Literature Articles

Article / Updated 05-03-2023

Whether or not to enroll in that AP English Literature and Composition class can be a difficult decision. An AP English class can be a lot of work, but it can yield great rewards. Here is some information to help you make that choice. Each AP English teacher has a degree of freedom in designing the course. (Getting English teachers to agree on something is a little harder than herding cats, so this is probably a good idea.) Though the classes vary, some things remain the same: An AP English Literature course must, according to College Board rules, throw college-level work at you. In other words, the course material must be difficult. The College Board doesn't mandate a particular reading list, but it does ask that students read a wide variety of literature in the AP class. By the time you finish your course, the College Board wants you to have read something from every genre and every time period from the 16th century through the present day. Both British and American writers must be on the reading list, as well as some translated works. (You don't have to read everything in your AP year; you just have to read it sometime.) All the material is supposed to be of good literary quality, which means writing that rewards close reading. If you "get" a book in one reading, it isn't AP material. Expect the amount of reading to equal or surpass the amount you read in an honors English class: 10 or 12 full-length works and a good fistful of poetry. Some AP English teachers start you off with homework for the summer. You may have to read a couple books or write something to hand in on the first day of school. Expect to write a lot — everything from informal journal entries to polished essays. The grading may be tougher in an AP class than in a regular English section because teachers apply college-level standards to your work in an AP class. Facing the AP English exam The purpose of the AP class is, of course, to prepare you for the AP exam. When you walk into the test room in May, what kind of questions will you face? The College Board hits you with two sections: Multiple-choice section: Each question has five potential answers; you interpret five or six pieces of literature that are printed on the exam. Selections include poems, maybe a dramatic scene or a slice of memoir, and one or two novel excerpts. Essay section: Two essay questions are based on a piece of literature that's provided on the exam; the third is an open-ended essay based on a work of literary quality that you choose. Literary selections on the exam may include anything from Tudor times (16th century) onward. The selections will most likely be American or British, though works from other English-speaking countries may pop up, as well. Literature translated into English from another language is also fair game. Usually, one-third to slightly less than half of the literature is poetry.

