American Literature CLEP

Stephen Crane

A "realistic" writer. Wrote The Red Badge of Courage. Irony: Henry's only wound comes from retreat, not battle. -Humans are left on this world to fend for themselves without help from divine creator.

Norman Mailer

The Naked and the Dead (WW2 exp), The Executioner's Song (about Gary Gilmore). Genre: New Journalism aka creative nonfiction

Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie

Dramatic Monologue

A monologue involves a speaker who addresses an unseen audience.

The Yellow Wallpaper

About a mother decline into madness after childbirth and being placed on the "rest cure." During her stay, she becomes obsessed about the Wallpaper. Sees woman trying to escape from wallpaper only to find out that woman is herself. Satire against medical practices and conventions of marriage and gender roles. By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

James Baldwin

African American who explore racial tensions and homosexuality in America. "Nobody Knows My Name", "Going to Meet the Man", "Sonny's Blues", "Go Tell it on the Mountain".

Michael Wigglesworth

Clergyman who wrote "Day of Doom" and "Meat out of the Eater". He wrote lyrical, theological poems. Puritan.

Thomas Paine

Common Sense, Age of Reason, The Rights of Man, The American Crisis. Revolutionary leader who argued for American independence from Britain.

The Mayflower Compact

Contract established power for colonists to make and enact laws for the good of the settlement. Consent to common government.

The Cask of Amontillado

The ___ of _______ by Edgar Allen Poe

The Dial

Transcendentalist journal edited by Margaret Fuller

Philip Freneau

Transitional poet. Between Enlightenment and the Romantic age. " "The Wild Honeysuckle". Published National Gazette that promoted anti-federalism. Considered "the poet of the American Revolution."

Nature

Emerson. "The whole of _______ is a metaphor of the human mind." The way to God's truth is by communicating with ______, not through reason.

The American Scholar

Emerson. Call for intellectuals to trust their individuality and act as noble representatives to the world.

I Sing the Body Electric

Walt Whitman wrote _______________Electric Perverted poem....

I Hear America Singing

Walt Whitman wrote ________________ Singing.

Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman wrote____________ Grass. Grass - symbolism of life cycle.

Main point of Richard Cory

Wealth and beauty does not mean one is happy. One does not know the hearts of others. You cannot buy happiness. (by Edwin Arlington Robinson)

Walden

Happiness can be obtained without money. Living wisely. Transcendentalist.

The White Heron

Jewett. The heron symbolizes the beauty of life, its dignity, and the endangered wilderness.

Harlem Renaissance Writers

Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Duke Ellington and the Cotton Club.

Raisin in the Sun

Lorraine Hansberry., about brown vs board of education, recognition by white mainstream, raising black consciousness, community involvement. -Title also from Langston Hughes.

Jack Kerouac's works

On the Road The Dharma Bums Desolation Angels All works autobiographical.

Bluest Eye

Pecola wants_____________ to be beautiful. -She is considered a scapegoat because her ugliness has made the towns people beautiful, her suffering made them feel lucky, her silence, their chatter. By Toni Morrison.

Flannery O'Conner

Southern Gothic writer. Has dark, grotesque humor yet works reflect her Catholic faith. Peacocks in her writing represent Christ. Violent/Grotesque characters symbol of moral depravity. Wrote Wise Blood.

Ezra Pound

Subcategories of Modernism he was famous for expanding were Imagism and Vorticism. Vorticism describes a partiular type of art influenced by cubism and futurism. Wrote The Cantos and "In a Station of the Metro" Used Free Verse.

William Byrd

Surveyor. Wrote accounts of his expeditions to Virginia and North Carolina in "History of the Dividing Line". Both Journey to the Land of Eden and Progress to the Mines were published after his death.

Confessional Poets

Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath. About a young woman (Esther Greenwood) whose talent and intelligence have brought her close to achieving her dreams must overcome suicidal tendencies.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot. "Talking of Michelangelo", Eliot- stream of consciousness, dramatic monologue, insecure man who decides not to ask the women because he thinks he will "disrupt the universe" if he asks it. Unable to overcome his emotional timidity to find love and meaning in life. Allusions - Bible, Hamlet, Dante. Serve to reinforce Prufrock's frustration and futility.

The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot. American and European postwar sense of tragedy and despair. Battlefields of World War I were a muddy ________ planted with corpses. Also, many lost their faith in religion.

Kate Chopin

The Great Awakening. Wrote about Louisana.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

Whitman wrote _________Patient_____. -desperately seeking meaning in life amidst chaos.

Theodore Dreiser

Wrote An American Tragedy. Sister Carrie.

John Smith

leader of Jamestown colony. "A Description of New England", "The General History of Virginia", "New England and the Summer Isles." Helped lay foundation of American Lit.

e. e. cummings

poetry mainly about individuality. used capital letters to emphasize words or phrases, not necessarily where readers expect them to appear.

