After Class IV, in which all students take the same English course, students may choose among several electives offered in each of the remaining three years. Students new to Milton make this choice shortly after they decide to matriculate, in consultation with the Registrar’s office. Returning students make a choice for the following year in consultation with their current English teacher. Creative Writing, Advanced Creative Writing, Hamlet and Exposition do not fulfill the diploma requirement in English and must be taken in addition to a full English course.

Class IV English

EN4
The course emphasizes basic skills in reading the most important literary genres; in writing clear, coherent exposition; and in developing a powerful vocabulary. Texts include a Shakespeare play, portions of the Bible, and anthologies of short fiction and poetry. In addition to four class meetings per week, students attend a weekly writing workshop.

Class III Electives

The department offers four courses: Discovering Literature, Foundations of Literature, Performing Literature and Seeing Literature. Given the various interests and abilities of the students, each of these courses is of comparable difficulty with similar amounts of writing. All students in Class III read Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play. The following descriptions spell out the content of each course in more detail.

ENDL
Discovering Literature
Working primarily with modern and contemporary literature, students will explore the four genres: fiction, poetry, drama and nonfiction. The goal of this course is to ground the student in a more refined understanding of these literary types. Each genre demands consideration of the conventions unique to each form, and each genre requires different skills to write critically about those conventions. The examination of fiction will include both novels and short stories; non-fiction will include essays, as well as memoirs.

ENFN
Foundations of Literature
The texts for this course are primarily from major works of Western literature that have influenced writers and readers from the earliest to the present time. Studies include close reading of poetry and prose, as well as introduction to the basic vocabulary of literary appreciation and critical exposition. The course, which is reading-intensive, examines epic, tragedy, comedy, prose fiction and lyric poetry within a chronological framework; texts include works by Homer, Sophocles and Marlowe, and more than one Shakespeare play. The last phase of the course focuses on novels and plays of the modern era.

ENPF
Performing Literature
The readings in this course present a mixture of English and American writers, classical and modern works, and the major literary genres. What distinguishes this course from the other Class III electives, however, is its emphasis on oral interpretation. Most sections begin with plays, and the students perform scenes and characters aloud, stage some scenes, and do dramatic analysis. As the course progresses, students give speeches, present panel discussions, write and perform in the voice of individual characters, create trials, or work in other performance activities as determined by the teacher. As with all electives, students write expository essays and learn grammar and aspects of style.

ENSL
Seeing Literature
From the imagery in a poem to the point of view of a short story or novel, literature often encodes in words an important visual message. This course examines literary and visual works in context with one another, exploring the territory where the two forms of expression intersect. Paintings, sculpture, photographs, films, graphic novels and advertisements serve both as subjects for student writing and as sources of key concepts for deepening students’ experience of the literature at the core of the course. Through its investigation of the visual, the course embraces all the reading and writing goals of the Class III program.

Class II Electives

ENAPP
Approaches to Literature
This course helps students appreciate literature by approaching it from a number of perspectives. Students begin with close reading—the detailed examination of a variety of texts for what the language itself will yield. Subsequent units group texts of the same genre, those with a common theme, those from the same historical period, and those by a single author. In the late spring, the class applies all of these approaches to a single work, studying the text closely while also considering its form and theme, the period from which it came, and the influence of events in the author’s life. Students should expect frequent in-class writing as well as longer critical essays.

ENHC
Literature and the Human Condition
Pursuing a broad philosophical inquiry into what it means to be a person, to form relationships with others, to make decisions and to live with their consequences, students read works by major British and American writers and place these texts into conversation with influential pieces by writers from other literary traditions. The class functions primarily as a seminar in which students explore the sub-topics that emerge to shape our discussions: heroism and villainy; masculinity and femininity; self and other; rationality, the unconscious and chaos; mortality, embodiment and divinity; innocence, guilt and redemption. Students can anticipate frequent writing assignments, which will ask them to clarify and argue their own ideas about the course’s central themes in critical essays, personal essays and creative responses.

ENAL
American Literature
This course is a chronological survey of classic American literature with representative readings from the works of predominantly 19th- and 20th-century writers. The form and content of the readings offer great variety, and students’ written responses range from straightforward literary criticism to creative imitations of styles. While some direct instruction fills in pertinent biographical or historical background, most classes are seminar discussions, and teachers encourage student participation. The course presents an 2012–2013 Course Catalogue 11 overview of American culture through its literary figures; students who also take United States History in the Class II year find that the two courses complement each other.

