Philosophy
The study of literature requires a person to be alone with a book. We believe this solitude is a fine thing and worth preserving. Though books do many things, they exist mostly for aesthetic bliss and, while a teacher may point out delights in a text, ultimately the shudder along the spine can only occur when one reads. And to what marvels reading can lead; for all authors were readers first. We think of Shakespeare as a writer, but he was a reader first, of books, of life. It was said of Shakespeare that he could get more from a single book than most people could from the whole British Museum. When one reads Shakespeare, one finds everything from references to curing leather (his father was a glove maker) to legal terms he picked up, likely while suing his neighbors. Literature ought to include everything. Mallarme, a French poet, wrote, “Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.” Books help give you something to say, and they help you learn to say it well. The VES English program intensively promotes writing, whether in formal essays about literature or personal narratives. We believe that in reading we might discover the world and in writing we might reintroduce the world to itself.
Our students begin their study of English in the Ninth Grade Initiative with an introduction to the literature of other cultures, reading authors from countries such as India, China, and Africa. In English 10, students learn to read closely and think analytically as they encounter classic works from each genre. Both ninth and tenth grade English encourage consistent, varied writing assignments that stress correctness, original thought, and full development of ideas. In the junior and senior years, students choose from a variety of term classes, after filling the required fall courses in Major American Writers for the eleventh grade and Major British Writers for the twelfth grade. Those students wishing to challenge themselves with a college-level English class may take either Advanced Placement Language and Composition or Advanced Placement English Literature. The junior and senior years of English emphasize independent critical thinking and a mature mastery of writing.
Course Descriptions
Freshman English
In the context of a student-centered class, ninth graders learn to think about literature, to recognize the specifics of structure, to find and understand symbol, and to analyze character, purpose, and meaning. Our students also learn to translate their ideas about a text into coherent papers that achieve style as much as correctness. The texts chosen for this class are taken from regions all over the globe. Encountering the voices of these different cultures allows our students to understand the qualities of humanity that transcend place.
Sophomore English
Sophomore English emphasizes mastery of the fundamentals of English: grammar, vocabulary, literature, and composition. These fundamentals are taught in a traditional curriculum of lectures, class discussions, assigned readings, exercises, and regular evaluations. Grammar is emphasized as an important factor in oral and written expression. Formal vocabulary study occurs approximately bi-weekly. Student study representative works of various genres: short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and are taught to recognize and define the thematic significance of individual works and the comparative relationships among genres. Audio-visual supplements help to make the literature “come alive.” Representative readings include Ethan Frome, Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Night, The Women of Brewster Place, and selected poetry. In general, compositions progress from two to five pages in the expository mode. All composition work is graded for both content and grammatical correctness. This course builds a foundation for essential language study.
Junior English - Major American Writers
The American literary voice is at once expansive and introspective. In this class, required of all juniors in the fall term, students encounter a selection of writers who have tried to express just what it means to be American, as well as what it means to be human. In this third year of English, students are asked to think independently, to rely more on their own skills of analysis rather than the teacher’s, and to contribute energy and insight to class discussions. Papers, both narrative and critical, are assigned regularly and graded for clarity, thorough development of ideas, effective use of textual references, and correctness.
Texts:
- The short stories of Hawthorne
- The short stories of Poe
- Selected passages from Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, and Hemingway
- The Great Gatsby
- The Road
Senior English - Major British Writers
This class, required for all seniors in the fall semester, exposes students to some of the greatest writers of all time. Readings begin with the Middle Ages, travel through the Renaissance, and into the Romantic and Victorian periods. Each text is given a brief historical context for richer understanding. Because this is a senior-level class, it is taught in seminar style, with students learning through discussion. Papers, both analytical and narrative, are assigned regularly. Seniors are expected to write with sophistication, personal style, and original thought, and to demonstrate a mature facility with literary terms, documentation of secondary sources, and analysis.
Texts:
- The Canterbury Tales
- Hamlet
- Pride and Prejudice
- Selections from Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats
- Selections from Tennyson and Browning
AP English Language and Composition
AP Language and Composition prepares juniors and seniors for writing at the college level. Through extensive writing practice and reading of essays by professional writers, students develop their own style and gain greater confidence in their ability to express themselves in writing. Students learn various forms of composition: the definition essay, the descriptive essay, the narrative essay, the expository essay, the persuasive essay, and the critical review. Students also practice the college application essay. This course prepares students to take the AP Language and Composition Exam.
AP English Literature and Composition
Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition is both demanding and intellectually stimulating, the primary goal being the development of students’ abilities as independent readers and writers. Students in this course work at a college-level pace and study challenging texts, so AP Literature truly requires a student's best effort – consistently. The richness of the course derives from its emphasis on students developing mature habits of critical thinking. Thus, classroom discussion and active participation are vital and serve as a means of testing ideas. Written assignments, both short and long-term, are an important and frequent feature of the course. Students work with both canonical and modern fiction and poetry, concentrating on encountering new works with open minds and responding in their own informed voices.
