AP English Literature

Reading poetry, prose & drama closely

AP English Literature & Composition is a course in close analytic reading — of poetry, short and long fiction, and drama — and in writing a defensible argument about what a text means and how it makes that meaning. This journey walks the College Board CED end to end: the shape of the exam (55 multiple-choice questions on literary passages plus three timed essays), how to read figurative language, imagery, diction, and tone in poetry, how to hear meter, rhyme, and the turn of a poem, how narration, point of view, structure, setting, and symbol build meaning in fiction, how drama works on a stage, strategy for the multiple-choice section, and how to plan and write the poetry-analysis, prose-fiction-analysis, and literary-argument essays under time. Master these and you can read any literary text closely and argue about it in writing.