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216 Cards in this Set
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Absurdist Fiction
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a novel or play that presents humanity’s plight as meaningless and without purpose; genre arose in the 20th century and often reflects a reaction against war, society, and stresses of modern life
EX: Waiting for Godot (by Samuel Beckett), Catch-22 |
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Allegory
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fictional narrative that contains a second, symbolic meaning in addition to its overt story; characters represent human qualities such as virtues and vices or abstract concepts such as death
EX: Pilgrim's Progress (by John Bunyan;Christian's journey to faith and redemption), Animal Farm, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe |
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Ballad
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a songlike poem that tells a story and often has a refrain, or repeated line or lines; many are in iambic form with alternating lines of four stresses and three stresses
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Comic Novel
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feature of British and American literature; amuses the reader with larger-than-life characters and outlandish events
EX: Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, Mark Twain |
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Dystopia
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narrative that depicts an anti-utopian, a world where ordinary people live regimented lives at the whim of a totalitarian government
EX: Brave New World, 1984, We |
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Epic
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long narrative poetic work in a formal or elevated style that features a heroic lead character who often must undertake a journey or a great trial to overcome a powerful foe
EX: Ramayana (written in Sanskrit), Odyssey |
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Essay
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prose work written in the first-person expressing strong opinions about some topic or life experience
EX: Montaigne's Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson "Self-Reliance" |
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Epistolary Novel
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written in the form of letters, diaries, and journal entries
EX: The Color Purple, Dracula, Clarissa (by Samuel Richardson) |
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Fable
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tale that provides a moral lesson and features animals with human characteristics
EX: Aesop's Fables "The Tortoise and the Hare," "The Cicada and the Ant" (by La Fontaine) |
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Fairy Tale
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a story that features fantasy characters from folklore and usually ends happily
EX: The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen ("The Ugly Ducking") |
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Fantasy
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a genre that blends historical material, such as Viking warriors or British knights, with invented elements such as wizards with magical powers and mythical creatures such as dragons and unicorns (sometimes called "sword and sorcery")
EX: Lord of the Rings |
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Farce
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comic play that employs stock situations and characters and exaggerated emotion; often considered the lowest form of dramatic comedy
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Legend
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a traditional story that has become part of the collective experience of a nation, ethnic group, or culture; features characters that are not historical but seem to have existed at some time in the distant past
EX: King Arthur, Spanish fountain of youth |
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Lyric Poem
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a brief work in verse that addresses the reader directly and expresses the poet's feelings and perceptions
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Myth
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an ancient story that presents the exploits of gods or heroes to explain some aspect of life or nature
EX: Persephone |
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Novel
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a long work of prose fiction that is often realistic and tends to address the concerns of the society in which it is produced
EX: Sense and Sensibility, David Copperfield, War and Peace, The Great Gatsby, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Color Purple |
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Parody
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a work written in imitation of an author's style or of a genre in order to make fun of it and mock its conventions
EX: Mark Beerbohm "The Mote in the Middle Distance" (parodied that imitated Henry James's ornate writing style) |
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Poem
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a literary work that is generally written in rhythmic lines of various lengths that may be divided into groups called stanzas
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Haiku
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a Japanese poetic form consisting of three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables; a haiku in English typically includes a seasonal word or image as part of a comparison of two things
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Limerick
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a comic five-line poem (rhyme scheme AABBA) that seems to have originated in England in the early 1700s
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Ode
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a meditative poem written in praise of someone or about a serious subject
EX: Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" |
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Pastoral
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a poem that depicts rural life or the life of shepherds in an idealized form, often for urban audiences
EX: Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" |
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Sonnet
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a fourteen-line poetic form that originated in Italy and later became popular in Shakespeare's England
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Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet
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consists of two quatrains (four-line stanzas rhymed ABBA) and six lines variously rhymed in pairs
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Shakespearean Sonnet
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three quatrains (rhymed ABAB) and a closing couplet (two rhymed lines)
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Triolet
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An eight-line poetic form based on French models; a triolet's first, fourth, and seven lines are identical, as are its second and final lines
EX: Thomas Hardy's "How Great My Grief" |
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Villanelle
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a French poetic form with nineteen lines divided into five three-line stanzas (tercets) and one final quatrain; only two rhyme sounds