Article / Updated 04-25-2023

Tolkien seems to have regarded the Elves as his favorite creatures of Middle-earth, but most of his readers seem to be hobbit-lovers at heart. They find hobbits to be the most likeable and also to be the most like themselves, despite some obvious differences (for most people) in the height and furry-footedness departments. Even Tolkien referred to himself as a hobbit ("in all but size") for his love of pipe-smoking, gardens, plain and simple food, peace and quiet, his dislike of mechanized farmlands and traveling, and his fondness for wearing ornamental waistcoats on particularly dull days. Before considering what hobbits really meant to Tolkien, you need to picture them as Tolkien designed them. In the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien asserts that hobbits are distantly related to humans and acquaints readers with all their vital statistics. According to this Prologue, hobbit characteristics include the following: A height of between two and four feet Feet with tough, leathery soles covered in hair (they seldom wear shoes) Long skillful fingers A tendency towards chubbiness Little or no facial hair An ability to disappear swiftly and silently Excellent hearing and sharp eyesight No understanding of machinery more complicated than the watermill, forge bellows, and the hand loom A delight in wearing bright colors, particularly yellow and green A love of food and drink (especially ale), eating a mere six times a day on average A love of laughter, jests, games, and celebrations A love of peace and quiet and "good tilled" earth A particular love for the smoking of tobacco in small clay pipes For many readers, one of the more important hobbit characteristics is missing from this list — namely, their tendency to live in burrows or what Tolkien so ignobly calls a hole. In fact, Tolkien is quite clear that only extremely rich or poor hobbits live in burrows (sometimes referred to in The Lord of the Rings as smials from the Old English smygel, meaning a "burrow" or "place to crawl into"). Because Bilbo and Frodo are such major characters in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and are fairly well-to-do, you are probably more accustomed to hobbits dwelling in very well-appointed holes (none of your wet, smelly rabbit holes, mind you). The more middle-class hobbits, Tolkien assures you, dwell above ground in houses of wood, brick, or stone. Hobbits are deeply contented with their way of life. Understanding the level of this contentment is important to comprehending their central role in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Tolkien therefore spends a good deal of time introducing the reader to the way hobbits party and hang out together, thus ensuring that his readers understand the depth of this contentment. A great part of the overall contentment with the hobbit way of life comes from their deep love of the Shire (from Old English scir meaning a "district"). The Shire is the region where most hobbits live, in the northwest section of the land of Eriador. Tolkien, like many English authors before him, is in love with his own "shire" (the Midlands in his case) and therefore naturally fosters in his hobbit characters a parallel love for their homeland. In the tradition of English villagers at the turn of the nineteenth century, the hobbits of the Shire are very distrustful of any kind of stranger. They think it quite "queer" when they run into hobbits such as Bilbo and Frodo who go off on foreign adventures. Because everything any hobbit could desire is found right in the Shire, why would any hobbit in his right mind want to go off to some strange, far-off land in search of adventure, of all things! They often say that this isn't natural and trouble will come of it. And it often does. So hobbits are Tolkien's "Everyman" in Middle-earth — creatures who just want to mind their own business and live a simple life. But the hobbits' simple life, just the like the one that Tolkien knew as a boy in the village of Sarehole (a hamlet just outside Birmingham), is being threatened by the outside world. Just as Tolkien saw the urban sprawl from Birmingham threaten the isolation and idyllic rural existence of Sarehole, the Shire in the Third Age faces its own menace from without that threatens to end its isolation from the rest of Middle-earth and endanger the hobbits' very way of life. Hobbits and their homespun wisdom Among the many delightful aspects of hobbits is their great homespun wisdom. Tolkien puts a number of pithy sayings, proverbs, and aphorisms into the mouths of the hobbits of the Shire. On the surface, the wisdom of these sayings appears commonsensical, but becomes a bit more complex when examined further. In Middle-earth, hobbits could write the equivalent of Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac —they achieve contentment by living their lives according to truisms. One of the first of these sayings comes from the Gaffer, Sam's dad. At one point, the Gaffer warns his son about queer folk such as Bilbo Baggins by telling him not to get mixed up in the affairs of "your betters" or "you'll land in trouble too big for you." When the hobbit fellowship of Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are making their way to the Bucklebury Ferry, Frodo suggests cutting across country to save time and avoid the roads (and the Black Riders who are following them). Pippin responds, "Short cuts make long delays." A couple of favorite aphorisms come from the incident in which Frodo finally gets Gandalf's letter at the inn of the Prancing Pony in Bree, warning him to make sure that he's dealing with the "real" Strider. Frodo tells Strider that if he (Strider) were a spy of the Enemy, he would somehow "seem fairer and feel fouler." Then, after Strider wryly observes that his looks are against him, Pippin quotes the old saying of the Shire, "handsome is as handsome does" — words of wisdom that many a mother tries to pass on to her daughters. As you can see, these commonsensical hobbit sayings are cautions when making judgments about the truth of a situation. They are forewarnings of the troubles that come your way when you can't effectively make these determinations. This makes them typical of the kind "folk" wisdom and truisms that that abound not only in faraway legends but also in today's small communities all around the world. Hobbit-sized heroes Despite their short stature and relatively conservative nature, at least when it comes to traveling and going on adventures, hobbits are the heroes of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In the case of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins saves the day for the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain, even though it is a Man, Bard the Bowman, who slays Smaug the dragon, and even though it takes a host of Men, Elves, Dwarves, eagles, plus Gandalf to defeat the army of goblins and wolves. In the case of The Lord of the Rings, it's the hobbits Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry, and yes, even Sméagol/Gollum, who save Middle-earth from the domination of Sauron. On the one hand, you may find it strange that Tolkien calls upon the "wee" folk of his fantasy world to carry the day. On the other hand, if you consider the hobbits' diminutive stature as a sign not of a lack of courage or steadfastness, but rather as a lack of towering ambition and desire, their heroic role makes perfect sense. In The Lord of the Rings, the Men, Elves, Dwarves, and wizards in the story, for all their might, are not able to handle the One Ring. Only Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum are able to bear it, each with differing amounts of harm to their personalities. All those "greater" in stature than the hobbits, including the Dwarves because of their greater stoutness, are hampered by their high aspirations and the great purposes to which they would put the One Ring. To be sure, those purposes are noble ones, such as defending their people and defeating the Enemy. But most hobbits lack any overarching goals (other than a pint of beer and a good meal) that the One Ring could amplify and distort and in turn use to control them. The hobbit who suffers the most in bearing the Ring is Frodo, because he carries the ambition of destroying the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom — a noble goal but one that the Ring itself naturally resists. The hobbits' way of life also suggests the "common person" who does his or her duty without any greater goal than a job well done and seeing the matter through to its conclusion — the ideal of any good infantryman, as Tolkien's experience on the front in World War I confirmed. By contrast, the high and the mighty seldom, if ever, do anything for its own sake. They are always working for a "greater" goal that inevitably colors the endeavor and that often can work against the very thing they want so badly to accomplish. Viewed in this light, Tolkien's selection of hobbits as the true heroes of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit marks these works as very contemporary in outlook. For it seems that in contemporary history — the modern democratic age — the common man is the hero. This was especially true in the two World Wars (Tolkien fought in the first one, and his son Christopher fought in the second). In Tolkien's opinion, it wasn't the lieutenants, colonels, and commanders who were the true heroes of the war, but rather the common soldier — especially the foot soldier, the nameless infantryman.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-12-2023

