, but we
never spent a lot of time focusing on how they were applied. For example, I
knew that a feminist critic would use gender roles to form a theory about a
piece of literature that they were reading, but I never made the connection
that the analysis had to do with the author’s motives when writing the story. I
am very glad that we spent some time learning about how each form of criticism
is applied in this class because this will help us gain an understanding of the
works that we read over the course of the year and on the AP test. It will also
help us to annotate the pieces that we read. If we consider all of the
different forms of literary criticism, we can think about all the different
things that the author could have been considering consciously, or subconsciously,
while writing it (as we are beginning to see in The American Dream. We also spent some time talking about the
literary movements in British Literature, but we never compared them all with
one another as we did on Friday. Having a clear comparison of the different
movements over time will help in making distinctions between them. Knowing the
specifics of each literary movement will also help determine an author’s
motives based on the time he or she wrote something. I look forward to learning
more about these literary movements and seeing more examples of how we see them
in literature from their eras.
Hi Kelsey.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the AP Lit essays are really difficult. Compared to what we have had to write in AP World, US History, and Government; these AP Lit essays seem to require so much more thinking.
I also agree with you that a lot of information presented in AP Lit, has been previewed to us in earlier literature classes. But I just think AP Lit takes the information we have learned, expands it, and teaches us to relate it to other material.
Yeah, I see what you mean by your points about the AP Lit essays. These essays follow much more rigorous standards, unlike ones in history (which we have all written). As a result, it's going to be harder to write these than to write normal ones.
ReplyDeleteCritical lenses was also an... interesting section. Personally, I don't think that I've ever looked at a piece through any of those lenses. However, I can see how such lenses would help to analyze and understand a work.
Good post!
Well, AP Lit essays are a tough ask. In my previous AP classes (especially history ones), the writing has followed a certain structure that can be easily predicted. AP Lit essays on the other hand seem to be much more than I thought. The "Century Quilt" exercise was quite a challenge. I can remember that the question was not as straightforward as we all thought it was. It presented three things to consider in the essay and to me I thought I could use the three and write a good essay. Half way through class, we find out the questions has one or two hidden questions and that those are the questions the AP readers want to be answered. In this regard the essays are difficult. In terms of the grading of them, I feel it is similar to the history ones. You miss a certain bit and you can't go beyond a certain point value. As for the critical lenses, I too remember skimming them. Now, through thoughtful discussion and applying them the "The American Dream" and "Death of a Salesman(Movie)," I can better understand them and better identify them.
ReplyDeleteNice job relating critical lenses to Brit lit last year! I get excited when I can realize how useful the things we learn in class are! Especially when they make so much more sense compared to when I learned it the first time around. And when we apply it, I get such a better understanding of the purpose of the materials we are learning.
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