EX: Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" |
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Satire
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a work that ridicules the follies and vices of individuals and society, often through comic exaggeration
EX: The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis), "A Modest Proposal" (Jonathan Swift) |
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Science Fiction
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depicts scientific and technological breakthroughs and their effects on future society
EX: The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. le Guin), Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein), Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke) |
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Short Story
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a brief work of prose fiction that often concentrates on a single incident and one or two main characters
EX: Anton Chekhov, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Guy de Maupassant, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver |
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Utopian Novel
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depicts its author's ideas about what a perfectly ordered society would be like
EX: Utopia, Erewhon (Samuel Butler), Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy) |
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alliteration
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repeating of initial consonant sounds in a sentence, paragraph, or a line of poetry
EX: beginning of Lolita |
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allusion
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a reference in a literary work to some famous person, place, event, artwork, or other literary work
EX: "London Bridge" in Eliot's "The Waste Land" |
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anachronism
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a detail of a literary work that is not appropriate for its time setting
EX: a woman in Victorian England make a call on a cell phone |
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analogy
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a writer emphasizes the ways two apparently unlike things are actually similar
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antithesis
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a figure of speech that balances an idea with a contrasting one or its opposite
EX: Robert Frost, "Some say the world will end in fire / Some say in ice" |
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assonance
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the repetition of vowel sounds in a sentence or line of poetry
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character
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a person or humanlike animal in a story, poem, or play
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climax
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the point of greatest dramatic tension
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connotation
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the use of precise words to give a positive or negative slant to a statement or passage
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denotation
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literal meaning of the word
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diction
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choice of words and style of language used
EX: technical jargon, colloquialisms, dialects |
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dramatic monologue
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a poetic form generally written in blank verse that presents the thoughts and emotions of a character in a particular situation; usually also an implied listener
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euphemism
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an inoffensive phrase used to replace a more direct or unpleasant expression
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flashback
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a description or episode in a literary work that interrupts the main story to recount something that happened in the past
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figure of speech
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the use of words aside from their literal meaning
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foreshadowing
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when an author provides clues to what will happen later in a narrative
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heroic couplets
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form of English poetry with pairs of rhyming lines in iambic pentameter (five stresses to a line)
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hyperbole
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an absurdly exaggerated statement
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imagery
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the use of descriptive language to enlist the scenes in evoking a scene, situation, or state of mind
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irony
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a sudden discordance between the expected meaning of words or actions and what they actually mean
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malapropism
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a word mistaken for another word with a similar sound
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metaphor
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a figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared without the use of words like or as
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meter
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a way of measuring the rhythm in formal verse; meter is shown by dividing a line of verse into feet, or units of two or three syllables
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iambic meter
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( - / ) (unstressed, stressed)
EX: And miles to go before I sleep. |
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trochaic meter
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(/ - ) (stressed, unstressed)
EX: Homeward goes the weary shepherd. |
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anapestic meter
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( - - /) (unstressed, unstressed, stressed)
EX: The mysterious stranger appeared on the steps. |
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dactylic meter
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( / - - ) (stressed, unstressed, unstressed)
EX: Feelings of sadness are calling me home. |
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metonymy
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a figure of speech in which a word is substituted for another word with which it is somehow linked or closely associated
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onomatopoeia
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using words that imitate sounds, such as crash, ring, clatter, buzz, and boom
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oxymoron
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a phrase made up of words that seem contradictory when placed together but actually express a special meaning, such as "act naturally," "a deafening silence," "passive aggressive."
