Following the school’s mission, the English department encourages students to ask the kinds of questions—Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?—that will shape them into lifelong searchers for truth.
The world’s greatest literature brings these questions to life, and our department prides itself on offering students an encounter with such timeless works wherever they appear, whether in ancient Greece or in contemporary America. Our Catholic and Benedictine character calls us in a particular way to explore the spiritual dimension of the works we read and to teach with an eye toward the development of the inner lives of our students. Small class sizes are instrumental in allowing teachers to attend to each student’s progress in the art of reading, writing, and thinking well. As students grapple with the likes of Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, and Morrison, they begin to think deeply about themselves and the world.
Students learn to read slowly and reflectively, and are often required to annotate in the margins. They are trained in the craft of academic writing, learning to form intelligent arguments and communicate them clearly. Each year students submit a portfolio of their written work, demonstrating a commitment to revision as well as composition. Classes revolve around lively discussion, and students are also required to memorize and recite poetry in class. Ultimately, the English classroom at Portsmouth Abbey is a place where a student discovers his or her own voice by thoughtfully engaging, as Matthew Arnold put it, “the best that has been thought and said.”
INTRO TO LITERATURE
The Third Form curriculum provides students with a foundation in serious reading, writing, and thinking via an encounter with some of the most famous works in history. Texts include Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, as well as other short fiction and poetry. Students learn the foundational art of close reading and annotation, as well as the skills of poetry recitation and public speaking. Writing instruction focuses on the argumentative essay, the building block of academic writing in all genres. Students learn how to craft a thesis statement and support it with textual evidence, with special emphasis placed on paragraph structure and organization of ideas. Above all, students are encouraged to use these skills to investigate what the texts have to say about what it means to live well, and to examine their own lives in light of what they discover.
AMERICAN LITERATURE
What does it mean to be American? In what ways is this identity universal? In what ways is it particular to the American experiment? Questions like these guide students in their Fifth Form year as they read some of the most prominent works in the American canon. After starting the year with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, students trace the beginnings of American literary culture in Concord, Massachusetts in studying the Transcendentalists and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the winter the curriculum dives deeply into Melville’s Moby-Dick, followed by a study of the Harlem Renaissance and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in the spring. Writing instruction encourages students to explore and develop their ideas through close reading and analysis of the text. The students’ concurrent study of American history provides them with an excellent opportunity to examine how history and culture inform each other and continue to shape our present moment. Interested students have the option to take the AP English Language exam at the end of the year.
ENGLISH SEMINAR AND THESIS
The Sixth Form year mirrors the structure, content, and expectations of a college-level course. All students read Shakespeare’s King Lear, and the remainder of the syllabus is crafted by their particular teacher. Current thematic offerings include “Modern Spiritual Crisis,” “Wise and Foolish Counsel,” and “Mourning and Meaning: Literature of Cultural Crisis from Antigone to Demon Copperhead.” In all cases, English Seminar and Thesis is an intensive reading, writing, and speaking course. Students are responsible for seminar discussions and write a literary-critical thesis, on a book and topic of their own choosing, in the Spring Term.
ENGLISH LITERATURE AP
The Iron Law of AP English is close attention to words, the crucial skill of every real reader, writer, and speaker. Students will learn the ways of words from the greats through frequent explication of literary masterworks. The readings include Renaissance sonnets, Metaphysical lyrics, and a selection of Romantic and modern poems. We also study Shakespeare’s King Lear, Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, and Morrison’s Beloved and a selection of short stories. Daily participation in seminar discussion drives the course. Students write frequent ex tempore close reading essays and present memorized poetry recitations. The course culminates in the Senior Thesis in the spring.
CREATIVE WRITING
This class explores the main genres of creative writing (Fiction, Poetry, and Drama). Students develop their skills by reading modern texts, participating in daily exercises, and composing numerous short stories, plays and poems. With a playful approach, students learn to evoke the senses of the reader, while integrating the primary elements of storytelling, including setting, plot, character and theme. They experiment with various forms of poetry, such as “found poems” and free verse, along with more traditional forms. In the spring, the class assists with publishing the school literary arts magazine, The Raven, by editing submissions and formatting the layout with Adobe InDesign software.