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All of the things mentioned are great for writing an in-class essay or something or maybe Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but you really need to talk about a novel that has had scholarly approval and it works out that the older the classic, the more approval it gets.
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<p>Well, certainly, time is important, but hardly the end-all, be-all. AP graders must know this, or else my class wouldn't do so well, seeing as how some of our books are from 1950s onward.</p>
<p>The main thing I see against HP, in fact, is that it's too easy to interpret, and the answers would be too obvious.</p>
<p>My British Lit. teacher allowed me to do my term paper on J.K. Rowling and argue that she was a writer of literary merit, and she agreed with me that the books are of literary merit, though I don’t think that’s what they’re looking for on the AP test. However, if you think you can do it and do it well, I’d go for it. It’s going to be much harder because they’re post-modern and don’t have history to prop them up. You’ll have to argue purely on layered content and composition elements.
To say the books are one-leveled because they’re for kids and teens is just silly. Just because children don’t see the multiple allusions to Greek and Roman mythology and classical literature, the skillful composition, the political and social commentary, or the lessons in virtue doesn’t mean they aren’t there. If you gave Jane Eyre to a first grader, they’d still only see the surface story. Judging a book’s merit by whether or not a first grader can understand it is completely backward. Seven year-olds should not be the judges of what literature has merit and what does not.</p>
<p>If the book is of questionable literary merit, it probably shouldn’t be used. Plus, HP is across multiple books, which makes it hard to fit a single-novel book. Lastly, AP Lit books that fit Question 3 are common to read for analysis in an AP Lit class. I’ve yet to hear of any school that close-reads HP in AP Lit. </p>
<p>This Convo has gotten more into what WE believe to be literary merit and not the CB’s definition of literary merit. </p>
<p>IMO, literary merit could be much more sharply defined. But the conversation is fulfilling and i’m sure the exam’s developers have convo’s much like this as well.</p>