Abigail Adams

• Advised her husband not to forget women when she stated, "Women will not hold ourselves bound to any Laws in which we have no voice." • Told Congress to "Remember the Ladies"

James Thurber

•"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", escapes overbearing wife by retreating to fantasy life. •Also wrote Fables for Our Time •commonly used theme: battle between the sexes.

J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur

•French-born American who wrote "Letters from an American Farmer". First successful American author. First to examine the idea of the "American Dream" and attempted to explain what an "American" was. Concepts by him that influenced America culture. • American Adam - uniqueness of new people called "Americans". •Melting Pot - America's uniqueness transcends ethnic, religious, cultural backgrounds.

Willa Cather

•Readers experience westward expansion in real and painful terms. Wrote about Midwest, Nebraska experience for immigrants. Protagonists navigate gender + cultural issues. •O Pioneers - Swedish family attempts to prosper as homesteaders. •My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop

Naturalism

•The universe is unpredictable, spontaneous, and discontinuous. •Our fate is determined by our environment, heredity, and chance. •Free will is an illusion. •Life is a cruel joke. (ie. Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

•by Washington Irving. Icabod Crane = main character (tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulder, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels...some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield" •The folks who inhabit _____________ believe their village is bewitched. The primary ghost is the Headless Horseman, rumored to be a Hessian soldier who had lost his noggin to a stray cannonball.

Ben Franklin

•wrote "Autobiography" (excerpt: bought bread too big for his pocket; looked ridiculous with bread) •Poor Richards Almanac - "A little neglect may breed mischief: for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost."

Mark Twain

•wrote Life on the Mississippi, The Prince and the Pauper •deadpan narration. •aka Samuel Clemens

quote by Stephen Crane

"A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe, 'The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.'"

John Winthrop

"A model of Christian Charity" by ____ ________". Sermon written on Arbella. He recorded daily happenings from his voyage on the Arbella in his journal "The History of New England. -major and minor events are no different and are all under the will of God.

Richard Wright

"Native Son", "Black Boy", "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" wrote on racial segregation in America. Realist and Naturalist author.

Emily Dickinson

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant..." Used-- this -- a lot-- No titles in her poems, instead ppl #'d her poems. Her poems paved way to the Imagist Movement.(ie. Lowell, Ezra Pound) Common theme of hers: Death

In what Poe work was the detective story popularized?

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" -main character August Dupin

In a Station of the Metro

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough." •uses Synedoche • mirrors Petrarchan sonnet

Opening to The Call of the Wild.

'Old longings nomadic leap, Chafing at custom's chain; Again from its brumal sleep Wakens the ferine strain.'

William Faulkner

-uses stream of conscience. -19 books takes place in Yoknapatwpha County, Mississippi like in Sound and the Fury. -screenplay: "The Big Sleep" -As I lay Dying -Light in August -Absalom, Absalom!

Invisible Man

-Passage on living in a cellar or underground. -Stealing electricity that was rightfully his. -black who's socially invisible. -Theme: racism as an obstacle to Individual Identity. -got to underground from evading police who suspects he is part of a riot. Man backs up and falls into a whole. by Ralph Ellison.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

-Romantic Period writer. -The Scarlet Letter -The Token -The House of Seven Gables -Blithedale Romance -The Marble Faun -skeptic of transcendentalism -critical of puritans. -allegorical and symbolic works.

Post World War 2 novels

-To Kill a Mockingbird -The Catcher in the Rye -The Bell Jar -The Naked and the Dead -Catch 22 -Invisible Man

Henry David Thoreau

-Transcendentalist. -Wrote Walden (simple life) -Civil Disobedience (individual resistance to corrupt government) -Poems of Nature -abolitionist. -influenced by Emerson. -cease to pay taxes -Themes: simplicity, freedom from society, ills of materialism. "I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward."

The literary periods of American Literature

1) Colonial and Early National Period (Beginnings to 1830) 2) Romantic Period (1830 to 1870) 3) Realism and Naturalism Period (1870 to1910) 4) Modernism Period (1910 to1945) 5) Contemporary period (1945 and on)

Order of The Leatherstocking Tales

1)The Pioneers 2) The Last of the Mohicans 3) The Prairie 4) The Pathfinder 5) The Deerslayer (when Natty's the youngest)

Sonnet

14 line poem, fixed rhyme scheme, fixed meter (usually 10 syllables per line).

Toni Morrison

1st Black Female Nobel Prize Winner. -"Song of Solomon" -"The Bluest Eye" "Jazz" "Beloved" "Paradise" -Stores about poor, black woman.

Aphorism

A brief, clever statement that makes a wise observation about life.

Apostrophe

A figure of speech in which one directly addresses an absent or imaginary person, or some abstraction. Often used to address deep emotion.

