Course Syllabus
English 11 H: Mr. Esposito
Office Hours in Room 146, on Fridays after school and at whatever times throughout the week before or after school that are mutually available.
Quizzes, essays, and contributions to discussion: These assignments and activities receive weight appropriate to the depth and range of expected and demonstrated learning.
Contact: espositop@wellesleyps.org
2024-2025
Objective:
To learn how to read books and poems, and how to write and talk about them. We shall grow as individuals and as members of a group of people who hold in common the highest ideals of the spirit of the humanities.
Activities and expectations:
Close and thorough reading, open and thoughtful conversation, honest and careful writing, diligent and purposeful intellectual improvement.
GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION
William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style
LITERATURE
George Orwell, 1984
Unit 1: Tragedy
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus
Unit 2: Comedy and Satire
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”
William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
Unit 3: Journeys – Personal, Figurative & or Literal
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Unit 4: Conflicts – Internal and External
< Dante Alighieri, Inferno>
< John Milton, Paradise Lost>
Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills
<Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon>
These titles, which are subject to change, will serve as our class texts.