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paradox
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a statement whose two parts seem contradictory, yet upon further study convey a deeper truth
EX: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." (Animal Farm) |
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personification
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a figure of speech in which human characteristics are given to something nonhuman, such as animal, object, or concept
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point of view
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how a literary work is narrated
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first-person point of view
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when the main character tells the story in his or her own words
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second-person point of view
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when the author uses pronouns such as you to describe the main character
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third-person point of view
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when a person outside the story is the narrator
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omniscient point of view
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the narrator has knowledge of everything in the story including all the characters' thoughts and emotions, or limited omniscient, in which the narrator knows the thoughts and inner emotions of one character
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plot
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the sequence of events in a narrative such as a short story, novel, or play
5 main sections: 1) introduction or exposition - the characters and settings are introduced 2) rising action - the main problem or conflict arises 3) climax - a dramatic turn of events creates great tension 4) falling action - the climax leads to an unwinding of the problem or conflict 5) resolution - problem or conflict is worked out in the end |
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rhyme
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the matching of end sounds in lines of verse
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slant rhyme
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words that are similar in their ending sounds but not exactly the same
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rhythm
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arrangement of beats or stresses in verse or prose; in verse, rhythm is measured in meter
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setting
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the time and place in which a narrative unfolds
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simile
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the comparison of two unlike things using the words like or as
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symbol
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an animal, object, place, action, or event that an author uses to represent a larger meaning
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synecdoche
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a figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole
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theme
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the central idea about life or the human condition that it represents
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tone
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the manner in which a writer approaches his or her material and is expressed in style and pervading atmosphere
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Beowulf
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the oldest surviving epic in Old English; tells story of Beowulf, a warrior and eventual king who wins three epic battles over Grendel, a monstrous troll, his mother, and a powerful dragon
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The Divine Comedy
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1321 CE by Dante Alighieri; epic allegory in Italian; three parts (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paridso) narrate Dante's journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven with the poet Virgil and Beatrice as his guides; begins in a dark wood representing sinful state that follows his progress upward through the levels, or "circles," of the dead; written in terza rima (rhymed stanzas of three lines)
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Canzoniere ("Songbook")
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Petrarch's compilation of love sonnets to a young woman named Laura
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The Decameron
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written by Boccaccio; presents 100 tales told by 10 refugees from the plague-ridden city of Florence; stories, based on oral sources and folklore, describe a wide variety of quick-witted merchants, jealous lovers, and superstitious villagers
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Canterbury Tales
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written by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1380 CE); story-telling contest by pilgrims on the road to Canterbury Cathedral, written in Middle English verse
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"The Knight's Tale"
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two young knights, Arcite and Palamon, battle for the hand of a duke's beautiful sister-in-law; explores ideals of chivalry, loyalty, valor, and courtly love
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"The Miller's Tale"
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a penniless student seduces the wife of his landlord, then convinces the landlord that a great flood is coming, whereupon the landlord spends the night hanging from the ceiling in a tub
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"The Wife of Bath's Tale"
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a young knight who has raped a maiden is sentenced to discover what women really want. He meets a repulsive old woman who reveals that women want control of their husbands and their own lives. She tells the knight that she could be either ugly and faithful, or beautiful and unfaithful. When he allows her to choose, he is rewarded by her transformation into a lovely young woman. The tale reflects the Wife of Bath's knowledge of the world and view of the conflict between the sexes.
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The Summoning of Everyman
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anonymous work from 15th century; portrays God's accounting of the good and evil deeds in the life of Everyman, who represents all mankind; allegorical characters include Death, Fellowship, and Knowledge
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Drama in the Middle Ages
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usually mystery plays and morality plays written to teach Christian stories and values through the use of allegory and symbolism
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The Faerie Queene
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written by Edmund Spenser in 1596; one of the first great works of the English Renaissance; longest poems in the English language presenting a many-leveled allegory including praise of Queen Elizabeth
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Hamlet
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c. 1600; the story of a Danish prince who is charged by the ghost of his murdered father to avenge his death. Hamlet discovers that his uncle, Claudius, has murdered his father, taken his crown, and married his widow. Despite this knowledge, Hamlet hesitates to take his revenge until the very end. Instead, he feigns madness and vividly describes his divided feelings into famous soliloquies
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Romeo and Juliet
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c. 1595; the story of doomed young lovers caught in the wake of their families' blood feud
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
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c. 1596; a play about quarreling kings and queens, young lovers, fairies, and a lowly but self-confident weaver named Bottom. While lost in the forest one night, Bottom is given the head of an ass by Puck, the playful servant of the fairy king. Puck also uses his magic to cause the queen of the fairies to fall in love with Bottom, and to complicate the relationships among the lovers in the forest.
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Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2
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c. 1597-98; describes the progress of Prince Hal from tavern roustabout to victorious warrior to king of England. Hal's lowlife companions include Falstaff, the fat, cowardly knight with a razor-sharp wit.
