AP Lit 2008 Summer Reading

Students in AP Literature and Composition read a lot. If reading isn't a habit of yours, you might consider a different senior English course. We don't teach as many books in AP Literature and Composition as we'd like you to read, so periodically we suggest -- and sometimes we assign -- additional reading. For summer reading we are making two reading assignments, available at libraries, local bookstores, such as Gulf of Maine and Bookland, and on-line at booksellers like Amazon.com:

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Ann Patchett's Bel Canto

On the first day of school, students should be prepared to demonstrate their knowledge of these texts. (You might not want to read the books too early in the summer so you won't forget the details!) We expect that students will have read them carefully and have found stunning parallels and contrasts. Don't be surprised if references to them surface periodically through the year. You may use your books, sticky notes, and annotations when taking tests on these texts, but not other materials about them.

Any student who asks to withdraw from the course or comes to the first day of class without having completed the summer reading will immediately be moved out of AP English Literature & Composition and into Academic English.

Students in Advanced Placement Literature and Composition need to be prepared to be challenged and sometimes even disturbed by what they read. The texts we choose are adult literature, typically found in the college courses which the AP program approximates. However, understanding the context of works is important to putting them in perspective. This readily happens in the classroom, where the teacher can create a context for learning and discussing. To prepare you for summer rea House of the Spirits ding, when we are not together in class, a few contextual words about this summer's selections are in order:

Thomas Hardy subtitled Tess of the D’Urbervilles "A Pure Woman," revealing his particular attitude toward Tess, one which was not shared by readers and critics in his day. Outraged defenders of public virtue decried her as an immoral woman, but Hardy saw her, to quote Shakespeare, as a woman "more sinned against than sinning," powerless over what was done to her. Richard Carpenter, a scholar of Hardy, describes Tess in this way:

Hardy did not intend his novel to be a social tract, but he did want to treat social problems in a mature way. In doing so, he did not confine himself only to the question of moral standards but also considered the effect on ordinary people of economic instability and social climbing. Part of Hardy's social criticism is aimed at the agricultural situation in which poor people lacked even a modicum of security and were subject to any chill economic wind that might blow along. Moreover, the pernicious idea that members of the "better classes" were really better than the simple country folk is subjected to sharp analysis. Tess is by far the most admirable person in the novel, and the two men in her life -- both presumably above her in the social scale -- are shown as victims of false ideas of human interrelationships coming from their background. Not only Tess's father labors under the illusion that social classes have some intrinsic value to them, but Alec thinks he can play the seigneur to the peasant girl and Angel believes that there is some mystic purity native to the maid of lower classes, necessary to her desirability. Both of these are destructive notions because they replace individual human values with false concepts about society.

Bel Canto, set in Latin America and inspired by actual events in Lima, Peru, takes us into the intimate daily experience of a group of hostages and puts a human face on terrorists. As you read, consider the clash of class and cultures, and the role that violence plays, as well as art and the imagination.

The critic Joan Wyle Hall writes:

Bel Canto is Patchett's most direct statement on the astonishing power of art to arrest time and set it into motion. Roxane Coss wields this power, but so does the novelist. She places her characters in a suspended moment, and they realize the inadequacy of clocks to measure their confusing experience. In a gesture reminiscent of Welty's wise old Solomon in the story "Livvie," Gen gives his watch to a young terrorist because the hours are no longer under his control. The narrator meditates, sometimes wryly, on the relativity of time, offering similes to convey the captives' new perceptions. It is, for example, "as if the world had become a giant train station in which everything was delayed until further notice."

As "summer reading" these books are meant to be savored. As prerequisites for AP, they need to approached with serious scholarship. We hope that you will enjoy both books -- and learn from them.

Jeff Fischer
Diana Krauss
Leonard Commet Krill