English Test 1

Front 1

The Beats

Back 1

Lead by William S Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, the beats of the 1950's attempted to convey pure emotion to break through what they saw as the sterility of the times.

Front 2

THe Confessional Poets

Back 2

Led by Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell, the confessional poets of the 1950s and 1960s dealt with deeply personal, emotional and psychological matters. They used the anguish of their own loves to explore America's hidden despair.

Front 3

Modernism

Back 3

This 20th-century literary movement, spearheaded by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, used fragmentation, allusions, symbols, irony, and shifting points of view to respond to the social breakdown of the early 20th century.

Front 4

Harlem Renaissance

Back 4

Led by Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, and Claude McKay, the Harlem Renaissance was an outpouring of African-American literature centered in Harlem, New York, in the 1930's.

Front 5

Imagism

Back 5

Led by Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell from 1913-17, the imagist poets wrote short poems that used everyday language and free verse to create precise and concentrated word pictures.

Front 6

Local Color

Back 6

The local color writers of the 1800's preserved the customs and culture of their religion. Notable writers included Bret Harte, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Willa Cather.

Front 7

Naturalism

Back 7

A literary movement that flourished among novelists and short story writers from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The naturalists viewed people as helpless victims of heredity and environment, adrift in an indifferent universe. Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser were the primary naturalists.

Front 8

Oral Tradition

Back 8

The passage of songs, stories, and poems from generation to generation by word of mouth. The oral tradition in America has preserved many Native-American and African-American myths, folktales, and spirituals.

Front 9

Realism

Back 9

A literary movement that advocated the presentation of the details of actual life in art. Realists such as Mark Twain and Henry James wrote objectively and truthfully about American life.

Front 10

Romance

Back 10

A romance deals with plots and people that are exotic, remote in time or place from the reader, and obviously imaginary. The romance grants the author a certain leeway for melodrama and emotionality. Romances flourished in the 1800s, notably in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Front 11

Romanticism

Back 11

A 19th-century literary movement that supported individual worth, the goodness of humanity, the glory of communication with nature, and individual freedom of expression. Cooper, Dickinson, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville used elements of romanticism in their writing.

Front 12

Puritanism

Back 12

A 17th-century religious, social, political, and literary movement that stressed original sin, the doctrine of election, prdestination, limited atonement, and the irresistible grace. Bradford, Bradstreet, Taylor, and Mather were the major Puritan writers.

Front 13

Symbolism

Back 13

A 19th-century literary movement that used symbols to suggest meaning. The poems of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound show the influence of symbolism.

Front 14

Transcendentalism

Back 14

An early 19th-century philosophical movement that stressed individualism, intuition, nature, and self reliance. By contemplating objects in nature, people can transcend the world and discover union with the "over-soul" that unites us all. Emerson and Thoreau were the major transcnedentalists.