Praxis II (5039)

Subjectivity

"The quality originating and existing in the mind of a perceiving subject and not necessarily corresponding to any object outside that mind." (HH) In literary critical usage, texts which explore the nature of such a perceiving, subjectS are said to be interested in subjectivity.

Ballad Meter

"______ measure," sometimes called "____ stanza" or "_____ meter," can be strictly defined as four-line stanzas usually rhyming abcb with the first and third lines carrying four accented syllables and the second and fourth carrying three.

Enjambment

(in verse) the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza. In poetry, ______ is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning runs over from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped.

Semantic Map

(or graphic organizers) are maps or webs of words. The purpose of creating a _____ is to visually display the meaning-based connections between a word or phrase and a set of related words or concepts. ______ help students, especially struggling students and those with disabilities, to identify, understand, and recall the meaning of words they read in the text.

Episodic

. Made up of many different events or _______. Telling about many separate events. Happening or appearing at different times.

Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

1868 Alcott prefaces ____________ with an excerpt from John Bunyan's seventeenth-century work The Pilgrim's Progress, an allegorical novel about leading a Christian life. Alcott's story begins with the four March girls—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—sitting in their living room, lamenting their poverty. The girls decide that they will each buy themselves a present in order to brighten their Christmas. Soon, however, they change their minds and decide that instead of buying presents for themselves, they will buy presents for their mother, Marmee. Marmee comes home with a letter from Mr. March, the girls' father, who is serving as a Union chaplain in the Civil War. The letter inspires the girls to bear their burdens more cheerfully and not to complain about their poverty. On Christmas morning, the girls wake up to find books, probably copies of The Pilgrim's Progress, under their pillows. Later that day, Marmee encourages them to give away their breakfast to a poor family, the Hummels. Their elderly neighbor, Mr. Laurence, whom the girls have never met, rewards their charitable activities by sending over a feast. Soon, Meg and Jo are invited to attend a New Year's Party at the home of Meg's wealthy friend, Sally Gardiner. At the party, Jo retreats to an alcove, and there meets Laurie, the boy who lives with Mr. Laurence. While dancing, Meg sprains her ankle. Laurie escorts the sisters home. The Marches regret having to return to their daily routine after the holiday festivities. Jo visits Laurie when he is sick, and meets his grandfather, Mr. Laurence. She inadvertently insults a painting of Mr. Laurence in front of the man himself. Luckily, Laurie's grandfather admires Jo's spunk, and they become friends. Soon, Mr. Laurence meets all the sisters, and Beth becomes his special favorite. Mr. Laurence gives her his deceased granddaughter's piano. The girls have various adventures. Amy is caught trading limes at school, and the teacher hits her as punishment. As a result, Mrs. March withdraws her daughter from school. Jo refuses to let Amy go with her to the theater. In retaliation, Amy burns Jo's manuscript, and Jo, in her anger, nearly lets Amy drown while ice-s-kating. Pretty Meg attends her friend Annie Moffat's party and, after allowing the other girls to dress her up in high style, learns that appearances are not everything. While at the party, she hears that people think she intends to marry Laurie for his money. That year, the Marches form the Pickwick Club, in which they write a family newspaper. In the spring, Jo smuggles Laurie into one of the club meetings, and he becomes a member, presenting his new circle with a postbox. At the beginning of June, the Marches decide to neglect their housework. At the end of a lazy week, Marmee takes a day off too. The girls spoil a dinner, but everyone ends up laughing over it. One day, Laurie has English friends over, and the Marches go on a picnic with them. Later, Jo gets a story published for the first time. One dark day, the family receives a telegram saying that Mr. March is sick in the hospital in Washington, D.C. Marmee goes to tend to him, and Jo sells her hair to help finance the trip. Chaos ensues in Marmee's wake, for the girls neglect their chores again. Only Beth goes to visit the Hummels, and after one of her visits, she contracts scarlet fever from the Hummel baby. Beth teeters on the brink of death until Marmee returns. Meanwhile, Amy spends time at Aunt March's house in order to escape the disease. Beth recovers, though not completely, and Mr. Brooke, Laurie's tutor, falls in love with Meg, much to Jo's dismay. Mr. Brooke and Meg are engaged by the end of Part One. Three years pass before Part Two begins. Mr. March is home from the war, and Laurie is nearly done with school. Soon, Meg marries and moves into a new home with Mr. Brooke. One day, Amy decides to have a lunch for her art school classmates, but poor weather ruins the festivities. Jo gets a novel published, but she must cut it down in order to please her publishers. Meanwhile, Meg struggles with the duties of keeping house, and she soon gives birth to twins, Demi and Daisy. Amy gets to go to Paris instead of Jo, who counted on the trip, because their Aunt Carroll prefers Amy's ladylike behavior in a companion. Jo begins to think that Beth loves Laurie. In order to escape Laurie's affections for her, Jo moves to New York so as to give Beth a chance to win his affections. There Jo meets Professor Bhaer, a poor German language instructor. Professor Bhaer discourages Jo from writing sensationalist stories, and she takes his advice and finds a simpler writing style. When Jo returns home, Laurie proposes to her, but she turns him down. Beth soon dies. Amy and Laurie reunite in France, and they fall in love. They marry and return home. Jo begins to hope that Professor Bhaer will come for her. He does, and they marry a year later. Amy and Laurie have a daughter named Beth, who is sickly. Jo inherits Plumfield, Aunt March's house, and decides to turn it into a boarding school for boys. The novel ends with the family happily gathered together, each sister thankful for her blessings and for each other.

Complex Sentence

A ______ sentence has one independent clause and at least one dependent clause. An independent clause (unlike a dependent clause) can stand alone as a sentence. Example: The car swerved to miss Mrs Jackson, who had slipped off the pavement. Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most. (Joseph Wood Krutch, 1893-1970)

Compound-Complex Sentence

A ________ sentence has at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause. For example: I stopped believing in Santa Claus when he asked for my autograph in a department store, but I still want to believe in him.

Simple Sentence

A _________ has just one independent clause and no dependent clauses. An independent clause (unlike a dependent clause) can stand alone as a sentence and has a subject and a verb. Examples: I cannot drink warm milk. A day without sunshine is like night. Only the mediocre are always at their best. (Jean Giraudoux) Reality continues to ruin my life. (Bill Watterson)

Participial Phrase

A _________ is a group of words consisting of a ____ and the modifier(s) and/or (pro)noun(s) or noun phrase(s) that function as the direct object(s), indirect object(s), or complement(s) of the action or state expressed in the ______, such as: Removing his coat, Jack rushed to the river. The ______ phrase functions as an adjective modifying Jack. Removing (_____) his coat (direct object of action expressed in _____) Delores noticed her cousin walking along the shoreline. The _____ phrase functions as an adjective modifying cousin. walking (_______) along the shoreline (prepositional phrase as adverb) Children interested in music early develop strong intellectual skills.

Compound Sentence

A __________ has at least two independent clauses. An independent clause (unlike a dependent clause) can stand alone as a sentence. Example: Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Albert Einstein, 1879-1955) There used to be a real me, but I had it surgically removed. (Peter Sellers, 1925-1980)

Picaresque

A ___________ novel is kind of narrative fiction made up of the adventures of a wily hero or heroine. You know the type we're talking about here: a scruffy, lower class scoundrel (in other words, he's hardly picturesque) whom everyone just loves, and who always gets through by the skin of his or her teeth. The genre gets its name from the Spanish word picaro, or "rogue." The structure of a picaresque is usually episodic, which means that you get the action in installments, kind of like a television series.

Archetype

A basic model from which copies are made; a prototype. According to psychologist Carl Jung, archetypes emerge in literature from the "collective unconscious" of the human race. Northrop Frye, in his Anatomy of Criticism, explores archetypes as the symbolic patterns that recur within the world of literature itself. In both approaches, archetypical themes include birth, death, sibling rivalry, and the individual versus society. Archetypes may also be images or characters, such as the hero, the lover, the wanderer, or the matriarch.