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Julius Caesar
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c. 1599; the story of Brutus, the noble Roman who leads a conspiracy to assassinate the tyrant Caesar and ends by paying with his life
Famous lines: Marc Antony, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears." |
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King Lear
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c. 1606; a play about an aging king who divides his kingdom between two daughters who pretend love for him, while rejecting the third, who genuinely loves him but feels it is unseemly to make a show of it. Lear portrays the terrors of age, betrayal, and isolation in scenes of matchless power and beauty.
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Shakespeare's Sonnets
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c. 1593-1600; a collection of poems about love, tim, pride, loss, and regret that come closest to revealing details about Shakespeare's own life and emotions
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Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatists
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Christopher Marlowe: Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, Edward II
Ben Jonson: Bartholomew Fair, Every Man in His Humour Thomas Middleton: the Changeling |
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The Changeling
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Thomas Middleton's story of Deflores, a troll-like henchman, who commits a murder for Beatrice, a lady at court, then demands her love as payment for the deed; represents Jacobean revenge tragedy
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Jacobean Revenge Tragedy
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dark explorations of human psychology, with a crowd-pleasing penchant for violence and sex
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Metaphysical Poets
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early-to mid 1600s including John Donne, George Herbert, and Andrew Marvell; these poets used outrageous metaphors, extended comparisons, and subtle wit to explore the fundamental nature of reality and humanity's place in it
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"The Flea"
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John Donne's metaphysical lyric where the narrator insists that since a flea has bitten both him and the woman he seeks to seduce, then their blood is already mingled
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Don Quixote
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written by Miguel de Cervantes around 1605; classic story of a man whose reading of novels about chivalry leads him to set out on his own knightly quests. Accompanied by a poor but sensible farmer named Sancho Panza, Quixote speaks in high-flown words and refuses to let go of his delusions despite being stymied time and again by the real world
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Paradise Lost
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written by John Milton in 1667; long poem on the theme of mankind's fall from grace and God's banishment of Satan from heaven
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Pilgrim's Progress
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written by John Bunyan in 1678; a Christian allegory of mankind's journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City
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The Neoclassical Period
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the age of Restoration in England from the latter part of the 1600s to 1798; the age of enlightenment for its emphasis on reason and progress. During the Neoclassical Period, European writers such as Voltaire and Rousseau mocked the supremacy of the Catholic Church and believed in the ability to remake the world on a more rational basis, while English writers such as Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and Samuel Johnson used their wit and learning to satirize the follies of mankind.
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A Tale of A Tub
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written by Jonathan Swift, satirizing what he sees as his era's excessive faith in rationalism
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Gulliver's Travels
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Swift's satirical account of an imaginary journey to three lands inhabited by, respectively, six-inch-tall people, giants, and intelligent, horse-like creatures
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Robinson Crusoe
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written by Daniel Defoe; a realistic tale of a shipwrecked traveler who tells the story of how Crusoe struggles to survive on an island and eventually meets and befriends a frightened native named Friday
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Rape of the Lock, An Essay on Man, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, the Dunciad
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Pope's essays and satires in heroic couples (RotL = mock-epic)
The Dunciad: written in aphoristic couplets, the poem ridicules those who pretend to have wit, culture, or knowledge but achieve only dullness |
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Samuel Johnson
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compiled A Dictionary of the English Language
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John Dryden
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master of heroic couplets, excelled in drama, poetry and translation
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French Neoclassical Period
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writers looked to Greek and Roman models for inspiraton
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Pierre Corneille
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the leading French dramatist of the mid-1600s, drew on Aristotle's ideas of unity in drama: unity of action (focus on events that occur during the running time of the play), unity of time (events compressed into imaginary 24-30 hour period), and unity of place (events occurring in a limited area) (unity of place = Corneille's idea, not Aristotle's)
Famous Work: El Cid, where a Spanish knight is torn between his love for a girl and his self-imposed duty to take revenge on her father |
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Jean Racine
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another French dramatist inspired by classical author whose plays Phedre, Andromaque, and Athalie were written in alexandrine verse (twelve-syllable lines) of great precision, grace, and emotional force
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Moliere
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wrote comedies such as Tartuffe, the Misanthrope, and The Imaginary Invalid, which satirized the hypocrisy of French moralists and religious leaders
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Jean de La Fontaine
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a French poet who wrote fables in verse that were based on the oral tradition of fabulists such as the Greek Aesop and the Roman Phaedrus. La Fontaine's featured animal characters that acted out brief tales exemplifying truths about life, fate, and human nature
Famous work: "The Sun and the Frogs" (moral of the story is too much of a good thing, like the sun, is bad) |
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The Romantic Period
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Dating from the late 1700s to the mid-19th century, Romanticism was a reaction against an overemphasis on reason in favor of imagination and creativity. Romantic writers examined their own inner feelings and emotions with unprecedented curiosity and found inspiration not only in the beauties of nature but also in unusual places, such as obscure writings of the Middle Ages and the evocative ruins of past societies. Many opposed the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution.