ENMNW
Man and the Natural World
This course explores varied human responses to the natural world through literature that has been selected for its provocative response to nature and the ways in which man marks his presence on the land. The tension between urban and rural visions will help students understand ideas of the wilderness and of the city in the human imagination and the ways in which memory and imagination help define place in the world. The course is grounded in concrete, specific observations that grow toward more abstract, complex revelations about the human condition. Literature ranges from novels, poetry and essays to explorers’ journals and diaries. The course includes contemporary authors such as Leslie Marmon Silko and Annie Dillard but also explores the visions of writers such as Thoreau and Faulkner. Writing will range from illustrated nature journals to essays of literary analysis and response papers.

ENEAJ
Studies in English and American Literature
(Two-Year Sequence)
This course introduces students to major English and American writers and demonstrates the connections between English and American literary traditions. Structured chronologically, it begins with the major writers in England who form the basis for all subsequent developments. The second and third semesters of the sequence emphasize the similarities and dissimilarities of British and American writers and some ways in which they influenced each other and were influenced by their cultures. In scope, the course studies works of some 30 writers from Chaucer through Virginia Woolf in a year and a half. In the second semester of the Class I year, students study some modern and post-modern dramas, and then subdivide into specialized groups to study 20thcentury texts by a limited number of writers. (Note: In electing this course, a student makes a two-year commitment that cannot be broken at the end of Class II.)

Class I Electives

ENNF
The Craft of Non-Fiction
This course is designed for students who have a demonstrated interest in the craft of writing and who wish to write about ideas, personal experience, and the sort of general interest topics (e.g., the arts, medicine, sports, nature, science, education) that appear in magazines such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. It addresses three different genres of non-fiction: the feature article, a 4,000- to 5,000-word piece of investigative reporting; the essay of ideas, two or three 1,500-word reflective essays; and the memoir, a 4,000- to 5,000-word personal narrative. In each genre, students first read models and complete short, experimental writing assignments. The course differs from other Class I English courses in its high ratio of writing to reading and in its requirement that students revise each major piece of work to a high standard of professionalism. Critique by peers is an essential part of the writing process; students should expect to share their work with the class and to read and comment on the work of their classmates.

ENFC
Woman, Man, and Their Fictions
We begin our philosophical journey with The Magus, the course’s required summer reading. On the island of Phraxos in 1953, the mysteries of Bourani become the thematic and artistic questions of the course. Exploring the myths, creeds, and psychological and scientific principles that we live by in the Western world, we move from our encounters with freedom and truth to 19thand 20th-century fiction. Continuing our historical and thematic exploration, we examine the fictions that man lives by as we study modern and contemporary literature. Reading selections vary from year to year. The following is a sample of works taught recently: American Pastoral, The Collected Stories of John Cheever, Antony and Cleopatra, Betrayal, Oryx and Crake, The Road, The Gay Science, Studies in Modern Fiction, Beloved, Nemesis and A Farewell to Arms.

ENNR
Literature and the Nature of Reality
This course looks at a variety of texts that explore, question and prod at the boundaries of the nature of reality. In studying novels, plays, movies, short stories and poems, we look not only at ideas in literature, but also at theories in psychology, science, morality, language theory and art. The class is divided into thematic units, though many texts will cross from one theme into others. Central to the class are the big questions: What is real? How do we judge reality? How and why does literature explore it? Possible authors include Albee, Beckett, Borges, Fadiman, Frayn, Kushner, Pirandello, Sacks, Stoppard, Twain and Woolf.

ENCL
Modern Comparative Literature
The course begins with summer reading of Dickens and Dostoevsky, two writers who were contemporaries but wrote in very different styles. Dostoevsky anticipates much of what is thought to be “modern” in the arts. From his example, students move to Kafka—who casts the longest shadow over modern literature—Joyce, Woolf and Camus. The last three writers of the fall term, García Márquez, Coetzee and Morrison, writing in the post-modern era, face the question of what artists do to distinguish their work when earlier authors seem to have tried everything. In the spring semester, students trace the same evolution of style and content in drama, immersing themselves in sixteen plays ranging from Ibsen and Strindberg in the late-nineteenth century to Suzan Lori Parks and Caryl Churchill, whose plays have been on Broadway in the last few years. Overall, the course emphasizes reading more than writing. In the fall, students write critical and creative pieces. During the spring, in an effort to “see” plays in performance rather than on the page, students meet in King Theatre and submit frequent short homework exercises with the occasional critical essay. During the spring project period, students will study a film unit of their choice. In past years, subjects have included film noir, the changing image of women in film, five great directors, great examples of five film genres, and five autobiographical films.