Allusion

A brief, intentional reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event, or movement. "The Waste Land," T. S. Eliot's influential long poem is dense with ____________. The title of Seamus Heaney's autobiographical poem "Singing School" ________ to a line from W.B. Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" ("Nor is there singing school but studying /Monuments of its own magnificence"). Browse poems with allusions.

Simile

A comparison (see Metaphor) made with "as," "like," or "than." In "A Red, Red Rose," Robert Burns declares: O my Luve is like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody That's sweetly played in tune. "What happens to a dream deferred?" asks Langston Hughes in "Harlem": Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?

Black Arts Movement

A cultural movement conceived of and promoted by Amiri Baraka in the mid-1960s. Its constellation of writers, performers, and artists included Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Haki Madhubuti, Etheridge Knight, and Sonia Sanchez. "We want a black poem. And / a Black World. / Let the world be a Black Poem," writes Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) in his poem "Black Art," which served as a de facto manifesto for the movement. Its practitioners were energized by a desire to confront white power structures and assert an African American cultural identity. Its aims were community-minded as well as artistic; during its heyday, hundreds of Afrocentric repertory theater companies, public art projects, and publishing ventures were organized throughout the United States.

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole (for example, "I've got wheels" for "I have a car," or a description of a worker as a "hired hand"). It is related to metonymy.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which a related term is substituted for the word itself. Often the substitution is based on a material, causal, or conceptual relation between things. For example, the British monarchy is often referred to as the Crown. In the phrase "lend me your ears," "ears" is substituted for "attention." "O, for a draught of vintage!" exclaims the speaker in John Keats's "Ode to Nightingale," with "vintage" understood to mean "wine." Synecdoche is closely related to metonymy.

Limerick

A fixed light-verse form of five generally anapestic lines rhyming AABBA. Edward Lear, who popularized the form, fused the third and fourth lines into a single line with internal rhyme. Limericks are traditionally bawdy or just irreverent; see "A Young Lady of Lynn" or Lear's "There was an Old Man with a Beard." Browse more limericks.

Modernist Fiction

A genre of fiction writing popular from roughly the 1910s into the 1960s. _______ came into its own due to increasing industrialization and globalization. New technology and the horrifying events of both World Wars (but specifically World War I) made many people question the future of humanity: What was becoming of the world? Writers reacted to this question by turning toward ___________ sentiments. The ______ writer saw a decline of civilization instead of new technology, they saw cold machinery and increased capitalism, which alienated the individual and led to loneliness. To achieve the emotions described above, _____ fiction was cast in first person. Whereas earlier, most literature had a clear beginning, middle, and end (or introduction, conflict, and resolution), the______story was often more of a stream of consciousness. Irony, satire, and comparisons were often employed to point out society's ills. A short list of some of famous __________ writers includes Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, E.E. Cummings, Sylvia Plath, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and Gertrude Stein.

Metaphysical Poets

A group of 17th-century poets whose works are marked by philosophical exploration, colloquial diction, ingenious conceits, irony, and metrically flexible lines. Topics of interest often included love, religion, and morality, which the metaphysical poets considered through unusual comparisons, frequently employing unexpected similes and metaphors in displays of wit. The inclusion of contemporary scientific advancements were also typical. John Donne is the foremost figure, along with George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Abraham Cowley, Richard Crashaw, and Henry Vaughan.

Black Mountain poets

A group of progressive poets who, in the 1940s and 1950s, were associated with the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina. These poets, including Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan, promoted a nontraditional poetics described by Olson in 1950 as "projective verse." Olson advocated an improvisational, open-form approach to poetic composition, driven by the natural patterns of breath and utterance.

Pentameter

A line made up of five feet. It is the most common metrical line in English. Theodore Roethke's "The Waking" is written in _________. Hart Crane maintains _______ lines made up of variable feet in "The Bridge: To Brooklyn Bridge." See also blank verse and iamb.

Tetrameter

A line of poetry with four feet. "The Grass / divides / | as with / | a comb" (Dickinson).

Trimeter

A line of poetry with three feet. "Little / lamb, who / made thee?" (Blake).

Canon

A list of authors or works considered to be central to the identity of a given literary tradition or culture. This secular use of the word is derived from its original meaning as a listing of all authorized books in the Bible. William Shakespeare, John Milton, and William Blake are frequently found on lists of_______ literature in English.

Canto

A long subsection of an epic or long narrative poem, such as Dante Alighieri's Commedia (The Divine Comedy), first employed in English by Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene. Other examples include Lord Byron's Don Juan and Ezra Pound's _____.

Epic Poem

A long, narrative poem that is usually about heroic deeds and events that are significant to the culture of the poet.

Aubade

A love poem or song welcoming or lamenting the arrival of the dawn. The form originated in medieval France. See John Donne's "The Sun Rising" and Louise Bogan's "Leave-Taking." Browse more aubade poems.

Iamb

A metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. The words "unite" and "provide" are both _______. It is the most common meter of poetry in English (including all the plays and poems of William Shakespeare), as it is closest to the rhythms of English speech. In Robert Frost's "After Apple Picking" the ________ is the vehicle for the "natural," colloquial speech pattern: My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

Anapest

A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable. The words "underfoot" and "overcome" are anapestic. Lord Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib" is written in anapestic meter.

Sprung Rhythm

A metrical system devised by Gerard Manley Hopkins composed of one- to four-syllable feet that start with a stressed syllable. The spondee replaces the iamb as a dominant measure, and the number of unstressed syllables varies considerably from line to line (see also accentual verse). According to Hopkins, its intended effect was to reflect the dynamic quality and variations of common speech, in contrast to the monotony of iambic pentameter. His own poetry illustrates its use; though there have been few imitators, the spirit and principles of sprung rhythm influenced the rise of free verse in the early 20th century.

Beat poets

A national group of poets who emerged from San Francisco's literary counterculture in the 1950s. Its ranks included Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and Gary Snyder. Poet and essayist Kenneth Rexroth influenced the development of the "_______" aesthetic, which rejected academic formalism and the materialism and conformity of the American middle class. _______ poetry is largely free verse, often surrealistic, and influenced by the cadences of jazz, as well by Zen and Native American spirituality.

Nocturne

A night scene. John Donne was the first English poet to employ the term _______ to designate a genre in "A ________ upon S. Lucy's Day, being the shortest day" (1633). Donne sets his poem at midnight ("'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's") and creates an elegy on the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, by borrowing from the night offices of the Roman Catholic canonical hours.

Couplet

A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length. ___________ is "closed" when the lines form a bounded grammatical unit like a sentence. example: Dorothy Parker's "Interview": "The ladies men admire, I've heard, /Would shudder at a wicked word.").

Aphorism

A pithy, instructive statement or truism, like a maxim or adage. See Benjamin Franklin's "How to get RICHES." Browse more aphorisms.

Ars Poetica

A poem that explains the "art of poetry," or a meditation on poetry using the form and techniques of a poem. Horace's Ars Poetica is an early example, and the foundation for the tradition. While Horace writes of the importance of delighting and instructing audiences, modernist ars poetica poets argue that poems should be written for their own sake, as art for the sake of art. Archibald MacLeish's famous "Ars Poetica" sums up the argument: "A poem should not mean / But be." See also Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism," William Wordsworth's Prelude, and Wallace Stevens's "Of Modern Poetry."

Romanticism

A poetic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries that turned toward nature and the interior world of feeling, in opposition to the mannered formalism and disciplined scientific inquiry of the Enlightenment era that preceded it. English poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron produced work that expressed spontaneous feelings, found parallels to their own emotional lives in the natural world, and celebrated creativity rather than logic.

