English

For both the Upper School and Lower School the objective of the English department is to encourage each student to develop her ability to read with insight, think logically, and express herself clearly. Class discussions, frequent papers, and regular meetings with teachers help achieve these goals.

English Courses

Class I

Strong reading, writing, and thinking skills are the focus of this course. Literature units are designed to help students make connections between texts and think about the layers of meaning in complex stories by authors such as Lois Lowry, Jerry Spinelli, Sharon Creech and Christopher Paul Curtis. Students read and write numerous poems. They share ideas through class discussions, presentations, and group projects. The focus is on expository and creative writing, with an emphasis on editing. Students are encouraged to word-process their assignments and develop technology skills through units coordinated by the technology department and the library.

Class II

The course focuses on building reading, writing, and critical thinking skills through carefully chosen texts and writing projects. Units on mythology and mystery allow students to deepen their understanding of character, theme, plot, and setting. During the historical fiction unit, students gain research skills while learning the background of the texts they read. A poetry unit teaches close reading and creative writing skills. Narratives, dialogues, persuasive paragraphs, short essays and weekly journal writing are woven into the curriculum. Large and small group discussions enable students to develop their ideas. Throughout each unit students study vocabulary and grammar and practice editing, revising, and proofreading their work.

Class III

Students work on reading accurately and in depth by studying a variety of genres in this course. They learn terms of literary analysis and explore how plot, characters, and themes develop. Students also learn to take useful and concise margin notes as they read. Written assignments focus on developing an effective writing process and include analytical paragraphs, short essays, and short stories. There is also regular grammar study. Works include a collection of short stories, The Pearl, Animal Farm, Miracle Worker , and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Class IV

In this course, students develop reading skills through the analysis of a variety of genres. Texts include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The House on Mango Street, Lord of the Flies, The Odyssey and a variety of poems. In analytical writing, students develop their ability to structure paragraphs and longer pieces, write thesis and topic sentences, and incorporate evidence. There is continued emphasis on the writing process, including brainstorming, outlining, and revising. Class IV writers study creative and personal writing as well, including style imitations, point-of-view pieces, descriptive pieces, and anecdotes. Grammar study continues with a review of parts of speech, functions of the noun, and phrases, and an introduction to clauses.

Class V

The first semester centers on expository writing. Students practice writing thesis statements and outlines as well as reading and writing different kinds of essays: descriptive, anecdotal, analytical and persuasive. The semester concludes with organizing and writing a major research paper. In the second semester, which focuses on literature, students study Jane Eyre, a Shakespeare play and other works, learning to read closely and write short reading responses, creative assignments and longer essays on the works.

Class VI

English VI covers literature of the United States from pre-European times to the present day. It is a full-year course taught in coordination with the history department’s U.S. History course. The first semester is a common curriculum covering the pre-European period to the end of the 19th century. Teachers take slightly different approaches to the literature of the 20th and 21st centuries in the second semester.

Class VII

Students take a one-semester elective course in the literature of a non-western country or region in conjunction with a matching history course. Beginning in 2008-2009, students will have four offerings from which to choose: Africa, India, China and the Middle East. For their other semester of English, students choose from a range of electives in literature and writing.

CLASS VII Non-Western Electives

African Literature

Africa is a huge continent, consisting of 53 nations. This course provides a glimpse of some of the best of the wonderful written literature that has emerged from sub-Saharan countries. Our study begins with an introduction to traditional oral storytelling, then considers the effects of colonialism, the early 20th-century concept of Negritude, and the literature that emerged in the 1960s as many African countries gained their independence. Topics will include the clash between traditional and modern African ways of life, as well as the conflicts between Africans and Europeans and what happened to the high hopes for the new post-colonial societies. The reading includes a novel, two novellas, two plays, two films, and numerous short stories and poems.

Chinese Literature

The Chinese word for civilization means “transformation by the word.” In fact, the Chinese have shared the same written language since early in the first millennium B.C.E., and not surprisingly, literature has been an important part of Chinese culture in every dynasty and region. Because it would be impossible to survey such a rich and diverse tradition, we will instead look closely at recurring subjects in the literature from family to revolution by reading traditional texts, poetry, and contemporary fiction and memoirs.

Indian Literature

To celebrate India’s 50th year of independence in 1997, The New Yorker published an issue devoted entirely to Indian fiction. Students in this course begin by analyzing the contents of this issue in order to identify the urgent questions facing not only contemporary Indian literature but also India’s longstanding literary traditions. By studying literature through the lenses of these questions, students gain new understandings of what and who define “literature” throughout a civilization’s development. The profound pattern of Indian stories being re-written—by the political right, by regional ethnic groups, and by Indians living abroad—offers students insight into the country’s rich diversity and many divisions. Possible texts include The Ramayana, short stories by Tagore and corresponding film adaptations by Satyajit Ray, Raj Mulk Anand’s Untouchable, and Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day.