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Lyrical Ballads
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a joint work by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge; poets rejected rigid conventions in favor of the language that ordinary people used every day
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
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Colreidge's long poem that consists of an old sailor's account of a cursed sea voyage that ends in tragedy. The poem includes many chillings elements, as the sailor describes being forced by the ship's crew to wear a dead albatross around the neck, and then watching the crew members die one by one from the lack of fresh water ("Water, water, every where:/ Nor any drop to drink")
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Great Romantic Poets
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include Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, George Gordon, Lord Byron
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"Ozymandius"
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Shelley's lyric poem about the vanity of ancient kings whose monuments to themselves decay to dust
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John Keats
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Famous works: "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode to a Nightingale"
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Don Juan
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Byron's long poem which is a comic satire more like those of the Neoclassical Age
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Gothic Novels
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a product of the Romantic infatuation with the ruins of the past; horror stories set in crumbling castles and old monasteries
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Frankenstein
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Mary Shelley's novel about a man of science who brings to life a stitched-together corpse, which combines Gothic horror with questions about the limits of science in the modern world
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The Mysteries of Udolpho
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a novel by Anne Radcliffe that describes a young woman who is imprisoned in an old Italian castle
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Jane Austen
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writing against the Romantic grain by producing novels about sensible young women who strive to keep questions of romance and money in perspective
Famous works: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Pjreudice |
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The Victorian Period
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bridging the gap from Romanticism to Modernism in England that saw a further development in the English novel
Famous Works: Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) |
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bildungsroman
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novels that describe the development of a young person from childhood to maturity
Examples: David Copperfield, Great Expectation, Sentimental Education (Gustave Flaubert), The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann) |
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Charles Dickens
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wrote bildungsromans such as David Copperfield and Great Expectations
focused on social problems of the 19th century (ex. sympathizes with plight of children and orphans in the slums of London in Oliver Twist) |
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Mary Baton
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novel by Elizabeth Gaskell about social problems caused by industrialism in England
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Symbolism
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a poetic movement in France that was a reaction against the Parnassian school of poets, who wrote verse that emphasized metrical form and restricted emotions. Symbolism focused on moods and transient sensations instead of lucid statements and logical descriptions. It embodied a desire to apprehend a transcendental realm of being, where the essence of life could be expressed in exotic, sometimes morbid terms.
Famous Works: The Flowers of Evil (Charles Baudelaire), Illuminations (Arthur Rimbaud) |
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"The Drunken Boat"
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Arthur Rimbaud's poem that shows the freedom of association and arcane language of style
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Modernism
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a literary movement encapsulating a feeling of disillusionment with modern culture and society, shock and a sense of waste after WWI, and a new urge to reject past forms and experiment with new ones
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"The Waste Land"
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poem written by T.S. Eliot in 1922; uses dozens of allusions to myth, legend, and past literature to suggest mankind's restless search for spiritual meaning
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"Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
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Eliot; dramatic monologue to depict a frustrated, indecisive man at large in a modern city
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Ulysses
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novel by James Joyce, which includes an elaborate analogy between the events in the life of an advertising salesman, Leonard Bloom, on one summer day in Dublin and the adventures of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey
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William Butler Yeats
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Irish poet who embraced modernism in powerful, allusive poems such as "The Second Coming" and "Among School Children"
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Virginia Woolf
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literary modernist whose novels, including To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway experimented with stream-of-consciousness and psychological portraits
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In Search of Lost Time
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written by Marcel Proust explores the impressions and memories of a sensitive narrator in aristocratic Parisian circles
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Franz Kafka
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Czechoslovakian modernist who wrote stories presenting the absurdity and tragedy of mankind's situation in the world
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"The Metamorphosis"
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a man wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant dung beetle
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The Trial & The Castle
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Kafkan novels depicting protagonists caught in webs of bureaucracy and inexplicable guilt that mirror the difficulties of modern life
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dystopian fiction
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portrayal of what writers saw as the opposite of "utopian dreams" who sensed the dangers of totalitarian political systems in the mid-20th century
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1984
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George Orwell's novel depicting an England enslaved by a dictatorial Big Brother and assailed by "doublespeak" slogans such as "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength"