Ballad

A popular narrative song passed down orally. In the English tradition, it usually follows a form of rhymed (abcb) quatrains alternating four-stress and three-stress lines. Folk (or traditional) ballads are anonymous and recount tragic, comic, or heroic stories with emphasis on a central dramatic event; examples include "AMAZING GRACE" "Barbara Allen" and "John Henry." Beginning in the Renaissance, poets have adapted the conventions of the folk ballad for their own original compositions. Examples of this "literary" ballad form include John Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci," Thomas Hardy's "During Wind and Rain," and Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee." Browse more ballads.

Caesura

A stop or pause in a metrical line, often marked by punctuation or by a grammatical boundary, such as a phrase or clause. A medial caesura splits the line in equal parts, as is common in Old English poetry (see Beowulf). _____________ can be found throughout contemporary poet Derek Walcott's "The Bounty." When the pause occurs toward the beginning or end of the line, it is termed, respectively, initial or terminal. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Mother and Poet" contains both initial ("Dead! One of them shot by sea in the east") and terminal _______ ("No voice says 'My mother' again to me. What?")

Transcendentalism

A strain of Romanticism that took root among writers in mid-19th-century New England. Ralph Waldo Emerson laid out its principles in his 1836 manifesto Nature, in which he asserted that the natural and material world exists to reveal universal meaning to the individual soul via one's subjective experiences. He promoted the poet's role as seer, a "transparent eyeball" that received insight intuitively through his or her perception of nature. Henry David Thoreau was an early disciple of Emerson's philosophy.

Novel of Manners

A work of fiction that re-creates a social world, conveying with finely detailed observation the customs, values, and mores of a highly developed and complex society. The conventions of the society dominate the story, and characters are differentiated by the degree to which they measure up to the uniform standard, or ideal, of behaviour or fall below it. The range of a novel of manners may be limited, as in the works of Jane Austen, which deal with the domestic affairs of English country gentry families of the 19th century and ignore elemental human passions and larger social and political determinations. It may also be sweeping, as in the novels of Balzac, which mirror the 19th century in all its complexity in stories dealing with Parisian life, provincial life, private life, public life, and military life. Notable writers from the end of the 19th century into the 20th include Henry James, Evelyn Waugh, Edith Wharton, and John Marquand.

Ballade

An Old French verse form that usually consists of three eight-line stanzas and a four-line envoy, with a rhyme scheme of ababbcbc bcbc. The last line of the first stanza is repeated at the end of subsequent stanzas and the envoy. See Hilaire Belloc's "_____ of Modest Confession" and Algernon Charles Swinburne's translation of François Villon's "______ des Pendus" (_______ of the Hanged).

Epigram

An ______ is a short but insightful statement, often in verse form, which communicates a thought in a witty, paradoxical, or funny way.

Anticipation Guide

An _________ is a comprehension strategy that is used before reading to activate students' prior knowledge and build curiosity about a new topic. Before reading, students listen to or read several statements about key concepts presented in the text; they're often structured as a series of statements with which the students can choose to agree or disagree. Anticipation guides stimulate students' interest in a topic and set a purpose for reading. When to use: Before reading How to use: Individually With small groups Whole class setting Why use: ___________ guides stimulate students' interest in a topic and set a purpose for reading. -They teach students to make predictions, anticipate the text, and verify their predictions. -They connect new information to prior knowledge and build curiosity about a new topic. How to use: *Construct the anticipation guide. Construction of the anticipation guide should be as simple as possible for younger students. -Write four to six statements about key ideas in the text; some true and some false. Include columns following each statement, which can be left blank or can be labeled Yes, or No (Maybe can also be used). NOTE: Teachers may wish to create an additional column for revisiting the guide after the material has been read. -Model the process. Introduce the text or reading material and share the guide with the students. Model the process of responding to the statements and marking the columns. -Read each of the statements and ask the students if they agree or disagree with it. Provide the opportunity for discussion. The emphasis is not on right answers but to share what they know and to make predictions. Read the text aloud or have students read the selection individually. If reading aloud, teachers should read slowly and stop at places in the text that correspond to each of the statements. Bring closure to the reading by revisiting each of the statements.

Apostrophe

An address to a dead or absent person, or personification as if he or she were present. In his Holy Sonnet "Death, be not proud," John Donne denies death's power by directly admonishing it. Emily Dickinson addresses her absent object of passion in "Wild nights!—Wild nights!"

Allegory

An extended metaphor in which the characters, places, and objects in a narrative carry figurative meaning. Often an allegory's meaning is religious, moral, or historical in nature. John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene are two major _______ works in English.

Irony

As a literary device, _______ implies a distance between what is said and what is meant. Based on the context, the reader is able to see the implied meaning in spite of the contradiction. When William Shakespeare relates in detail how his lover suffers in comparison with the beauty of nature in "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing like the Sun," it is understood that he is elevating her beyond these comparisons; considering her essence as a whole, and what she means to the speaker, she is more beautiful than nature.

Walt Whitman

Born in 1819 Published 1 book 8 times (leaves of grass) (1855) The book was self-published anonymously Although his name appears in "Song of Myself,(longest in the series" It appears nowhere else in the book. Went beyond basic Iambic Pentameter form and pushed against the 5 stress form. Often used free verse - no regular or identifiable metrical pattern, regular line, to unite the majority of his poems One of the first major poets to embrace this.

William Wordsworth

Character of the Happy Warrior A Complaint Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement The Green Linnet I Travelled among Unknown Men I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free It is not to be Thought of Laodamia Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798 Lines Written in Early Spring London, 1802 Most Sweet it is Mutability November, 1806 Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room Nutting October, 1803 Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood Ode to Duty On the Departure of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotsford, for Naples On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic A Poet! He Hath Put his Heart to School The Power of Armies is a Visible Thing from The Prelude: Book 1: Childhood and School-time from The Prelude: Book 2: School-time (Continued) Resolution and Independence The Reverie of Poor Susan Scorn not the Sonnet September, 1819 She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways She Was a Phantom of Delight Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman The Simplon Pass A Slumber did my Spirit Seal The Solitary Reaper Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle upon the Restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors Sonnets from The River Duddon: After-Thought Surprised by Joy The Tables Turned There was a Boy The Thorn Three Years She Grew To a Highland Girl To the Skylark To the Cuckoo The Virgin We Are Seven "Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant" The World Is Too Much With Us Written in London. September, 1802 Yarrow Revisited Yarrow Unvisited Yarrow Visited. September, 1814

Antithesis

Contrasting or combining two terms, phrases, or clauses with opposite meanings. William Blake pits love's competing impulses—selflessness and self-interest—against each other in his poem "The Clod and the Pebble." Love "builds a Heaven in Hell's despair," or, antithetically, it "builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

Gerund

Every _____, without exception, ends in ing. ______ are not, however, all that easy to identify. The problem is that all present participles also end in ing. What is the difference? ______ function as NOUNS. Thus, ______ will be subjects, subject complements, direct objects, indirect objects, and objects of prepositions. Present participles, on the other hand, complete progressive verbs or act as modifiers. Read these examples of ___________: Since Francisco was five years old, SWIMMING has been his passion. Francisco's first love is SWIMMING. Francisco enjoys SWIMMING more than spending time with his girlfriend Diana. Francisco gives SWIMMING all of his energy and time. ___________________________________________ These ing words are examples of present participles NOT _______: One day last summer, Francisco and his coach were swimming at Daytona Beach. A Great White shark ate Francisco's swimming coach. Now Francisco practices his sport in safe swimming pools.

Blazon

French for "coat-of-arms" or "shield." A literary _______ catalogues the physical attributes of a subject, usually female. The device was made popular by Petrarch and used extensively by Elizabethan poets. Spenser's "Epithalamion" includes examples of _______: "Her goodly eyes like sapphires shining bright, / Her forehead ivory white ..." _______ compares parts of the female body to jewels, celestial bodies, natural phenomenon, and other beautiful or rare objects. example: Thomas Campion's "There Is a Garden in Her Face." Contreblazon inverts the convention, describing "wrong" parts of the female body or negating them completely as in Shakespeare's famous sonnet "My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun." For a contemporary example, see "My Boyfriend" by Camille Guthrie.

