Keywords

Advanced Placement English, literary canon, classic literature

Abstract

Perhaps the most traditional, conservative bastions of literature in America are those that are home to the thousands of high school Advanced Placement English classes throughout the United States. In these classrooms, diligent students and teachers study "literature of enduring quality" in preparation for the rigorous AP English literature examination given each spring. Typically the curriculum of these courses relies heavily on the classics: works by Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Hugo, Austen, Hawthorne, Hemingway, and the rest of the authors enshrined in literature's pantheon. Of course, in recent decades the literary canon has loosened up enough to accept a handful of works by talented authors who in the past had been or would have been excluded from the mainstream, and so Kate Chopin, Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, Chinua Achebe, and a few other writers who achieved critical acclaim in the twentieth century have found their way into AP study.

Original Publication Citation

“AP and YA?” English Journal 91.1 (September 2001): 123-128.