2025-2026 AP English Literature and Composition Syllabus

September 22, 2025

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AP® English Literature and Composition

Mr. Howard Butcher

Caprock Academy 2025-2026

Regarding AP® Designation:

AP English Literature and Composition is designed to be a college/university level course, thus the “AP” designation on a transcript rather than “H” for Honors. The course meets or exceeds the intellectual rigor and workload of a traditional undergraduate university English Literature/Humanities course. As a culmination of the class, students will take the AP English Literature and Composition Exam given in May. A grade of 4 or 5 on this exam is considered equivalent to a 3.3-4.0 for a comparable course at a college or university level with high academic standards. A student who earns a grade of 3 or above on the exam will be granted college credit at most colleges or universities.

Prerequisites:

Caprock is an academically accelerated charter school with a rigorous English program focused on the classics. It is structured as follows:

Freshman Year

Students take Honors Classical Literature, a year-long class, wherein they study the unabridged texts of Homer’s epics The Iliad and The Odyssey (Fagles’s translations), Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Aeschylus’s The Oresteia, and Sophocles’s “Theban Plays.”

Sophomore Year

Students take Honors British Literature, a year-long class, wherein they read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Seamus Heaney’s verse translation of Beowulf, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities, George Orwell’s 1984, and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

Junior Year

Students take Honors American Literature, a year-long class, wherein they read Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays on “Nature,” “The Transcendentalist,” and “An Address,” Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, selections of American Poetry,  and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Course Description and Required Texts:

AP English Literature and Composition aims to engage questions of human purpose, responsibility, and freedom. Students have already touched on these topics in other courses, but this class will place them in direct conversation with the some of the most influential works of art in world literature. The class will study texts such as Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Plato’s Apology, Tess of the d’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy, The Inferno by Dante Alighieri, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, and several pieces of contemporary literature and poetry as selected. In each case students will seek to identify the strategies or narrative techniques the author uses to engage an audience and assert his or her views. Students will conclude the year by making their first major contributions to this ongoing human conversation by writing a 20-25 page thesis in response to the question “What is the good life?”

Composition:

Students will write several analytical argumentative papers 3-4 pages in length and the end of year thesis mentioned above. Each paper must adhere to the structure and expectations taught in class and provided in writing. The papers will be revised in accordance with teacher edits and notations on the first draft. All final drafts must be submitted with the prior draft and be in MLA format with a works cited page. There will also be timed essays based on AP prompts. Students will keep a reading journal as part of their homework. Each entry will include a reflection/summary of the night’s reading, a beautiful or noteworthy sentence, and a Socratic question good enough to use in class.

My comments on all papers encourage students to vary sentence length and structure. I point out particularly well-constructed phrases and apt word choices, subtle and appropriate transition statements, effective use of rhetoric to establish voice, and original illustrative details. Students must restate their thesis clearly at the end of the paper, which allows me to comment on how well the writing style (tone, diction, sentence structure, and choice of examples) achieves their stated purpose.

Goals:

  • To understand that writing is a recursive process and that revision is essential.
  • To refine the use of diction, grammar, syntax, imagery, tone, and detail.
  • To refine the ability to use Aristotle’s 3 major appeals: logos, pathos, ethos in persuasive and argument writing.
  • To make stronger and more cogent arguments using claims, evidence, and analysis.
  • To read with a sharper, critical eye, and greater sensitivity.
  • To write and speak with more care, skill, fluency, eloquence, and persuasiveness.

Key Understandings:

  1. Every literary text is an intentional construction and implies the creator’s attitudes and agendas. This understanding is a key prerequisite for critical thinking and literary analysis.
  2. Students will sharpen critical thinking and writing skills as they identify the premises and possible biases imbedded in texts.

Topics:

Central questions will include:

  1. What is the good life?
  2. What are the limits of man?
  3. What is the right relation between the individual and society?
  4. What is “freedom”?
  5. How do we avoid “the horror”?

Course Schedule:

First Quarter:

Weeks 1-3:  Macbeth (Review summer Reading).

Writing assignments:

  • Rhetorical analysis of Lady Macbeth’s admonition to Macbeth in Act I.
  • A translation of 10 lines of Shakespeare to 10 lines of contemporary English with a reflection on the difference.
  • Close Reading on Macbeth’s famous soliloquy in Act V.

Weeks 4-10:   Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Writing assignments:

  • Reading Journals.
  • Close Readings on Raskolnikov’s dream and other key moments.
  • 4-5 page expository/argument paper. Essay Topics include:
  1. Compare and contrast the key themes of “Macbeth” and Crime and Punishment.
  2. Who comes closer to achieving the good life? Macbeth or Raskolnikov?

Second Quarter:

Weeks 1-3:   Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Writing Assignments:

  • Reading Journals.
  • Close Reading. Is Chinua Achebe’s view of Conrad correct?
  • Extended Essay Topics include:
  1. How does Conrad use figurative language to advance his narrative?
  2. Define Imperialism and show whether and how Conrad condemns it or supports it.
  3. Analyze the text from a historical perspective considering such details as European attitudes towards Africans during the late 1800s and King Leopold II of Belgium’s role in genocide and the nascent human rights movement of the 20th century.

Week 4-5: Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”

  • Close Reading.

Weeks 6-7:   Plato’s Apology

Writing Assignments:

  • Reading Journals.
  • Close Reading.

Weeks 8-10:  Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl

Writing Assignments:

  • Reading Journals.
  • Close Reading.

Third Quarter:

Weeks 1-6:   Tess of the d’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy

Writing Assignments:

  • Close Reading. How does the society and culture of the time impact the narrative?
  • Extended Essay. Prompt: Hardy’s style and syntax strike some modern readers as elaborate and cumbersome. How does Hardy’s style contribute to the work’s artistry and quality? The essay will be developed through multiple drafts based on teacher notes and edits.
  • Reading Journal reflections.

Weeks 7-10: Contemporary Literature and poetry like Alistair McLeod’s “The Boat” and poems by Mary Oliver, James Dickey, and others to be selected for the packet. Review for AP Exam.

Writing Assignments:

  • Students must choose a poem from the packet I supply and write an interpretation of the poem’s structure, style, or theme based upon textual details. Then present it to the class.
  • Three page Essay. Prompt:  Evaluate the artistry, literary quality, and social and cultural values present in “The Boat” or other selected short story.

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Fourth Quarter:

Weeks 1-7: Contemporary novel to be selected.

Writing Assignments:

  • First draft of Thesis due (20-25 pages) approximately week 4. This paper must cite at least five of the literary texts studied at school and include three additional sources.
  • Final draft of Thesis due (20-25 pages) approximately week 7.

Weeks 8-10: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri.

AP® English Literature and Composition

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