LM - What is Literary Merit? Overview
What is Literary Merit?
Introduction
According to the College Board the goal of AP English literature is
”intensive study of representative works from various genres and periods, concentrating on works of literary merit. . . the pieces chosen invite and reward rereading.” But what exactly is “literary merit” and what makes a work “invite rereading?”
The above questions are ones that philosophers and literary theorists have been asking for over two thousand years, and they’ve yet to come to a consensus. Is it a work's overall meaning, its popularity, its technique, its influence, or a combination of all these qualities? Often works that are considered great in their day fall into oblivion within one or two generations (if you don’t believe me look at the list of Nobel Prize winners for literature and tell me how many you recognize), whereas sometimes books that are all but ignored, misunderstood and even hated in their day, end up being classics that grow with time (The Awakening, Moby Dick, Lord of the Flies). Yet some authors were successful, and still remain important (Dickens, Shakespeare).
The purpose of this module is to enter the two thousand year conversation about literature merit and to learn about some qualities that great works of literature tend to have in common. You will then conclude with a justification of why a particular work contains the elusive quality of literary merit.
Module Lessons Preview
In this module, we will study the following topics:
What is Literature?: In this lesson, you will explore and define a working definition of literature by starting with the purpose of literature.
Four Great Thinkers on Literature: In this lesson, you will read and discuss four philosophers of literature to help formulate an understanding of how the purpose of a work contributes to its merit.
Ambiguity and Irony: In this lesson, you will explore two concepts that seem to be consistent with both works of literature merit, as well as the AP Exam.
Universality of Literature: In this lesson, you will explore what is perhaps the most common concept with literary merit - the universality of a work - by learning how to compose a complex thematic statement.
Literary Merit: In this lesson, you will apply the discussion of literary merit to one specific work of literature.
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