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Enhance your AP Literature exam preparation with this detailed guide by Ms. Teref of Roosevelt High School. Learn effective techniques for poem analysis, including how to annotate text, identify shifts in tone or emotion, and understand structural elements such as stanzas and sentences. Discover the importance of punctuation, literary devices like alliteration and metaphor, and the distinction between speaker and narrator. Additionally, delve into comparison/contrast essays with practical strategies for thesis development and connecting ideas across texts.
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AP Lit Review for Exam By Ms.Teref, Roosevelt High School
When analyzing a poem or a long passage… • Use your weapon – pen/pencil to annotate! • Look for shifts (e.g. however, but, yet, ironically, oddly enough…) • Look for natural breaks: • Is one stanza or paragraph significantly longer than the others? (That must mean there’s an overwhelming emotion in that part.) • Is there a sentence which is significantly longer than others? Why?
Is there a list or a litany (a negative list)? Could that list be making the long sentence so long? (Think of Hamlet’s soliloquies.) • Chase subject and verb combinations (find the verb first and see what it’s linked to) + bracket the interrupters or nonessential information) • If a sentence/line sounds odd, unscramble the word order (perhaps the line starts with a verb and its subjects is far apart)
When faced with a difficult sentence or verse, circle the words you know or the key words, and pay attention to what you know. • Pay attention to punctuation: ! ? - (something is emphasized, dramatized…) • When stuck and don’t know what else to write, start with “When (character does something…), i.e. summarize and then analyze.
Literary (technical vocabulary) • For the thesis: CFC, parallel structure, correlatives (no sooner… than, not only… but), archetypes, does the character change from beginning to the end? • Alliteration, metaphor, extended metaphor (conceit), simile (what’s their function? don’t just identify them) • Connotation (connote), denotation (denote) • Euphony, cacophony
Sonnet, Italian sonnet, English sonnet, stanza, blank verse, volta, iambic pentameter, iamb, rhyme scheme (abbaabbacdccdc), couplet, heroic couplet (rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter: aa bb cc dd…) quatrain. • Humor: humorous/comic (not “funny”): - exaggeration/hyperbole/hyperbolic • irony, sarcasm • diction tone • shifts • satire: we must know the original (e.g. “My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”)
Anti-hero (Hamlet, Lucifer), protagonist, antagonist/villain (King Claudius), foil, major vs. minor characters (characters “in transit” – what’s their function?) • Speaker vs. persona vs. narrator (never the author – this is only for non-fiction)
Comparison/contrast essay • 1. THESIS: In your thesis, identify what similar concern/problem/issue the speakers have, and then explain how their conclusions about that concern are different. • 2. ANALYZE COMPLETELY THE POEM YOU UNDERSTAND BETTER FIRST. • 3. Transitional paragraph: connect poem 1 with poem 2. • 4. Begin analyzing the other poem and occasionally ping-pong between poem 2 and poem 1 to make connections between them. • 5. Conclusion