Conceit

From the Latin term for "concept," a poetic ______ is an often unconventional, logically complex, or surprising metaphor whose delights are more intellectual than sensual. Petrarchan (after the Italian poet Petrarch) _______ figure heavily in sonnets, and contrast more conventional sensual imagery to describe the experience of love. In Shakespeare's "Sonnet XCVII: How like a Winter hath my Absence been," for example, "What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!" laments the lover, though his separation takes place in the fertile days of summer and fall. Less conventional, more esoteric associations characterize the metaphysical ______. John Donne and other so-called metaphysical poets used ______ to fuse the sensory and the abstract, trading on the element of surprise and unlikeness to hold the reader's attention. In "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," for instance, John Donne envisions two entwined lovers as the points of a compass.

Cacophony

Harsh or discordant sounds, often the result of repetition and combination of consonants within a group of words. The opposite of euphony. Writers frequently use ______ to express energy or mimic mood. See also dissonance.

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

Having run up large debts, a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby faces the prospect of losing everything he owns. Though he and his wife, Emily Shelby, have a kindhearted and affectionate relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise money by selling two of his slaves to Mr. Haley, a coarse slave trader. The slaves in question are ______, a middle-aged man with a wife and children on the farm, and Harry, the young son of Mrs. Shelby's maid Eliza. When Shelby tells his wife about his agreement with Haley, she is appalled because she has promised Eliza that Shelby would not sell her son. However, Eliza overhears the conversation between Shelby and his wife and, after warning ---- and his wife, Aunt Chloe, she takes Harry and flees to the North, hoping to find freedom with her husband George in Canada. Haley pursues her, but two other Shelby slaves alert Eliza to the danger. She miraculously evades capture by crossing the half-frozen Ohio River, the boundary separating Kentucky from the North. Haley hires a slave hunter named Loker and his gang to bring Eliza and Harry back to Kentucky. Eliza and Harry make their way to a Quaker settlement, where the Quakers agree to help transport them to safety. They are joined at the settlement by George, who reunites joyously with his family for the trip to Canada. Meanwhile, ________ sadly leaves his family and Mas'r George, Shelby's young son and _____ friend, as Haley takes him to a boat on the Mississippi to be transported to a slave market. On the boat, Tom meets an angelic little white girl named Eva, who quickly befriends him. When Eva falls into the river, Tom dives in to save her, and her father, Augustine St. Clare, gratefully agrees to buy Tom from Haley. Tom travels with the St. Clares to their home in New Orleans, where he grows increasingly invaluable to the St. Clare household and increasingly close to Eva, with whom he shares a devout Christianity. Up North, George and Eliza remain in flight from Loker and his men. When Loker attempts to capture them, George shoots him in the side, and the other slave hunters retreat. Eliza convinces George and the Quakers to bring Loker to the next settlement, where he can be healed. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, St. Clare discusses slavery with his cousin Ophelia, who opposes slavery as an institution but harbors deep prejudices against blacks. St. Clare, by contrast, feels no hostility against blacks but tolerates slavery because he feels powerless to change it. To help Ophelia overcome her bigotry, he buys Topsy, a young black girl who was abused by her past master and arranges for Ophelia to begin educating her. After ____ has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very ill. She slowly weakens, then dies, with a vision of heaven before her. Her death has a profound effect on everyone who knew her: Ophelia resolves to love the slaves, Topsy learns to trust and feel attached to others, and St. Clare decides to set ____ free. However, before he can act on his decision, St. Clare is stabbed to death while trying to settle a brawl. As he dies, he at last finds God and goes to be reunited with his mother in heaven. St. Clare's cruel wife, Marie, sells Tom to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legree. Tom is taken to rural Louisiana with a group of new slaves, including Emmeline, whom the demonic Legree has purchased to use as a sex slave, replacing his previous sex slave Cassy. Legree takes a strong dislike to Tom when Tom refuses to whip a fellow slave as ordered. Tom receives a severe beating, and Legree resolves to crush his faith in God. Tom meets Cassy, and hears her story. Separated from her daughter by slavery, she became pregnant again but killed the child because she could not stand to have another child taken from her. Around this time, with the help of Tom Loker—now a changed man after being healed by the Quakers—George, Eliza, and Harry at last cross over into Canada from Lake Erie and obtain their freedom. In Louisiana, Tom's faith is sorely tested by his hardships, and he nearly ceases to believe. He has two visions, however—one of Christ and one of Eva—which renew his spiritual strength and give him the courage to withstand Legree's torments. He encourages Cassy to escape. She does so, taking Emmeline with her, after she devises a ruse in which she and Emmeline pretend to be ghosts. When Tom refuses to tell Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have gone, Legree orders his overseers to beat him. When Tom is near death, he forgives Legree and the overseers. George Shelby arrives with money in hand to buy Tom's freedom, but he is too late. He can only watch as Tom dies a martyr's death. Taking a boat toward freedom, Cassy and Emmeline meet George Harris's sister and travel with her to Canada, where Cassy realizes that Eliza is her long-lost daughter. The newly reunited family travels to France and decides to move to Liberia, the African nation created for former American slaves. George Shelby returns to the Kentucky farm, where, after his father's death, he sets all the slaves free in honor of Tom's memory. He urges them to think on Tom's sacrifice every time they look at his cabin and to lead a pious Christian life, just as Tom did.

Carpe diem

In Latin, "Seize the day." The fleeting nature of life and the need to embrace its pleasures constitute a frequent theme of love poems; examples include Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time."

Internal Monologue

In dramatic and nondramatic fiction, narrative technique that exhibits the thoughts passing through the minds of the protagonists. These ideas may be either loosely related impressions approaching free association or more rationally structured sequences of thought and emotion. _________ encompass several forms, including dramatized inner conflicts, self-analysis, imagined dialogue as in T.S. Eliot's ""The Love (Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"" [1915]), and rationalization. It may be a direct first-person expression apparently devoid of the author's selection and control, as in Molly Bloom's monologue concluding James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), or a third-person treatment that begins with a phrase such as "he thought" or "his thoughts turned to."

Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954)

In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the other boys. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will hunt food for the entire group. Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the lenses of Piggy's eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to death. At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing in the water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting. When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to their horror, that the signal fire—which had been the hunters' responsibility to maintain—has burned out. Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the chase in a kind of wild dance. Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy across the face. Ralph blows the conch shell and reprimands the boys in a speech intended to restore order. At the meeting, it quickly becomes clear that some of the boys have started to become afraid. The littlest boys, known as "littluns," have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys now believe that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. The older boys try to convince the others at the meeting to think rationally, asking where such a monster could possibly hide during the daytime. One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea—a proposition that terrifies the entire group. Not long after the meeting, some military planes engage in a battle high above the island. The boys, asleep below, do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A parachutist drifts to earth on the signal-fire mountain, dead. Sam and Eric, the twins responsible for watching the fire at night, are asleep and do not see the parachutist land. When the twins wake up, they see the enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it makes. Thinking the island beast is at hand, they rush back to the camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked them. The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster. Jack and Ralph, who are increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain. They see the silhouette of the parachute from a distance and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds a meeting at which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a coward and that he should be removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Jack angrily runs away down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies the remaining boys to build a new signal fire, this time on the beach rather than on the mountain. They obey, but before they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join Jack. Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a violent, ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize the occasion. The hunters then decapitate the sow and place its head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. Later, encountering the bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible vision, during which it seems to him that the head is speaking. The voice, which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of the Flies, says that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints. When he wakes up, he goes to the mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist. Understanding then that the beast does not exist externally but rather within each individual boy, Simon travels to the beach to tell the others what he has seen. But the others are in the midst of a chaotic revelry—even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack's feast—and when they see Simon's shadowy figure emerge from the jungle, they fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands and teeth. The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done. Jack's hunters attack them and their few followers and steal Piggy's glasses in the process. Ralph's group travels to Jack's stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam and Eric tied up and fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down the mountain, killing Piggy and shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears. Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while the others hunt him like an animal. Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding place. Ralph stays in the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sow's head, but eventually, he is forced out onto the beach, where he knows the other boys will soon arrive to kill him. Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees a British naval officer standing over him. The officer's ship noticed the fire raging in the jungle. The other boys reach the beach and stop in their tracks at the sight of the officer. Amazed at the spectacle of this group of bloodthirsty, savage children, the officer asks Ralph to explain. Ralph is overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what has happened on the island, he begins to weep. The other boys begin to sob as well. The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their composure.