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson, wrote 56 short stories and 4 novels featuring the great private detective and his loyal sidekick. Sherlock Holmes fans and scholars refer to these 60 stories the canon. All of the novels and almost all of the short stories are narrated by Dr. Watson. Sherlock Holmes himself narrates two of the later short stories.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-27-2022

J.R.R. Tolkien made his literary mark on 20th century readers and contemporary audiences with the rich characters, language, geography, and history of his fascinating world of Middle-earth. Explore the author's own origins, check out his list of notable works, and meet a cast of beings that abound in masterful fantasy storytelling.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-08-2022

Poetry is the practice of creating works of art through language. The study of poetry should include important works that display a bit of the history and evolution of poetry. Poems are written to be read aloud, so follow the helpful reading guidelines offered in this Cheat Sheet. Then, take a poetry pop quiz to test your knowledge and discover some fun facts.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-25-2022

These lists break down William Shakespeare's works by type and provide you a brief summary of each play. Also find terms commonly used in relation to Shakespeare's writing, covering styles of poetry, types of plays, and stage direction.

Article / Updated 10-04-2021

Learn how to write a sonnet in iambic pentameter, just like Shakespeare did. Discover the rhythm and rhyme scheme of the quatrains and couplets that make up a Shakespearean sonnet. How to write a sonnet When writing a Shakespearean-style sonnet, there are various rules you need to keep in mind. This form of poetry is required to follow a specific format including length, rhythm, and rhyme scheme. To write a sonnet properly, follow this process: Select a subject to write your poem about (Shakespearean sonnets are traditionally grounded as love poems). Write your lines in iambic pentameter (duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH. Write in one of various standard rhyme schemes (Shakespearean, Petrarchan, or Spenserian). Format the sonnet using 3 quatrains followed by 1 couplet. Compose your sonnet as an argument that builds up as it moves from one metaphor to the next. Ensure your poem is exactly 14 lines. The Shakespearean rhyme scheme If you're writing the most familiar kind of sonnet, the Shakespearean, the rhyme scheme is as follows: A B A B C D C D E F E F G G Every A rhymes with every A, every B rhymes with every B, and so forth. You'll notice this type of sonnet consists of three quatrains (that is, four consecutive lines of verse that make up a stanza or division of lines in a poem) and one couplet (two consecutive rhyming lines of verse). How a sonnet tells a story Ah, but there's more to a sonnet than just the structure of it. A sonnet is also an argument — it builds up a certain way. And how it builds up is related to its metaphors and how it moves from one metaphor to the next. In a Shakespearean sonnet, the argument builds up like this: First quatrain: An exposition of the main theme and main metaphor. Second quatrain: Theme and metaphor extended or complicated; often, some imaginative example is given. Third quatrain: Peripeteia (a twist or conflict), often introduced by a "but" (very often leading off the ninth line). Couplet: Summarizes and leaves the reader with a new, concluding image. One of Shakespeare's best-known sonnets, Sonnet 18, follows this pattern: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest, Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. The argument of Sonnet 18 goes like this: First quatrain: Shakespeare establishes the theme of comparing "thou" (or "you") to a summer's day, and why to do so is a bad idea. The metaphor is made by comparing his beloved to summer itself. Second quatrain: Shakespeare extends the theme, explaining why even the sun, supposed to be so great, gets obscured sometimes, and why everything that's beautiful decays from beauty sooner or later. He has shifted the metaphor: In the first quatrain, it was "summer" in general, and now he's comparing the sun and "every fair," every beautiful thing, to his beloved. Third quatrain: Here the argument takes a big left turn with the familiar "But." Shakespeare says that the main reason he won't compare his beloved to summer is that summer dies — but she won't. He refers to the first two quatrains — her "eternal summer" won't fade, and she won't "lose possession" of the "fair" (the beauty) she possesses. So, he keeps the metaphors going, but in a different direction. And for good measure, he throws in a negative version of all the sunshine in this poem — the "shade" of death, which, evidently, his beloved won't have to worry about. Couplet: How is his beloved going to escape death? In Shakespeare's poetry, which will keep her alive as long as people breathe or see. This bold statement gives closure to the whole argument — it's a surprise. And so far, Shakespeare's sonnet has done what he promised it would! See how tightly this sonnet is written, how complex, yet well-organized it is? Now that you know how to write a sonnet, try writing one your own! Poets are attracted by the grace, concentration, and, yes, the sheer difficulty of sonnets. You may never write another sonnet in your life, but this exercise is more than just busywork. It does all the following: Shows you how much you can pack into a short form. Gives you practice with rhyme, meter, structure, metaphor, and argument. Connects you with one of the oldest traditions in English poetry — one still vital today.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 09-01-2021