ENPH
Philosophy and Literature
This course investigates theories about the nature of humanity and the nature of human happiness. Proceeding sometimes chronologically and sometimes by examining conflicting philosophers’ ideas about a single topic, the course emphasizes a reasoned approach to thinking about complex and abstract problems. Topics include the origins of the universe, the basis of human knowledge, questions of freedom and determinism, the nature of evil, the nature of moral and aesthetic judgment, and the definition of social and political justice. Students read traditional philosophers such as Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle and Descartes. They also study modern thinkers such as Marx and Freud, as part of an examination of the search for a scientific theory of human nature. The class uses current articles and essays along with a significant amount of film, poetry and fiction (including such texts as Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams, Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved and Schlink’s The Reader). The course aims at the development of more sophisticated and rational ways of thinking about ourselves and our world and introduces the student to basic philosophic problems and to some of the classic answers suggested by thinkers and artists of the Western world.

ENSH
Shakespeare
This course is devoted to the study of Shakespeare’s plays. It concentrates on the plays in relation to the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, to the theatre, and to the development of Shakespeare’s art in comedy, history and tragedy. There is little study of secondary materials, criticism or commentary; instead, homework assignments include reading of the text, writing assignments, and preparation for dramatic readings. Papers, at least one per play, stress analysis and close reading.

When appropriate, students view films of the plays or compare the treatment of a given scene in different versions. There may be required trips to the theatre.

ENCWL
Themes in Contemporary World Literature
As citizens of the world, we need to understand the world; its literature can present colorful doorways to knowledge and understanding. This course will use a thematic approach to exploring some of the topics and issues relevant in our contemporary world. We will divide the course into three units, each exploring a different topic of global interest. Possible themes include globalization, the post-colonial world, gender, natural resources, religion, poverty and ethnic conflict. Texts will span continents and genres, drawing primarily from current literature.

ENTWD
Three Writers in Depth
By limiting the number of writers we study, this course allows students to examine each writer longer and more intensively than is possible in other courses. Opportunities presented by the course include following the evolution of an author’s style and choice of subject matter and theme; exploring one author’s approach to different literary genres; and placing an author in historical and biographical context. Written work consists of both critical essays and creative pieces, perhaps using as inspirations the style or thematic content of the works being studied. The teacher selects the first two writers; after the school year has begun, teacher and students together will select the third. The following list suggests the stature of the writers likely to be chosen: Auden, Austen, Baldwin, Beckett, Conrad, Dante, Eliot, Faulkner, Frost, García Márquez, Hemingway, Ibsen, James, Joyce, Morrison, O’Neill, Swift, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Williams, Woolf, Yeats.

EHAMH
Hamlet
(Half Course)
Classes I & II
By devoting a full year to the play widely regarded as the greatest in English, this course, team-taught by a member of the English department and a member of the performing arts department, offers students several unique opportunities:

• to enjoy the in-depth study of a single text, with no pressure to move on; and to experience fully the richness that a very complex literary text provides;

• to approach a Shakespeare play actively by performing, directing and designing parts of the text, and in doing so discover a full range of possible interpretation;

• to join the literate world in knowledge and appreciation of a classic work;

• to explore the deep personal resonances that this work, perhaps more than any other, seems always to evoke;

• to gain familiarity with the problems and processes of literary scholarship.

Most class time is spent reading and discussing Hamlet and comparing different film versions. Students, individually or in groups, formulate long-term projects that they complete during homework time. Projects, which may be critical or creative, have covered a broad range, including theatre design, filmmaking, creative writing, textual analysis, memorization and performance, graphic art, psychology, music, and research into the play’s historical and literary background.

APCW
Creative Writing
Satisfies Arts Program Requirement
Classes I, II & III
This course offers workshops in shaping ideas, personal observations, and memories into fiction and poetry. It teaches techniques of each genre and employs frequent reading and discussion of student works within the class.

EACWH
Advanced Creative Writing
(Half Course)
Meeting twice a week in a format that consists of a writers’ workshop and individual conferences, this course provides the student-writer the opportunity to continue to develop talents. (Prerequisites: Creative Writing and permission of the creative writing teachers.)

EACW2
Advanced Creative Writing 2
(Half Course)
This course allows those who have successfully completed Advanced Creative Writing to continue working in the same format. (Prerequisites: Advanced Creative Writing and permission of the creative writing teachers.)

Language Skills

ELEX
Exposition Classes III & IV
The English department offers a diploma credit course for students in Classes III and IV who desire intensive instruction for improvement of verbal skills and study techniques. The course focuses on developing the skills necessary for clear, correct and forceful expository writing of the sort required by all disciplines at Milton. This course includes a thorough study of grammar; an introduction to key concepts about writing; and a series of essays and longer projects aimed at helping students learn to write in a step-by-step process that includes planning, drafting, revising and editing.

Enrollment in this course is limited and is granted by permission of the department. A Class IV student who wishes to take Exposition in Class III must first consult with his or her current English teacher.