Arthurian Legends
This class explores codes of conduct, the heroic archetype, and the adventure found during quests. In literature dealing with the Knights of the Round Table, each man must face difficulties at every turn; some are successful while others fail the tests they face. Through this legendary company of warriors and their tales, readers explore the role of hero and his archetypal journey into self-discovery. Several knights are covered in this course including King Arthur, Lancelot, Sir Gawain, Galahad, and the women who impact their lives. The course concludes with a journey into Middle Earth with Bilbo Baggins, illustrating the impact of the quest lore and heroic model left by Arthurian Legends.
Battlefield Literature
In this course students examine attempts to lift the unspeakable horror of war into the realm of moral comprehension. Through the study of how war is presented in literature and film, students gauge the appropriateness of art as a vehicle to convey, what the speaker in Brian Turner’s poem “A soldier’s Arabic” described as, “a language made of blood,” that if spoken, “must be earned.” Students examine the presentation of reality and the construction of myth in texts dealing exclusively with war and texts that use war as a backdrop to explore larger themes.
Comedy
Comedy is a class that focuses largely on what makes people laugh. It is a study of happiness. Students explore all of humor’s possibilities, whether in the personal narrative (My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber), comedy of manners (The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse), physical comedy (Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes), or nonsense (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll). In addition to researching humor as it is reflected among different cultures and ages, students also attempt to compose their own comedic writings based on the types studied.
Creative Writing
Students in this class write nearly every day. They study technique--how to create substantial dialogue, memorable characters, and vivid description; how to slide seamlessly from scene to scene and control pace and energy. They study the writing of great writers, paying close attention to how they do what they do. They write--short stories, narratives, poems, and one-act plays—and bring those pieces to workshop, relying on each other for honest evaluation, guidance, and encouragement. By the end of the term, each student in the class has produced several finished, polished pieces to be submitted to The Basement, the school’s literary journal, and to several national writing contests.
Texts:
- The poems of Billy Collins, Li Young Lee, Sharon Olds, Mark Strand, and others
- The stories of Michael Chabon, Jumpa Lahiri, David Sedaris, and others
Detective Fiction
Detective fiction offers students the opportunity to read carefully and analyze critically the detective in literature with selections ranging from canonical works to contemporary Scandinavian novels. The class explores the role of the detective, a sleuth who invariably has demons of his own, and thus the genre expands to include everything from Oedipus to Bruce Wayne. No mere genre study, detective fiction explores some of the basic elements of literature, so the class studies not just writers like Conan Doyle, Poe, and Chandler, but also such ancient texts as the Book of Susannah and 1001 Nights or any other book with mean streets where a man must go, though he is not himself mean.
Film Genre: From the Classic Age of Hollywood to the Present
This course is not about eating popcorn and watching the latest Hollywood release. Fair warning: upon completing this course the student will never mindlessly watch a film again. Though viewing individual films is an integral part of the course, understanding a film’s place within a specific genre is paramount and helps us to understand American cinema’s cultural importance. The basic premise under which the class operates is that film genres—a classification used to house the narrative components of likeminded films—celebrate the values and ideals shared by film makers and their audiences.
Folklore
Folklore is a catch-all term for the stories of the people. But what people? In this class, students discover the ancient texts that define humanity, from the world’s oldest book, The Epic of Gilgamesh, to contemporary local legends. Folklore explores what sort of stories people like to tell, as well as the ones that have lasted, like Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Students will discover and research tales from their own geographical or cultural backgrounds and present them to the class. Students also explore how they are defined by the stories they tell and that this is, in some ways, the greatest source of their humanity.
Modernism to Postmodernism
“Do I dare disturb the universe?” In what is probably the most well-known modern poem, Prufrock confronts the emptiness of his existence. Students begin the term with texts that, likewise, bravely confront the possibility of a life without meaning. Then, they’ll examine life through the perspective of the post-modernists who, rather than mourn the emptiness, celebrate the freedom of a world without absolute values. Postmodern literature encourages fun, creativity, and the destruction of traditions, expectations and boundaries. For this section of the class, we examine all aspects of postmodern culture: novels, online journals, TV shows, movies, and graphic novels.
Texts:
- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”—TS Elliot
- Nine Stories—JD Salinger
- Waiting for Godot—Samuel Becket
- “The Myth of Sisyphus”—Camus
- Harold and Maude
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius—Dave Eggers
- The Simpsons
- McSweeney’s
- “The Royal Tannenbaums”
- Excerpts from Maus
Monsters and Metaphors
Is evil absolute or relative? Where does it come from? Can it be defeated? In this class, students examine the nature of evil, and the ways in which encounters with evil can change us.
Texts:
- Beowulf
- Othello--Shakespeare
- Excerpts from Paradise Lost--Milton
- “Where are you going? Where have you been?”—Oates
- “A Good Man is Hard to Find”—O’Connor
- No Country for Old Men—Cormac McCarthy
A Search for Self
This course explores the dynamics of identity in the world. In many ways the labeling of a person’s being happens as early as birth with a name and continues throughout life through various relationships and experiences. The person one becomes is a conglomeration of the past, present, and potential future. Works, such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Bitter Sea, The Lovely Bones, and “The Goblin Market,” demonstrate that identity or self is a fluid concept, always changing or morphing throughout life.