Jane Austen is the queen and inventor of the Regency romance (courtship literature set in England's Regency period, 1811–1820). Jane Austen's six most famous works (Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion) highlight the strict social etiquette of her day and the legal limitations that women of her social class endured. She also created memorable characters, from flirts and fools to some who displayed abnormal personality disorders.

Article / Updated 07-17-2017

Literature provides a lens through which readers look at the world. Point of view is the way the author allows you to "see" and "hear" what's going on. Skillful authors can fix their readers' attention on exactly the detail, opinion, or emotion the author wants to emphasize by manipulating the point of view of the story. What are the kinds of point of view in literature? Point of view comes in three varieties, which the English scholars have handily numbered for your convenience: First-person point of view is in use when a character narrates the story with I-me-my-mine in his or her speech. The advantage of this point of view is that you get to hear the thoughts of the narrator and see the world depicted in the story through his or her eyes. However, remember that no narrator, like no human being, has complete self-knowledge or, for that matter, complete knowledge of anything. Therefore, the reader's role is to go beyond what the narrator says. For example, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is told from the point of view of Scout, a young child. She doesn't grasp the complex racial and socioeconomic relations of her town — but the reader does, because Scout gives information that the reader can interpret. Also, Scout's innocence reminds the reader of a simple, "it's-not-fair" attitude that contrasts with the rationalizations of other characters. Second-person point of view, in which the author uses you and your, is rare; authors seldom speak directly to the reader. When you encounter this point of view, pay attention. Why? The author has made a daring choice, probably with a specific purpose in mind. Most times, second-person point of view draws the reader into the story, almost making the reader a participant in the action. Here's an example: Jay McInerney's best-selling Bright Lights, Big City was written in second person to make the experiences and tribulations of the unnamed main character more personal and intimate for the reader. Third-person point of view is that of an outsider looking at the action. The writer may choose third-person omniscient, in which the thoughts of every character are open to the reader, or third-person limited, in which the reader enters only one character's mind, either throughout the entire work or in a specific section. Third-person limited differs from first-person because the author's voice, not the character's voice, is what you hear in the descriptive passages. In Virginia Woolf's wonderful novel Mrs. Dalloway, you're in one character's mind at a time. You know the title character's thoughts about Peter, the great love of her youth, for example, and then a few pages later, you hear Peter's thoughts about Mrs. Dalloway. Fascinating! When you're reading a third-person selection, either limited or omniscient, you're watching the story unfold as an outsider. Remember that most writers choose this point of view.