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Brave New World
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novel written by Aldous Huxley; a future in which a world government conditions the people to buy products and relieve their frustrations with drugs
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We
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inspiration for Orwell and Huxley; an earlier dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Postmodernism
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a literary movement presenting a fragmented view of reality that drew on parody, pastiche, unreliable narrators, irony, black humor, and a general feeling of cultural exhaustion; postmodern protagonists often create their own versions of reality to compete with or replace the reality of everyday existence
Famous Writers: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Umberto Eco, and Jeannette Winterson |
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Jorge Luis Borges
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wrote tales about an infinite library, a universe created by a team of authors, and a man who can't forget anything he's ever seen or heard (The Name of the Rose)
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Vladimir Nabokov
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Russian writer famous for Lolita and Pale Fire whose novels were as complex as puzzle boxes
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Martin Amis
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presents a postmodern version of today's media driven world in novels such as Money and London Fields, in which people indulge their own fantasies to replace the frustrations of everyday reality
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Multicultural and postcolonial literature
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describes and expresses emotions about the many human effects of imperialism and its final decline in the 20th century
Famous Writers: Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe (Thing's Fall Apart), R.K. Narayan, Arundhati Roy |
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Native American oral myths
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explain how the world was created, describe how mankind and culture emerged, and relate the adventures of mythic heroes and tricksters
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trickster tale
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the hero, usually an anthropomorphized animal, is often involved in mischief, deception, or treachery. The trickster may be able to change shapes or perform magic to cheat or deceive gods, humans, or other animals
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indigenous myths
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describe the first encounters between native Americans and white Europeans; a common theme of NA writers is the danger inherent in surrounding indigenous cultural values and traditions as a result of contact with European civilization
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Anne Bradstreet
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Puritan poet whose poems such as "To My Dear and Loving Husband" describe family life, personal loss, and hopes for the future with the intimacy of a living voice
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Best Writing of American Colonies
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political documents and tracts, such as Federalist Papers and the Declaration of Independence, and Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac and Autobiography
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Phillis Wheatley
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first African American poet; published Poems in 1773
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The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African
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a narrative published in 1789 of an African American's capture in Africa and voyage to America. Equiano's account of how he and his sister were seized while out playing and transported to a slave ship for the voyage across the ocean increased the efforts of abolitionists.
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Washington Irving
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early 19th century writer to achieve international fame, with stories and tall tales such as "Rip Van Winkle," about a man who falls asleep for 20 years, and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," about the superstitious Ichabod Crane and his encounter with the headless horseman
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James Fenimore Cooper
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created the mythic American West in his Leatherstocking Tales such as The Last of the Mohicans (1826), with its hero Hawkeye-- the first of a long line of rugged individualists
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Edgar Allan Poe
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influenced by English Romanticism, created his own style of Gothic literature in poems about love and death such as "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven"; also wrote short fiction such as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (often cited as the first modern detective story), "The Pit and the Pendulum," and "The Telltale Heart" (the latter two are examples of Poe's emphasis on psychological horror)
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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New England poet and essayist and leader of the Transcendentalist movement who sought "an original relation to the universe" and the natural world through self-reliance, self-respect, and the tireless pursuit of truth
Famous Works: "Self-Reliance," "Nature" |
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Transcendentalist Movement
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expounded the idea of a spark of divinity in man and the interconnectedness of everything in existence
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Walden
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work by Henry David Thoreau that recommended a simpler life closer to nature
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Emily Dickinson
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19th century poet who led a secluded life; unusual imagery and strong rhythms made her poetry instantly memorable
IE "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" |
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John Greenleaf Whittier
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poet writing against slavery, including "The Slave Ship" (1846), in which captured Africans who've been blinded by sickness are thrown overboard as useless for sale
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Leaves of Grass
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Walt Whitman's book of poetry celebrated ordinary working people and the common experiences of life in America (such as "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry")
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Moby Dick
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Herman Melville's novel in which the sea captain Ahab obsessively pursues the white whale that wounded him in the past
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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Mark Twain's novel narrated in the rustic voice of Huck, a homeless boy who befriends Jim, a runaway slave. Despite being surrounded by racist attitudes, Huck recognizes Jim's humanity and the foolishness of racism.
