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American Lit FINAL
Important people & terms
Side 1 | Side 2 |
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Puritan | a member of a group of English Protestants who in the 16th & 17th centuries, advocated strict religious discipline along w/ simplfication of the ceremonies & creeds of the Church of England |
Separatist | William Bradford led the first group aboard the Mayflower to secede from the Church of England. These Puritans, later called Pilgrims, were the first to settle in America |
Dissenters | Challenged Puritan orthodoxy, religious & civil rule & suffered as a result. Roger Williams was among them |
Polemical Writing | Popular during French/American revolutions. Based on radical views of anti-slavery. Attacks traditional religious system |
The Others | Slaves, Indians, women & homosexuals |
Transcendentalism | A literary & philosophical movement, associated w/ Ralph Waldo Emerson & Margaret Fuller, asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical & scientific & is knowable through intuition |
Unitarianism | Christian doctrine that stresses individual freedom of belief & rejects the Trinity |
Individualism | Belief in the primary importance of the individual & in the virtues of self-reliance & personal independence |
Immediacy | Instantaneous knowledge |
Esemplastic | Molding into unity |
Organic Metaphor | Expression of new radical religion. The sum is larger than the whole of its parts. From Emerson - Nature |
Apostrophe | Addressing an inanimate object as if it is alive. highly emotional and direct |
Parable | A simple story illustrating a moral or religious lesson. From The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne |
Allegory | A short moral story (often w/ animal characters) |
Second American Revolution | The Civil War |
Extension | Non-Abolitionist attempt to prevent slavery from moving west & southwest into other parts of the country. The Republican Party, under Lincoln's leadership, stood against the extension of slavery into new territories |
Helotry | Serfdom; Slavery |
Lyrical Elegy | Moves from am apparent problem in nature to a positive acceptance. Borrows from romantic and transcendentalists' theories |
Carol | Sings for a purpose w/ a moral. As does a chant, song or psalm. From Emerson's Concord Hymn where the nature of the spirit is praised |
Paean | A song or hymn of praise; a.k.a. hurrah |
Autochthonic | Native, or rising from the soil; indigenous; Whitman's definition of all literature |
Omnigenous | Consisting of all kinds |
Iambic Pentameter | A common meter in poetry consisting of an unrhymed line w/ 5 feet or accents, each foot containing an unaccented syllable & an accented syllable |
Monometer | A verse consisting of a single metrical foot |
Trochaic | The falling foot of a ryhme scheme |
Plot | "Life in time" |
Theme | "Life in Value" |
Literary Realism | Writing about what you know,goes beyond truth & what you know vs. Naturalism. Deterministic is the key adjective for realism |
Naturalism | The doctrine that the world can be understood in scientific terms w/o recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations. The world doesn't care if Man exists or not. "Stuff" happens. Fate is key. Ex.: "To Build a Fire" by Jack London |
Epitaph | Something written on a tombstone in a book. A brief memorialization. "I had a lovers quarrel worldwide," from Robert Frost's tombstone |
Epithet | A term used to characterize a person or thing. Name upon name. Ex.: Langston Hughes a.k.a. the Poet Laureate of the Negro Race, from The Negro Speaks of Rivers |
Satirist | Writing that aims to correct social vices & misbehavior through laughter |
Inhumanism | Not man. The rest of nature. Positive message. From Robinson Jeffers, the romantic naturalist & inhumanist |
Ekphrasis | When a poet writes about the visual arts, like a painting or a statue. Poetry that responds to a work of art. Ex.: William Carlos Williams |
Robinson Jeffers | romantic naturalist |
Langston Hughes | The Poet Laureate of the Negro race. Autochthonic poet, native to America |
E.E. Cummings | The cubist poet who wrote like Picasso painted; a satirist |
Wallace Stevens | Poet of supreme fictions. "Death is the mother of beauty." |
The Cold War | a.k.a. the Age of Anxiety & "arms race" |
Gwendolyn Brooks | 1st Nobel prize winner, African American, wrote "Annie Allen" |
Dudley Randall | 1965 Broadside Press, which advanced black careers & changed the whole character of American Lit; wrote "The Melting Pot" |
Robert Frost | The poet of New England |
Phillis Wheatley | First published black author |
Abraham Lincoln | "A house divided against itself cannot stand." |
Poem that is a hymn or paean | "Lilacs in the Dooryard Bloom'd" |
Example of a parable | "The Minister's Black Veil" |
Anne Bradstreet | Wrote the first book of British North American poetry |
William Carlos Williams | The ekphrasis poet |
Gary Snyder | Buddhist poet; Will speak @ Baylor & add a poem to the wall inside our building |
Emily Dickinson | Influenced by Emerson; has the Elizabeth Browning Library on our campus |
Cathy Song | Hawaiian contemporary American poet |
Joy Harjo | Native American American poet |
Michael S. Harper | Jazz poet |
Thomas Paine | Issued a polemic revolution |
Benjamin Franklin | Modern, yet embodied the Age of Reason |
Ezra Pound | Father of the modernist movement |
Walt Whitman | Freed poetic style by breaking pentameter; content & form in American lit |