The Color Purple (Alice Walker)

In this novel Celie, the protagonist and narrator, is a poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl living in rural Georgia. Celie starts writing letters to God because her father, Alphonso, beats and rapes her. Alphonso has already impregnated Celie once. Celie gave birth to a girl, whom her father stole and presumably killed in the woods. Celie has a second child, a boy, whom her father also steals. Celie's mother becomes seriously ill and dies. Alphonso brings home a new wife but continues to abuse Celie. Celie and her bright, pretty younger sister, Nettie, learn that a man known only as Mr. ______ wants to marry Nettie. Mr. ______ has a lover named Shug Avery, a sultry lounge singer whose photograph fascinates Celie. Alphonso refuses to let Nettie marry, and instead offers Mr. ______ the "ugly" Celie as a bride. Mr. ______ eventually accepts the offer, and takes Celie into a difficult and joyless married life. Nettie runs away from Alphonso and takes refuge at Celie's house. Mr. ______ still desires Nettie, and when he advances on her she flees for her own safety. Never hearing from Nettie again, Celie assumes she is dead. Mr. ______'s sister Kate feels sorry for Celie, and tells her to fight back against Mr. ______ rather than submit to his abuses. Harpo, Mr. ______'s son, falls in love with a large, spunky girl named Sofia. Shug Avery comes to town to sing at a local bar, but Celie is not allowed to go see her. Sofia becomes pregnant and marries Harpo. Celie is amazed by Sofia's defiance in the face of Harpo's and Mr. ______'s attempts to treat Sofia as an inferior. Harpo's attempts to beat Sofia into submission consistently fail, as Sofia is by far the physically stronger of the two. Shug falls ill and Mr. ______ takes her into his house. Shug is initially rude to Celie, but the two women become friends as Celie takes charge of nursing Shug. Celie finds herself infatuated with Shug and attracted to her sexually. Frustrated with Harpo's consistent attempts to subordinate her, Sofia moves out, taking her children. Several months later, Harpo opens a juke joint where Shug sings nightly. Celie grows confused over her feelings toward Shug. Shug decides to stay when she learns that Mr. ______ beats Celie when Shug is away. Shug and Celie's relationship grows intimate, and Shug begins to ask Celie questions about sex. Sofia returns for a visit and promptly gets in a fight with Harpo's new girlfriend, Squeak. In town one day, the mayor's wife, Miss Millie, asks Sofia to work as her maid. Sofia answers with a sassy "Hell no." When the mayor slaps Sofia for her insubordination, she returns the blow, knocking the mayor down. Sofia is sent to jail. Squeak's attempts to get Sofia freed are futile. Sofia is sentenced to work for twelve years as the mayor's maid. Shug returns with a new husband, Grady. Despite her marriage, Shug instigates a sexual relationship with Celie, and the two frequently share the same bed. One night Shug asks Celie about her sister. Celie assumes Nettie is dead because she had promised to write to Celie but never did. Shug says she has seen Mr. ______ hide away numerous mysterious letters that have arrived in the mail. Shug manages to get her hands on one of these letters, and they find it is from Nettie. Searching through Mr. ______'s trunk, Celie and Shug find dozens of letters that Nettie has sent to Celie over the years. Overcome with emotion, Celie reads the letters in order, wondering how to keep herself from killing Mr. ______. The letters indicate that Nettie befriended a missionary couple, Samuel and Corrine, and traveled with them to Africa to do ministry work. Samuel and Corrine have two adopted children, Olivia and Adam. Nettie and Corrine become close friends, but Corrine, noticing that her adopted children resemble Nettie, wonders if Nettie and Samuel have a secret past. Increasingly suspicious, Corrine tries to limit Nettie's role within her family. Nettie becomes disillusioned with her missionary experience, as she finds the Africans self-centered and obstinate. Corrine becomes ill with a fever. Nettie asks Samuel to tell her how he adopted Olivia and Adam. Based on Samuel's story, Nettie realizes that the two children are actually Celie's biological children, alive after all. Nettie also learns that Alphonso is really only Nettie and Celie's step-father, not their real father. Their real father was a storeowner whom white men lynched because they resented his success. Alphonso told Celie and Nettie he was their real father because he wanted to inherit the house and property that was once their mother's. Nettie confesses to Samuel and Corrine that she is in fact their children's biological aunt. The gravely ill Corrine refuses to believe Nettie. Corrine dies, but accepts Nettie's story and feels reconciled just before her death. Meanwhile, Celie visits Alphonso, who -confirms Nettie's story, admitting that he is only the women's stepfather. Celie begins to lose some of her faith in God, but Shug tries to get her to reimagine God in her own way, rather than in the traditional image of the old, bearded white man. The mayor releases Sofia from her servitude six months early. At dinner one night, Celie finally releases her pent-up rage, angrily cursing Mr. ______ for his years of abuse. Shug announces that she and Celie are moving to Tennessee, and Squeak decides to go with them. In Tennessee, Celie spends her time designing and sewing individually tailored pairs of pants, eventually turning her hobby into a business. Celie returns to Georgia for a visit, and finds that Mr. ______ has reformed his ways and that Alphonso has died. Alphonso's house and land are now hers, so she moves there. Meanwhile, Nettie and Samuel marry and prepare to return to America. Before they leave, Samuel's son, Adam, marries Tashi, a native African girl. Following African tradition, Tashi undergoes the painful rituals of female circumcision and facial scarring. In solidarity, Adam undergoes the same facial scarring ritual. Celie and Mr. ______ reconcile and begin to genuinely enjoy each other's company. Now independent financially, spiritually, and emotionally, Celie is no longer bothered by Shug's passing flings with younger men. Sofia remarries Harpo and now works in Celie's clothing store. Nettie finally returns to America with Samuel and the children. Emotionally drained but exhilarated by the reunion with her sister, Celie notes that though she and Nettie are now old, she has never in her life felt younger.

Anthem (Ayn Rand)