Article / Updated 01-23-2017

You may well wonder why it's important at all to locate Middle-earth in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Does it really matter whether Middle-earth is a future world in another galaxy or a Europe long gone? Would it really detract from your enjoyment of Bilbo's journey to the Lonely Mountain or Frodo's quest from the Shire to Mount Doom if you found out that Middle-earth were nowhere on this earth? Tolkien drew Middle-earth so well in The Hobbit and told the story of The Lord of the Rings so tightly that it wouldn't matter a whit if he had started off either story with the now famous declaration from George Lucas' Star Wars saga, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . ." On the other hand, coming to know how much Middle-earth owes to past European sagas, legends, and languages can only enhance appreciation of Tolkien's works and deepen understanding of their many lessons. Associating Middle-earth with our world and not some alien planet or invisible dimension was very important to Tolkien. When pressed for the location of Middle-earth (as fans and critics continually did), Tolkien often replied that Middle-earth most definitely refers to lands of this world. In his letter commenting on a review of The Lord of the Rings by W. H. Auden, he wrote, "Middle-earth is not an imaginary world." He then declared that his Middle-earth is "the objectively real world" as opposed to an imaginary world, such as Fairyland, or invisible ones, such as Heaven or Hell. In another letter responding to a draft of a Daily Telegraph article for which he was interviewed, Tolkien said that the stories in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place in the "north-west of 'Middle-earth,' equivalent to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean." He then went on to fix some of the primary locations in his books by stating that if you placed Hobbiton and Rivendell at the latitude of Oxford (which was his intention), then Minas Tirith, some 600 miles south in Gondor, would be at approximately the same latitude as Florence, Italy. This puts the Mouths of the river Anduin and the ancient Gondorian city of Pelagir at about the same latitude as the fabled city of Troy (made famous in Homer's heroic epic poem the Iliad and located on the west coast of modern-day Turkey). To get an idea of these spatial relationships, see Figure 1, which shows the western coastline of Middle-earth and points out the specific parallel locations that Tolkien pinpointed in his letter. From this map, you'd be hard pressed to match any of Middle-earth's physical features with those of modern-day Europe. Tolkien would have explained this obvious discrepancy as the result of changes in coastal geography during the time that has elapsed since his epic adventures took place. You might look at it as the difference between Earth's Jurassic age and the Middle Ages — not too much looks the same, but it's the same old Earth. Figure 1: Middle-earth's coastline superimposed on Western Europe. The origin of the term "Middle-earth" In the letter commenting on a New York Times book review, Tolkien stated that the name Middle-earth is "just a use of Middle English midden-erd (or erthe), altered from Old English Middangeard, the name for the inhabited lands of Men 'between the seas' . . ." Midden-erde (or erthe), however, is good old Middle English for "middle-earth." As Tolkien pointed out, it hails from an earlier form, middangeard, which literally means the "middle yard" in Old English or Anglo-Saxon, the language Tolkien taught at Oxford University. Middangeard was taken to mean, like oikumenos, the "inhabited world." It is rumored that Tolkien first happened upon this term as an undergraduate student when he read the following lines in Crist (Christ), an Old English poem attributed to a bard named Cynewulf: Éala Éarendel engla beorhtast ofer middangeard monnum sended This reads, "Hail, Earendel, the brightest of angels sent to the world of men!" In this early form, Middle-earth was not only the inhabited lands in the midst of the encircling seas, but also the middle ground between Heaven above and Hell below. This vertical dimension of the early European Christian Middle-earth is entirely missing from Tolkien's — even though you'd be hard pressed to find a more devout Catholic Christian. "Stuck in the middle again . . ." At the time when The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place, the inhabited lands of Middle-earth are surrounded on three sides by wastelands and on the west by open sea. To the north lies the Ice Bay of Forochel, and beyond that is the frozen Northern Waste; to the east is Rhûn, populated by the barbaric Easterlings. To the south you find the vast deserts of Harad, populated by dark-skinned peoples called the Haradrim ("Southerns"). In The Lord of the Rings, both Easterlings and Southrons often make war on the free peoples of Middle-earth and are allied with Sauron, Dark Lord of the eastern realm of Mordor, who is the greatest threat to freedom in Middle-earth. On the west, many of the lands of Middle-earth, just like many lands of Europe, have borders that adjoin the sea. According to Tolkien's thinking, at the time of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, you could sail west and not find any other land masses (you certainly wouldn't discover the Americas). In earlier ages, though, sailing directly west would bring you to the island of Númenor, the ancient homeland of the people who end up settling the northern and southern coasts of Middle-earth. And west of Númenor lay the continent of Aman — the so-called Blessed Realm or Undying Lands. Aman is where two types of immortal beings, the Valar and Elves, dwell together. By the Third Age, the one in which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place, the island of Númenor has sunk beneath the sea, and Aman, removed from the physical plane of the world, is accessible only by the magic White Ships of the Elves. Viewed from this perspective, you can start to understand how the peoples of Tolkien's Middle-earth perceive their lands as being encircled by limiting forces, some of which are hostile. This viewpoint is perhaps not so unlike the Anglo-Saxons before they came to Britain, when they still dwelt along the northwestern coast of Europe in the lands now known as Denmark and northwest Germany. At that time, they were surrounded on three sides by potentially hostile tribes and the open sea on the other. The situation didn't change much when they got to England, except that the sea was mostly at their back with the hostile Celts in front and on either side of them. Much of the orientation of Middle-earth's geography may be rooted in the perspective of Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon ancestors, whose language he knew so well.