English

Reading, Expression, and Literature in the English Curriculum

Mr. Gary M. Nied, Head of Department

Underlying the sequence of courses in the English Department are three principles. First, reading is an active process that must be taught, a process that, by posing questions and parsing out the actual meaning of the words on the page, will be of lifelong benefit to the student. Second, expressing a thought clearly and coherently in a sentence, paragraph, essay, or poem is essential in exercising one’s role as a citizen and discovering one’s voice. Third, carefully reading a select number of significant texts in our literary heritage will broaden the horizons of these 21st-century students and deepen their understanding of what William Faulkner called “the old verities of the heart, the old universal truths.”

Furthermore, a central goal of the English Department is to nourish the moral imagination in our students. A steady diet of epic literature, as well as the works of Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, C.S. Lewis, and Flannery O’Connor, to name but a few, help integrate our emphasis on the close reading of complete texts with our desire to nurture in our students the ability to write about important things, whether that be an essay in response to the characters and themes of a piece of literature, a paragraph of personal opinion about a topic raised in class, a research paper merging information taken from both English class and history or theology, or a short story derived from personal experience.

Literature in Middle School begins with The Chronicles of Narnia and continues in Form II and III with tales of adventure (Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, The Tales of King Arthur); mythology and folk tales (Greek, African and Asian);  and a broad selection of lyric and narrative poetry. Form IV takes up the coming-of-age theme with Great Expectations, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Empire of the Sun, as well as a poetic meter and rhyme study.

In the Upper School, the literature study becomes more chronological, mirroring the curriculum in our Social Studies department. Form V looks again at Greek mythology and the Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Macbeth. Form VI reads British literature, including Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Hamlet, and Cry the Beloved Country, and a broad lyric and narrative poetry spectrum. Form VII studies American literature, including Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, The Crucible, and W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, as well as a wide range of 19th and 20th-century American short stories and poetry. Form VIII takes up world literature, beginning with Ovid’s The Metamorphoses and continuing with Dante’s Inferno, as well as works by Becket, Calvino, Dostoevsky, Soyinka, and Murakami.

English Department Faculty