In this novel, a youth named Equality 7-2521, lives in a dystopian society where solitude is not permitted. However, he has found a hidden tunnel he hides in to write. As he spends more time alone, he realizes that solitude suits him, and he begins to crave more and more time by himself. He keeps writing in his tunnel and records episodes of his own childhood. He remembers wanting to, more than anything, to be a scholar and feels that he is cursed with curiosity. This got him in trouble at school. He would fight the other students, and he was reprimanded for being too smart. He is not able to conform. The Council of Vocations assigns him to be a street sweeper, and he is pleased because it means he can atone for the "sins." When he was ten, Equality 7-252 witnesses the execution of the "Transgressor of the Unspeakable Word", a man who had discovered the word "I" and was burned to death in the town square as punishment for using the word. While he was burning, the Transgressor showed no pain but locked eyes with Equality 7-2521. Equality 7-2521 comes to believe that that moment anointed him as a disciple of the same crusade as the Transgressor. Equality 7-2521 begins to conduct experiments and shortly discovers electricity. After many weeks of work, he successfully builds a lightbulb from the materials he finds in his tunnel. He decides that he must share his invention with the world and resolves to present it to the World Council of Scholars when it convenes that year in his city. In the meantime, Equality 7-2521 has met the Golden One, a beautiful peasant girl who is proud and haughty. He knows it is wrong to do so, but he speaks to her when he gets the chance, and they immediately fall in love. One day, she offers him some water from her hands, and he drinks it, not understanding why this act makes him think of the Palace of Mating, where he and all other mature citizens are sent once a year to have sex. Before he can show the lightbulb to the World Council, Equality 7-2521 accidentally returns late to the Home of the Street Sweepers, where he lives. When he refuses to tell his Home Council where he has been, he is thrown into the Palace of Corrective Detention. There he is tortured, but he still refuses to tell where he has been, because he wants to keep the lightbulb a secret until he gets to show it to the World Council. He remains incarcerated until the World Council convenes, when he breaks out of the Palace of Corrective Detention and goes to the World Council, expecting to be exonerated and reconciled with his brothers. When Equality 7-2521 arrives and tells the World Council his story, however, the World Council rejects him out of fear and anger. It threatens to kill him and to get rid of his lightbulb. He cannot abide having his lightbulb destroyed, so he grabs his invention and flees the city. He runs to the Uncharted Forest where he discovers that he is free at last to do as he pleases. A few days later, the Golden One appears. She has followed Equality 7-2521 into the woods. They vow to live together in peace and solitude. After they have been hiking for several days in the mountains, they find an abandoned house from the Unmentionable Times. The Golden One revels in the finery she finds in the house, and Equality 7-2521 consumes the library. He discovers the meaning of the word "I," and he vows to protect his home and from there launch a new race of men who will believe in individualism and the never-ending supremacy of the ego.

The Bluest Eyes (Toni Morrison)

In this novel, nine-year-old Claudia and ten-year-old Frieda MacTeer live in Lorain, Ohio, with their parents. It is the end of the Great Depression, and the girls' parents are more concerned with making ends meet than with lavishing attention upon their daughters, but there is an undercurrent of love and stability in their home. The MacTeers take in a boarder, Henry Washington, and also a young girl named Pecola. Pecola's father has tried to burn down his family's house, and Claudia and Frieda feel sorry for her. Pecola loves Shirley Temple, believing that whiteness is beautiful and that she is ugly. Pecola moves back in with her family, and her life is difficult. Her father drinks, her mother is distant, and the two of them often beat one another. Her brother, Sammy, frequently runs away. Pecola believes that if she had blue eyes, she would be loved and her life would be transformed. Meanwhile, she continually receives confirmation of her own sense of ugliness—the grocer looks right through her when she buys candy, boys make fun of her, and a light-skinned girl, Maureen, who temporarily befriends her makes fun of her too. She is wrongly blamed for killing a boy's cat and is called a "nasty little black bitch" by his mother. We learn that Pecola's parents have both had difficult lives. Pauline, her mother, has a lame foot and has always felt isolated. She loses herself in movies, which reaffirm her belief that she is ugly and that romantic love is reserved for the beautiful. She encourages her husband's violent behavior in order to reinforce her own role as a martyr. She feels most alive when she is at work, cleaning a white woman's home. She loves this home and despises her own. Cholly, Pecola's father, was abandoned by his parents and raised by his great aunt, who died when he was a young teenager. He was humiliated by two white men who found him having sex for the first time and made him continue while they watched. He ran away to find his father but was rebuffed by him. By the time he met Pauline, he was a wild and rootless man. He feels trapped in his marriage and has lost interest in life. Cholly returns home one day and finds Pecola washing dishes. With mixed motives of tenderness and hatred that are fueled by guilt, he rapes her. When Pecola's mother finds her unconscious on the floor, she disbelieves Pecola's story and beats her. Pecola goes to Soaphead Church, a sham mystic, and asks him for blue eyes. Instead of helping her, he uses her to kill a dog he dislikes. Claudia and Frieda find out that Pecola has been impregnated by her father, and unlike the rest of the neighborhood, they want the baby to live. They sacrifice the money they have been saving for a bicycle and plant marigold seeds. They believe that if the flowers live, so will Pecola's baby. The flowers refuse to bloom, and Pecola's baby dies when it is born prematurely. Cholly, who rapes Pecola a second time and then runs away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola goes mad, believing that her cherished wish has been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes.

Pararhymes

In typical rhymes, we want vowels to match. In a _____, though the vowels may be the same, they do not sound the same, leaving us with a half rhyme.

Canzone

Literally "song" in Italian, the ______ is a lyric poem originating in medieval Italy and France and usually consisting of hendecasyllabic lines with end-rhyme. Early versions include Petrarch's five to six-line stanzas plus an envoi, as well as Dante's modification: five twelve-line stanzas with repeated end words, finished by a five-line envoi. The ______ influenced the development of the sonnet and later writers such as James Merrill, W.H. Auden, and Ezra Pound took up the form.

New Criticism

Name given to a style of criticism advocated by a group of academics writing in the first half of the 20th century. _______, like Formalism, tended to consider texts as autonomous and "closed," meaning that everything that is needed to understand a work is present within it. The reader does not need outside sources, such as the author's biography, to fully understand a text; while _____ Critics did not completely discount the relevance of the author, background, or possible sources of the work, they did insist that those types of knowledge had very little bearing on the work's merit as literature. Like Formalist critics, _____ focused their attention on the variety and degree of certain literary devices, specifically metaphor, irony, tension, and paradox. The _______ emphasized "close reading" as a way to engage with a text, and paid close attention to the interactions between form and meaning. Important _________ included Allan Tate, Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, William Empson, and F.R. Leavis. William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley coined the term "intentional fallacy"; other terms associated with _________ include "affective fallacy," "heresy of paraphrase," and "ambiguity."

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Neoclassical poet during the Essay on Criticism (Literature requires wit and criticism). Is about how writers and critics depend on one another. Speaks on how to be a critic and defines wit. Demonstrates a lot of the meanings he speaks of through the poetic form. Writes in heroic couplets. Essay on man: The universe is hierarchical. There is a chain of being. "Whatever is is right". Rape of the Locke. Mock epic written for his own inner circle.

Anaphora

Often used in political speeches and occasionally in prose and poetry, ______ is the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, which uses _______ not only in its oft-quoted "I have a dream" refrain but throughout, as in this passage when he repeats the phrase "go back to": Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. In Joanna Klink's poem "Some Feel Rain," the phrase "some feel" is repeated, which creates a rhythm and a sense of an accumulating emotions and meanings: Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle in its ghost-part when the bark slips. Some feel musk. Asleep against each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there.

Ode

Originally a composition meant for musical accompaniment. The term refers to a short poem in which the poet, the poet's persona, or another speaker expresses personal feelings. Robert Herrick's "To Anthea, who May Command Him Anything," John Clare's "I Hid My Love," Louise Bogan's "Song for the Last Act" Louise Glück's "Vita Nova."

Gothic Fiction

Originated in England in the second half of the 18th century, ______________ which is largely known by the subgenre of _________ horror, is a genre or mode of literature and film that combines fiction and horror, death, and at times romance. ... Another well known novel in this genre, dating from the late Victorian era, is Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Passive Voice Vs. Active Voice

Passive voice produces a sentence in which the subject receives an action. In contrast, active voice produces a sentence in which the subject performs an action. Passive voice often produces unclear, wordy sentences, whereas active voice produces generally clearer, more concise sentences. To change a sentence from passive to active voice, determine who or what performs the action, and use that person or thing as the subject of the sentence. Passive voice: On April 19, 1775, arms were seized at Concord, precipitating the American Revolution. Active voice: On April 19, 1775, British soldiers seized arms at Concord, precipitating the American Revolution.

Chiasmus

Repetition of any group of verse elements (including rhyme and grammatical structure) in reverse order, such as the rhyme scheme ABBA. Examples can be found in Biblical scripture ("But many that are first / Shall be last, / And many that are last / Shall be first"; Matthew 19:30). See also John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" ("Beauty is truth, truth beauty").

