By Siena Oliver, ’27

Opinions Editor

With exams on the horizon, many AP Literature and Composition students struggle to define ‘literary merit.’

The AP Lit test has several components: a multiple choice section, two essays analyzing a given excerpt of text, and a final essay where students are allowed to choose a work of ‘literary merit’ to analyze based on a given prompt. It is this last essay which often sparks debate on which literary works ‘have merit,’ what that means and who gets to decide.

The College Board, the company which creates and administers AP exams, never directly defines ‘literary merit.’ The AP Lit syllabus encourages teachers to “select works of literary merit culled from a variety of genres and periods from the late 16th century to the present” as material for their classes, and emphasizes that students “get to know several works of literary merit in depth.” Because of the lack of formal definition for the term, teachers and students are forced to speculate and come up with their own standards.

There are some books which are immediately discarded as not having ‘literary merit,’ like many children’s or young adult novels, simply due to the fact that they are written for younger audiences. The basic standard seems to be that if a book is not at a college reading level, it does not have sufficient ‘literary merit’ to be used on the AP exam. Contradictory to this idea, however, is the fact that Alice in Wonderland, a children’s literature classic, has appeared on the official College Board list of recommended books for AP Literature in past years.

Additionally, despite the fact that many books which apparently have ‘literary merit’ were written long ago, the age of a book is not a strictly defining factor. The College Board list of recommended books has novels written in the 1800s, but also works published as recently as 2016.

One example of a book that is not considered suitable for use on the AP Lit exam is Harry Potter, an extremely popular children’s/young adult book series that holds personal importance for many readers. These books, although lauded for their rich world-building, complex themes and character development, are not considered to have ‘literary merit.’ Critics say the writing is not sophisticated and relies on well-worn tropes such as the battle of good versus evil. Others say its commercial success, seven books followed by a wildly popular movie franchise, mean it cannot be taken seriously as ‘literature.’

So, without an official definition, how can someone determine a work’s ‘literary merit’? In terms of every day life, ‘literary merit’ can refer to a host of qualities about a work of literature, but mainly is qualified by a work’s ability to meaningfully impact readers and remain relevant over time. In contrast, for English scholars, and students taking the AP Lit exam, the best practice is to assume that a work of ‘literary merit’ is one that is complex enough to support in-depth analysis, has layered themed, nuanced characters, and uses advanced literary elements and techniques throughout.