Middle Eastern Literature

Students in this course will seek to broaden their cultural understanding of the Middle East by engaging with literature from or about that region. The course might focus on one particular area of the Middle East or survey the Middle East as a whole. Readings will include ancient works such as Sufi poetry and religious texts, as well as fiction and non-fiction contemporary prose. In addition to weekly reading journal entries, students will write analytical and narrative papers.

CLASS VII Literature Electives

Curtain Up!

“All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare said, and from his time to ours playwrights working in English have taken him at his word, exploring a variety of issues, characters, settings, and styles in their attempts to “hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature.” Students in this course will experience the tenderness of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the hilarity of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the absurdity of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the anguish of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the elegance of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, and the exuberance of Rent, a contemporary example of an indigenous American art form, the musical comedy. No special expertise or familiarity with drama or the stage required.

Irish Literature

Irish literature will focus mainly on the political, social and literary voices that defined what later became known as the “Irish literary renaissance.” In closely examining the poems and plays of authors such as Yeats, Synge and Gregory, as well as short stories and a novel by Joyce, we will try to understand how these distinct and at times contentious voices helped to shape Ireland’s cultural and political consciousness during the years of its struggle for independence from England. How did the nationalist imperative affect literary representations? Why did crowds riot when Synge’s plays were performed in Dublin? How did the disastrous and bloody first attempts to resist the colonial power cause Yeats to reevaluate his art? How did these forces, as well as the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland, influence Joyce’s artistic and personal commitments? In trying to understand these authors and their works in a larger context, students will write critical essays, present individual research to the class and view Irish films.

Poetry Revisited

During his recent tenure as Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky invited contemporary readers to revisit poetry. In this course we will take up that challenge by not only reading poetry but also writing it. The reading will range in period and style from Anne Bradstreet to Gwendolyn Brooks and from John Donne to Bei Dao. The writing, which will be appropriate for students of all levels of experience, will include essays, journal entries, and original poems. We will have the opportunity to explore a variety of themes, movements, and forms, and by the end of the term each student will complete both an author study and a portfolio.

A Sense of Place

According to Wendell Berry, “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.” From its beginnings, the idea of The United States has been defined by its relationship to place, both in the sense of the distinct regions that comprise it and in the more abstract sense of “the nation” as a conceptual geography of ideas about individuals and communities, freedom and restraint, life at home and life “on the road.” America has been conceived as a “city upon a hill,” a godless wilderness, a superabundant cornucopia, a zone of divinely infused natural beauty, and a modern wasteland of alienation, commercialism and hopelessness. We will focus on 20th-century texts that explore concerns about place in regard to competing notions of American identity, reading authors such as Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Kate Chopin.

Siblings: The ties that bind?

In this course we will read a variety of classic to contemporary works that will allow us to explore the nature of being a sibling, the forces that bind us as brothers and sisters together and apart. Texts may include some traditional fairy tales, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Dickens’ Hard Times, Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market, Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Hasseini’s The Kite Runner. The occasional film may also be added.

Class VIII

Students choose two semesters of English study from a selection of electives in literature and writing. The second semester course will be an 8-week seminar.

Class VIII Fall Electives in British Literature

Dynamic Shakespeare

In this course we study a range of Shakespeare’s major works, including three major plays and a selection of sonnets. The course examines both written and production texts; while grounded in Shakespeare’s written work, students visually and aurally map the two-dimensional written text onto the three dimensional stage. We carefully consider the elements of language, character development, and story line. Then, to complement those elements, the course draws from film productions of various directors since the 1900s. We will also try to attend a local professional production of one of Shakespeare’s plays.

Nineteenth-Century English Literature

From early Romanticism to fin-de-siecle decadence, 19th century British literature ran the gamut from one intellectual extreme to another. We will study some poetry of the Romantics, dip into some Victorian essayists and poets, read Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, study Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge and finish with Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan.

British Literature of Empire

The purpose of this course is to examine the effect of British imperial cultural consciousness on the literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We will begin with imperial romance: what one critic has called the “bedtime story the empire told itself before it fell asleep at night.” Romance gives way to ambivalence, in which Victorian complacency is infused with creeping uncertainty about the assumptions supporting its “civilizing mission.” Upon what beliefs—political, racial, cultural and religious—was this “mission” based? How does the literature of the time reflect both the coherent ideology of empire and the latent cracks in its structure? In what ways did the literary reflection of early modern ambiguity both reveal and inform the shifting philosophical, political and social values of the last decades of the British Empire? In exploring these topics, we will read poems by Tennyson, poems and a novel by Kipling, shorter and longer works by Conrad and a novel by Forster. We will also supplement our literary reading with historical texts on the mythologies of travel narratives, 19th-century espionage, or “The Great Game,” and period propaganda.

