OVERVIEW
The purpose of this chapter is to acquaint you with the variety and types of literary works that have
been on past exams and may appear on future exams. While you are not expected to have read all of these
works—that would be impossible—you are expected to have read a wide variety of works. It is better to
know five to seven novels/plays very well than to have a cursory knowledge of more literary works.
If you study the first list below, you will find that most of the titles are novels or plays. Some short
fictional works are listed along with a few (very few) non-fiction texts.
If time is short, focus on reading and studying a few novels and plays. Choose those
most often cited on the AP Lit exam if you have no other impulse guiding your
decision. See the list below.Also, if you look at the tags for the most prominently cited works, you’ll see some common
denominators, which may indicate the types of themes the College Board tends to favor in its selection of
texts for the exam. Common themes include:
a heroic journey or quest
self determination or self discovery
coming of age or maturity (bildungsroman)
awakenings or epiphanies: individual, spiritual, etc.
disparity and oppression: class, economy, race, sex, etc.In general, the AP Lit exam is going to present obscure texts in the multiple-choice section, presumably
so that a greater percentage of students will be unfamiliar with them. Therefore, you cannot expect to
study and know those passages and poems ahead of time. Instead, your success hinges on your careful
reading and analysis of these passages and poems on test day.
No doubt you have already read some of the works listed in this chapter. To aid you in remembering
the key concepts for those works, there is a graphic organizer presented at the end of this chapter called
Remembering Major Works. This organizer is not meant to represent everything you might need to know
about a certain text, but it gives you a concise format for recording a good summary of major novels or
plays. It is meant to be a memory tool.