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Romantic Poet 1772-1834 Christabel Constancy to an Ideal Object Dejection: An Ode On Donne's Poetry Fragment 1: Sea-ward, white gleaming thro' the busy scud

Anachronism

Someone or something placed in an inappropriate period of time. Shakespeare's placing of a clock in Julius Caesar is an anachronism, because clocks had not yet been invented in the period when the play is set.

Heroic Couplet

The "___________" is written in iambic pentameter and features prominently in the work of 17th- and 18th-century didactic and satirical poets such as Alexander Pope: "Some have at first for wits, then poets pass'd, /Turn'd critics next, and proved plain fools at last."

Semantic Feature Analysis

The ______________ strategy uses a grid to help kids explore how sets of things are related to one another. By completing and analyzing the grid, students are able to see connections, make predictions and master important concepts. This strategy enhances comprehension and vocabulary skills. When to use: Before reading During reading After reading How to use: Individually With small groups Whole class setting How to use semantic feature analysis: -Select a category or topic for the semantic feature analysis. -Provide students with key vocabulary words and important features related to the topic. -Vocabulary words should be listed down the left hand column and the features of the topic across the top row of the chart. -Have students place a "+" sign in the matrix when a vocabulary word aligns with a particular feature of the topic. If the word does not align students may put a "-" in the grid. If students are unable to determine a relationship they may leave it blank.

Verisimilitude

The appearance of being true, or a likeness to truth. ____ is related to mimesis or imitation, though it is also connected to ideas of literary decorum and proper use of conventions. ______ can thus exist in both works of literary realism and fantasy, since readers's perceptions of the "reality" of a work may depend on the inner consistency of elements (such as character, language, plot) and not just the work's fidelity to a preexisting outer world. Though more often associated with fiction, the principle of _____ can be seen in poetry from Homer and Virgil, and in the poetry of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose "willing suspension of disbelief" is also introduced into discussions of the technique.

Augustan Age

The first half of the 18th century, during which English poets such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift emulated Virgil, Ovid, and Horace—the great Latin poets of the reign of the Emperor ________ (27 BCE to 14 CE). Like the classical poets who inspired them, the English __________ writers engaged the political and philosophical ideas of their day through urbane, often satirical verse.

Cadence

The patterning of rhythm in natural speech, or in poetry without a distinct meter (i.e., free verse).

Alliteration

The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or verse line. ________ need not reuse all initial consonants; "pizza" and "place". Example: "With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim" from Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Pied Beauty."

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme. See Amy Lowell's "In a Garden" ("With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur") or "The Taxi" ("And shout into the ridges of the wind").

Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)

This novel follows the life of a Nigerian man, Okonkwo. Okonkwo lives in a group of nine villages. The villages are ruled by a council of elders. Okonkwo is one of the respected leaders of his village and a wrestling champion. Both his wrestling and his leadership role are driven by his shame about his father, who left a lot of debts unpaid when he died, and who Okonkwo viewed as too feminine. When a man from a neighboring village kills one of the women from Okonkwo's village, a peace settlement requires the son of the man who killed the woman to come live in Okonkwo's village. Okonkwo himself takes the boy in and they develop a strong bond. Unfortunately, a decision is made to kill the boy. One of the village elders, Ezeudu, warns Okonkwo not to assist with killing the boy. Determined not to seem like a coward, especially because of his father's legacy, Okonkwo kills the boy himself with a machete. The boy's death is like a bad omen. After the boy dies, Okonkwo accidentally kills Ezeudu's son. For his crime, the village determines he must spend seven years in exile to appease the gods. During his exile, white missionaries arrive in the village. When Okonkwo finally returns, the white men have thoroughly infiltrated his village. Okonkwo helps destroy a Christian church, only to be arrested by the white government. Some of the villagers, including Okonkwo, want to stage an uprising against the village. He even kills one of the white men. After he does so, he realizes that the other villages have changed too much. They will not fight the white men off. Unable to live with his revelation, Okonkwo kills himself. This is a very important moment in the novel because, according to Okonkwo's traditional beliefs, suicide is not allowed. Okonkwo's desperation about his changing village is staggering if it can outweigh his strict adherence to the traditional ways. At the end of the novel, a white commissioner, upon learning about Okonkwo's rebellion and suicide, notes that it will make an interesting paragraph in the book he is writing about 'the pacification of the primitive tribes of the lower Niger.

Blank Verse

Unrhyming iambic pentameter, also called heroic verse. This 10-syllable line is the predominant rhythm of traditional English dramatic and epic poetry, as it is considered the closest to English speech patterns. Poems such as John Milton's Paradise Lost, Robert Browning's dramatic monologues, and Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning," are written predominantly in _______ verse. Browse more blank verse poems.

Parataxis

When things are connected by "and, and, and, and" A literary technique, in writing or speaking, that favors short, simple sentences, with the use of coordinating rather than subordinating conjunctions. The placing of clauses or phrases one after another, without words to indicate coordination or subordination, as in Tell me, how are you?

Romantic Poets

William Wordsworth 1770-1850 Gérard de Nerval 1808-1855 Heinrich Heine 1797-1856 Friedrich Hölderlin 1770-1843 Dr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes 1803-1849 Mikhail Lermontov 1814-1841 Charles Lamb 1775-1834 Thomas Moore 1779-1852 Giacomo Leopardi 1798-1837 Christian Milne 1773-1816 Sir Walter Scott 1771-1832 John Keats 1795-1821 Robert Southey 1774-1843 Mary Lamb 1764-1847 Elizabeth Moody 1737-1814 Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna 1790-1846 William Blake 1757-1827 Robert Burns 1759-1796 Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twaine)

Written 1876 An imaginative and mischievous boy who lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid, in the Mississippi River town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, he is made to whitewash the fence as punishment on Saturday. At first, he is disappointed by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He trades these treasures for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses and uses the tickets to claim a Bible as a prize. He loses much of his glory, however, when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first two disciples were David and Goliath. He falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" to him. Their romance collapses when she learns that he has been "engaged" before—to a girl named Amy Lawrence. Shortly after being shunned by Becky, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a "cure" for warts. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr. Robinson by the Native-American "half-breed" Injun Joe. Scared, he and Huck run away and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe blames his companion, Muff Potter, a hapless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and his anxiety and guilt begin to grow. Him, Huck, and his friend Joe Harper run away to an island to become pirates. While frolicking around and enjoying their newfound freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. He sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, he is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends. Back in school, he gets himself back in Becky's favor after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has ripped. Soon Muff Potter's trial begins, and, he overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window. Summer arrives, and he and Huck go hunting for buried treasure in a haunted house. After venturing upstairs they hear a noise below. Peering through holes in the floor, they see Injun Joe enter the house disguised as a deaf and mute Spaniard. He and his companion, an unkempt man, plan to bury some stolen treasure of their own. From their hiding spot, -- and Huck wriggle with delight at the prospect of digging it up. By an amazing coincidence, Injun Joe and his partner find a buried box of gold themselves. When they see -- and Huck's tools, they become suspicious that someone is sharing their hiding place and carry the gold off instead of reburying it. Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, he goes on a picnic to McDougal's Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident of St. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the violence and becomes an anonymous hero. -- and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to search for them, but to no avail. he and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when he, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. Eventually, just as the searchers are giving up, he finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Becky's father, Judge Thatcher, locks up the cave. Injun Joe, trapped inside, starves to death. A week later, he takes Huck to the cave and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, he promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join his robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees.

Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

Written in 1851 famously begins with the narratorial invocation "Call me Ishmael." The narrator, like his biblical counterpart, is an outcast. Ishmael, who turns to the sea for meaning, relays to the audience the final voyage of the Pequod, a whaling vessel. Amid a story of tribulation, beauty, and madness, the reader is introduced to a number of characters, many of whom have names with religious resonance. The ship's captain is Ahab, who Ishmael and his friend Queequeg soon learn is losing his mind. Starbuck, Ahab's first-mate, recognizes this problem too, and is the only one throughout the novel to voice his disapproval of Ahab's increasingly obsessive behavior. This nature of Ahab's obsession is first revealed to Ishmael and Queequeg after the Pequod's owners, Peleg and Bildad, explain to them that Ahab is still recovering from an encounter with a large whale that resulted in the loss of his leg. That whale's name is _____. The Pequod sets sail, and the crew is soon informed that this journey will be unlike their other whaling missions: this time, despite the reluctance of Starbuck, Ahab intends to hunt and kill the beastly ______ no matter the cost. Ahab and the crew continue their eventful journey and encounter a number of obstacles along the way. Queequeg falls ill, which prompts a coffin to be built in anticipation of the worst. After he recovers, the coffin becomes a replacement lifeboat that eventually saves Ishmael's life. Ahab receives a prophecy from a crew member informing him of his future death, which he ignores. _____ is spotted and, over the course of three days, engages violently with Ahab and the Pequod until the whale destroys the ship, killing everyone except Ishmael. Ishmael survives by floating on Queequeg's coffin until he is picked up by another ship, the Rachel. The novel consists of 135 chapters, in which narrative and essayistic portions intermingle, as well as an epilogue and front matter.

Participle

____ is a verbal that is used as an adjective and most often ends in -ing or -ed. It is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being. However, since _______ function as adjectives, ________ modify nouns or pronouns. There are two types of ______________: present ______ and past _______. Present _________ end in -ing. Past ________ end in -ed, -en, -d, -t, -n, or -ne as in the words asked, eaten, saved, dealt, seen, and gone. The crying baby had a wet diaper. Shaken, he walked away from the wrecked car. The burning log fell off the fire. Smiling, she hugged the panting dog.

Relative Clause

_____ are clauses starting with the _____ pronouns who*, that, which, whose, where, when. They are most often used to define or identify the noun that precedes them.

Intertextuality

_______ is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text. Intertextual figures include: allusion, quotation, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche and parody.

Bildungsroman

_________ are novels of formation, education, and culture, depicting their main characters' processes of searching, learning, and coming of age. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1796) is widely considered the original ________. Charles Dickens' 1850 novel David Copperfield and 1861 novel Great Expectations are also examples of this genre, but not considered the first.

Dramatic Irony

_________ involves a contrast between reality and a character's intention or ideals. For example, in Sophocles' Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, King Oedipus searches for his father's murderer, not knowing that he himself is that man. In "The Convergence of the Twain," Thomas Hardy contrasts the majesty and beauty of the ocean liner Titanic with its tragic fate and new ocean-bottom inhabitants: Over the mirrors meant To glass the opulent The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Diegesis

_________ refers to the world within a story.

Absurdist Fiction

__________ is a genre of fictional narrative (traditionally, literary fiction), most often in the form of a novel, play, poem, or film, that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. Common elements in absurdist fiction include satire, dark humor, incongruity, the abasement of reason, and controversy regarding the philosophical condition of being "nothing." Works of __________ often explore agnostic or nihilistic topics.

Reciprocal Teaching

______________ refers to an instructional activity in which students become the teacher in small group reading sessions. Teachers model, then help students learn to guide group discussions using four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. Once students have learned the strategies, they take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading a dialogue about what has been read.

Psychoanalytic Criticism

_______________ adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses.

Neoclassical Literature

________________ literature was written between 1660 and 1798. This time period is broken down into three parts: the Restoration period, the Augustan period, and the Age of Johnson. Writers of the ____________ period tried to imitate the style of the Romans and Greeks. Thus the combination of the terms '_____,' which means 'new,' and '_________,' as in the day of the Roman and Greek classics. This was also the era of The Enlightenment, which emphasized logic and reason. It was preceded by The Renaissance and followed by the Romantic era. In fact, the __________ period ended in 1798 when Wordsworth published the Romantic 'Lyrical Ballads'.

Metaphor

a figure of speech that refers, for rhetorical effect, to one thing by mentioning another thing. It may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two ideas. Where a simile compares two items, a metaphor directly equates them, and does not use "like" or "as" as does a simile. One of the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature is the "All the world's a stage" monologue from As You Like It.

Pathetic Fallacy

a literary term for the attributing of human emotion and conduct to all aspects within nature. It is a kind of personification that is found in poetic writing when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent. The attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature ____________ vs Personification—a ______________ acts as more of a projection of the speaker's emotions. Personification forces a human quality on a thing.

Dramatic Monologue:

a poem in the form of a speech or narrative by an imagined person, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events.

Soliloquy

a poem, discourse, or utterance of a character in a drama that has the form of a monologue or gives the illusion of being a series of unspoken reflections.

Aside

a remark or passage in a play that is intended to be heard by the audience but unheard by the other characters in the play.

Fascicle

a section of a book or set of books being published in installments as separate pamphlets or volumes.

Free Indirect Discourse:

a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech.

Focalization

a term coined by the French narrative theorist Gerard Genette. It refers to the perspective through which a narrative is presented. For example, a narrative where all information presented reflects the subjective perception of a certain character is said to be internally focalized.

Hyperbole

extreme exaggeration Your suitcase weighs a ton! She is as heavy as an elephant!

The Big House Novel

is a peculiarly Irish phenomenon and is based on an Irish reality, namely the _____ where the landlord (often English) lived, surrounded by the poor Irish peasants. The novel, as written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was about the situation that then prevailed.

Close Reading

is similar to choral reading, except that the teacher does most of the oral reading while the students read along silently. Once or twice every few sentences, the teacher omits an important vocabulary or content word, not a simple sight word, and the students' job is to read it aloud as a class. Notice that with cloze reading, as opposed to choral reading, students spend less time practicing oral reading. Therefore, cloze reading is best thought of as an alternative to Round Robin Reading.

Parallel structure (Parallelism)

is the repetition of a chosen grammatical form within a sentence. By making each compared item or idea in your sentence follow the same grammatical pattern, you create a ______ construction.

Syllabic

poetry that has a certain number of syllables per line. (A poem whose grid is governed by the number of syllables it contains) Think of Marianne Moore's poetry from Black Earth: Openly, yes, With the naturalness Of the hippopotamus or the alligator When it climbs out on the bank to experience the Sun, I do these Things which I do, which please No one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub- Merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object

Consonance

refers to repetitive sounds produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase. This repetition often takes place in quick succession such as in pitter, patter. It is classified as a literary term used in both poetry as well as prose.

Spondee (Spondaic)

stressed, stressed / /

Trochee (Trochaic)

stressed, unstressed / u

Personification

the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form

Choral Reading

the teacher and students read aloud together, following the teacher's pace-so students get the benefit of a model while they practice reading aloud. The teacher can stop at any time to ask questions, comment on the text, discuss a vocabulary term, or remind the class that she expects everyone to be reading. If choral reading is used with heterogeneously grouped students, it is possible that the lowest performing students may have difficulty keeping up with even a moderate pace. However, they can follow along, participating when they can, and still hear the text being read accurately and with good pacing and phrasing. Choral reading works best if the teacher directs all students-regardless of age or ability level-to use a marker or finger to follow along in the text as they read.

Dactyl (dactylic)

three syllable feet stressed, unstressed, unstressed / u u The English language tends to have the stress in the beginning of the word, unless there is a prefix. Many words are stressed in the beginning. Articles tend to go in front of words and aren't stressed.

Anapest

three syllable feet - unstressed, unstressed, stressed u u / The English language tends to have the stress in the beginning of the word, unless there is a prefix. Many words are stressed in the beginning. Articles tend to go in front of words and aren't stressed.

Iamb (Iambic)

unstressed, stressed u /

Pyrrhic

unstressed, unstressed u u