Modern British Literature

A well-known 19th century saying was, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.” However, the 20th and 21st centuries saw Great Britain rocked by two World Wars and the loss of its colonies. From the salons of upper-class Bloomsbury to the flats of blue-collar Liverpool, writers asked, “Who are we, without our empire?” The novels, short stories, plays, and poetry in this course reflect Britain’s struggle to redefine itself. Works include Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway; T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land; Stevie Smith’s Not Waving But Drowning; Ian Hamilton Finlay’s concrete poetry; John Lennon’s Penny Lane; Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone; Chinua Achebe’s Girls at War; and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.

Tradition and Experiment in British Poetry

In this elective, we’ll trace the history of British poetry from the 16th through the 20th century, placing a particular emphasis on the way earlier poets set the intellectual tone for and influenced those to follow, both in terms of style and content; in so doing, we’ll explore the contributions of both canonical male poets and their (often lesser-known) female counterparts. Students will have the chance to experiment with poetic form themselves, in addition to honing their interpretive skills in several analytical essays. Authors will include: Queen Elizabeth I, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Lady Mary Wroth, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Smith, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Mina Loy, and H.D.

Class VIII Spring Electives

Shakespeare In the Round

From written text to production text (and lots in between)! Members of this course will engage in a close and in-the-round examination of one Shakespeare play. We will dig-in to the play’s language: its rhythm, meter, imagery, and literal and interpretive service. In addition to the main text, we will also read some of Shakespeare’s “primary sources” as a means of getting behind the arras of the mythological, biblical, and historical references within the play. To complement the play’s written text, the course will draw heavily from film productions of the play. If possible, the class will attend the performance of a play by a professional theater company in the Boston area. The course will also trace the legacy of the play: we will seek-out parallel stories and characters in literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; we will look for the re-appropriation of lines and phrases. Our work might also include etymological explorations, monologue recitations, the creation of director’s notes for a production, an acted and self-filmed scene, construction of a model stage-set, film analysis, and sonnet writing.

Dis-ease

In the face of epidemics, poverty, and dehumanization, man has sought to understand suffering and to find meaning and reason to hope. We will examine two classic stories in conjunction with modern corollaries to consider the way man copes with problems that threaten to annihilate his humanity. Works read:Camus’ The Plague, Kushner’s Angels in America, Dickens’ Hard Times, and Ishiguro’s Never Let me Go.

Creative Writing

With eight weeks of uninterrupted time ahead of you, you can write several short stories, a suite of poems, or a short play. You can start a novel or a screenplay. This course will encourage you to follow your own interests, sharing your work on a regular basis with the other writers in the class with a view to improving your talent for communicating imaginatively and to helping your classmates to do the same. Assignments will consist of working on your own writing and reading helpful models selected in consultation with the instructor. At the conclusion of the course you will present of a portfolio of what you have produced.

Literature and the Mind

In this course, we’ll explore literary representations of the mind’s workings, and study the ways writers have sought to understand the psyche in a few key historical moments and cultural contexts. We’ll pay particularly close attention to the philosophical and political leanings of the writers in question—and, if time allows, we will also consider the visual artwork contemporary to the literary texts we read (looking at, for example, paintings by Dadaist, Surrealist, Abstract Expressionist, and/or Abstract artists). Our main focus will be on the 20th century, and authors may include: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Henry James, Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, André Breton, Paul Eluard, Sigmund Freud, Jorge Luis Borges, Kazuo Ishiguro, Susanna Kaysen, Toni Morrison and/or Marjane Satrapi.

Literature and Film

This course will examine the interplay between these two powerful genres. We will read a number of paired works from literature and film, as well as examine the ways in which the conventions of each genre have influenced the other. How do we “read” film? What critical tools from our reading of literature are useful? What elements of cinematic representation evade or resist the tools of literary analysis? Our reading will be wide ranging, including authors such as Shakespeare, Mary Shelley and Hemingway. Our purpose is not merely to compare literary and film versions of the same concept; rather, we will set about the task of seeing how these genres bring the conventions of their crafts to bear on some of the large themes of classical literature and the twentieth century’s genre, film. Along the way, we will watch films, write viewing notes, reviews and critiques, read portions of screenplays, write analyses of both literature and film and even experiment with pitching movie ideas and developing screenplay concepts.