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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slave narrative; Douglass, a former slave and erudite speaker for the cause of abolition, describes his escape from bondage and the dehumanizing effects of slavery
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Regional novelists
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late 19th century writers who wrote stories about American life away from major cities
Famous Works/People: Willa Cather (wrote about life on the Nebraskan prairie), The Awakening (feminist novel set in New Orleans), The Country of the Pointed Firs (Sarah Orne Jewett's novel that captured community life in New England) |
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Henry James
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main subjects in his many novels and stories, such as "Daisy Miller," The American, and Portrait of a Lady was the innocent American abroad in a corrupt and sophisticated Europe
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The Red Badge of Courage
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Stephen Crane's Civil War novel that looked at the reality of war from the point of a view of a Union private
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Imagist movement
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featured free-verse poems phrased in common speech that addressed a wide variety of subject matter and conveyed meaning through clear, precisely described images
Famous Writers: Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, H.D. |
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"In A Station of the Metro"
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Imagist poem by Pound based on European and Asian models (haiku format)
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Robert Frost
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used traditional forms to present scenes from nature and explore tragic lives; wrote about New England countryside and its laconic people in poems such as "Mending Wall," "Home Burial," and "Stopping by Wood on a Snowy Evening"
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William Carlos William
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poet who used his experiences as a country doctor to present free-verse portraits of his native New Jersey; inspired later Americans such as Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath
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The Great Gatsby
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F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel focused on a romantic hero to present an ironic version of the American Dream
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The Sound and the Fury
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Faulkner's novel presented a portrait of the American South and its tormented inhabitants (similar to Eudora Welty)
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The Grapes of Wrath
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the effects of the Great Depression on migrant farmers
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American post-modernism
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characterized by works of literature focused on the illusions and disappointments of American life after WWII
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The Death of a Salesman
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Arthur Miller's play that depicts a man whose failures made him feel like an outcast
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Rabbit Run
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John Updike's novel that presents characters who are spiritually adrift and unfulfilled
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Slaughterhouse Five & Gravity's Rainbow
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Novels by Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon respectively that used comic science fiction to satires of science and nuclear war to explore modern American life
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Harlem Renaissance
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African American writers in New York's Harlem area who brought depth and realism to the depiction of African American life
Famous Writers: Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright (Native Son), Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God), James Baldwin, Alice Walker (The Color Purple), Toni Morrison (The Song of Solomon, Beloved) |
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Invisible Man
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novel by Ralph Ellison that conveyed the sense of alienation from society felt by the main character
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N. Scott Momaday
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Native American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for House Made of Dawn, a novel that draws on Kiowa and Pueblo storytelling traditions to present a story of a Native American's journey from a childhood pueblo war in Europe and back to the United States
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Bless Me, Ultima
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novel by Rudolfo Anaya that is rich in Mexican folklore as it tells the story of a man who must find a synthesis of the old and the new
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The House on Mango Street
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novel written by Sandra Cisneros that addresses the issue of the tug of ancestral loyalties amid the bustle of modern life from the women's perspective
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To Walt Whitman
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poem by Angela de Hoya expressing tension between Hispanic and American culture
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Asian Perspectives to Immigrant Life in America
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Famous Writers/Works: Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club), Maxine Hong Kingston (The Woman's Warrior), and Gish Jen
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Multicultural Literature
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novelists, poets, and playwrights of various cultural backgrounds expressed a common struggle with feelings of inferiority or exclusion from the larger society
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Young Adult Literature
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features adolescent characters who are trying to negotiate the problems and emotions of leaving childhood for the adult world; often called problem novels or coming of age fiction; focus on the protagonist's inner struggles with coming of age in whatever society is depicted
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Young Adult Literature Characteristics
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tend to be short (150 pages or less) with a focus on the main character's thoughts and actions in a plot that occurs over a relatively brief period of time; authors tend to aim for immediacy
TIP: teachers of secondary English can find young adult fiction that mirrors the topic or setting of a more difficult adult work that the class is studying to give struggling readers an aid to understanding EX: S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders about the rivalries between two social grounds might serve as an introduction to an important theme of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet |
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Classics of Young Adult Literature
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- Emma by Jane Austen
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith - The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger - The Pigman by Paul Zindel - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - Bless the Beasts and the Children by Glendon Swarthout - Are You there God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume - Hatchet by Gary Paulsen - The Giver by Lois Lowry - The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Alexie Sherman - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins |
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Drama
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performance of a narrative by actors onstage before an audience that often serves as a ceremonial function in society, exploring human fate and the capriciousness of the gods; birthplace of drama was city of Athens; includes tragedy, comedy, and satyr plays (comic burlesques on mythological subjects)
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chorus
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explained the plot to the audience and made comments on the action
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deux ex machina
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the gods intervene at a point of crisis to save the hero or change the course of events
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Oedipus the King
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Sophocles' Greek drama in which a king learns that he has unwittingly killed his own father and married his mother
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tragedy
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a drama in which a protagonist who is heroic or well respected brings about his or her own downfall through a fatal character flaw; pinnacle of dramatic art
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comedy
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a play written to be amusing, and often features exaggerated characters and funny situations
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dramatic monologue
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a poetic form in which a character speaks in his or her own voice with an implied listener at hand; usually written in blank verse or rhymed couplets
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soliloquy
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a dramatic speech in which a character talks to him-or herself, allowing the audience to overhear and judge the character's state of mind
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The Theater of the Absurd
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a late-twentieth century dramatic movement that sought to illustrate the essentially purposeless and illogical nature of mankind's condition; characters in these plays use dislocated, repetitious, and cliched speech to present a chaotic, senseless modern world
Famous Works: Waiting for Godot, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard), Rhinoceros (Eugene Ionesco) |
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Critical Thinking and Analytic Skills
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Require students to:
- setting a purpose for reading - analyzing vocabular - developing habits of self-monitoring in reading |
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Setting a Purpose for Reading
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ex: solve a problem, find information, compare elements with another text, verify predictions about the outcome
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Analyzing Vocabulary
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look for unfamiliar words by analyzing word parts (root, prefix, suffix), look for context clues, use dictionary or online source for definitions
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Developing Habits of Self-Monitoring in Reading
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metacognition (aware of your own thinking process as you read); monitor level of engagement with text, whether they understand what they are reading
ex (teacher): preview a text with a discussion, photos or artwork, film excerpts or music, hold group discussion, prepare questions and activities about text (plot points and resolution points) ex (student): write notes, make predictions, summarize what you've read, map plot, visualize setting and characters, role-play a conflict, retell story, compare story with another book or film, decide how a character might act differently, write a short poem about the moral principle |
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Researching Sources of Literary Criticism
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- public and university libraries
- The John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism - The Sacred Wood, T.S. Eliot - Poetry and the Age, Randall Jarrell - The Western Cannon, Harold Bloom - Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag - The New York Review of Books - The Times Literary Supplement - The New York Times Book Review - The New Republic - ipl2 Literary Criticism Collection |
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The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism
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an index to major critical works and articles
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ipl2 Literary Criticism Collection
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provides search engines for locating criticism by author's last name, title, or literary period; can quickly review some critical approaches to great texts; search texts for key names, terms, or phrases
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print media
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includes books, newspapers, magazines, journals, pamphlets, fliers, and other printed materials
Teachers can supplement by: showing a film version, suggesting websites that contain interviews, copy and distribute old newspaper articles and editorials |
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visual and broadcast media
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include feature films (both fictional and documentary), television drama, talk radio, internet radio, websites, and weblogs or "blogs"
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consumer, workplace, and public documents
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- job application
- driver's license application - insurance form - safety regulations chart - instruction manual Teachers might: ask what is the main purpose of the document, why the document is organized with bullet points |
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Fundamentals of Writing a Business Letter
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1. Letter head/heading
2. Inside address 3. Date 4. Formal greeting (Dear Mr. or Mrs:) (always use a colon) 5. Body of the letter 6. Complimentary close (e.g., Sincerely,) 7. Signature |