Ethan Frome

A novel by Edith Wharton. _________is a farmer frustrated in his ambition to become an engineer and in his marriage to a nagging, sour, sickly wife. He falls in love with his wife's cousin. The novel depicts ______'s wasted talents and passions and describes the triumph of a conventional society over the ambitious, creative individual. It's tragic love story of simple people in a bleak New England environment.

Brook Farm

A transcendentalist Utopian experiment, put into practice by transcendentalist former Unitarian minister George Ripley. Emerson declined to live there. Hawthorne was there, but wrote a satire about it in "Blithedale Romance". Margaret Fuller joined.

Live or Die

Anne Sexton

Booker T. Washington

Autobio - "Up from Slavery" -Believe that African Americans must ignore racial segregation in favor or good, honest hard word. "Cast down the buckets where you owe. Focus on individual success and not wait for government or white population to amend past failings."

individualism, intuition, nature, and self-reliance.

Beliefs of Transcendentalism.

Local colorists

Bret Harte Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Willa Cather

The Devil and Tom Walker

By Irving. About a man who sells his soul to the devil. Satirized hypocritical Puritans who used their social standing in the community to gain wealth. Finds devil pleasant. Tom will help the devil in exchange for the treasure of a famous pirate named Kidd. Ending - Get hold of property and "Let us endeavor to do without the [wife]".

The Sound and the Fury

By William Faulkner. A Southern family on the decline crumbles completely when one of his members has a child out of wedlock. Family falls into financial ruin, loses its religious faith and the respect of the town of Jefferson, and many of them die tragically. Title taken from Macbeth. "tale told from [different points of views], full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." Themes: honor and sin.

Flannery O'Conner

Catholic. Explores what it means to be Southern. "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "Revelation".

The Beat Generation

Central elements of "Beat" culture include a rejection of mainstream American values, for experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality, and an interest in Eastern spirituality. Spontaneity in living. Attempt to convey pure emotion. Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac, Carl Sandburg.

An American Tragedy

Dreiser. Clyde Griffiths impregnates mistress but is "in love" with another woman - drowns mistress making it look like an accident - Clyde is sentenced to electric chair when discovered.

The Sun Also Rises

E. Hemingway. A powerful expose of the life and values of the Lost Generation. Jake Barnes is in love with Brett Ashley (a girl), but Barnes suffered an injury during World War I... All characters suffering some way from WWI. The book is a tragedy because even the greatest courage does not enable the characters to rise above their circumstances. They only know how to suck it in and live in it.

The Iceman Cometh

Eugene O'Neill. The "Iceman" is supposed to represent the "death" found in reality. Discussed pipe dreams. Two characters from the Second Boer War.

Tall Tale

Exaggerated folktales. Unbelievable occurrences.

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald. Written about the Roaring 20's. The plot was a sensitive and satiric story of the pursuit of success and the collapse of the American dream. Being one of the writers of the Lost Generation, Fitzgerald was bitter because of the effects of the war. Captured the Jazz Age.

Walt Whitman

Father of free verse. (no rhyme or meter)

Synecdoche

Figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole. ie. How do you like my new ride? (Meaning car)

Anne Bradstreet

First woman to be published in Colonial America. Have a collection of poems, "the Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America" reveals love for her husband, children, and observation of colonial life. "Verses Upon the Burning of Our House."

Lost Generation

Group of writers in 1920s who shared the belief that they were lost in a greedy, materialistic world that lacked moral values and often choose to flee to Europe. They were disillusioned after World War I. T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway.

Blank Verse

Has (iambic penta)meter , no rhyme.

Langston Hughes

He wanted to capture the dominant oral traditions of black culture in written form., African American poet who described the culture of African American life using rhythms influenced by jazz music. Wrote of African American hope and defiance, as well as the culture of Harlem and also had a major impact on the Harlem Renaissance. The Weary Blues. The Dream Keeper.

The Snows of Kilamanjaro

Hemingway used F. Scott Fitzgerald's decline to depict the guilt of a talented yet unfulfilled artist as he faced death.

The Old Man and the Sea

Hemingway. Fisherman named Santiago who finally catches a magnificent fish after 84 days without a catch. After three days of battling the fish, he finally manages to reel it in and lash it to his boat, only to have sharks eat it as he returns to the harbor. The other fishermen marvel at the size of the skeleton; Santiago is spent but triumphant. Santiago =allegory of Christ.

Moby Dick

Herman Melville. An epic.

Allen Ginsberg and his works.

Howl - "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix." poem = anthem for the Beats. Kaddish - exorcized inner demons by writing this about his mother's insanity and death.

The Call of the Wild

Jack Landon. Shows how a tame dog comes to revert to his original primitive state. When boldspirited Buck is removed from his comfortable California estate and thrust into the rugged terrain of the Klondike, we see the savage lawlessness of man and beast. Book on survival of the fittest.

Erica Jong

Jewish. Wrote How to Save Your Own Life. Fear of Flying. Produces ribald, exuberant, feminist poems, novels and essays.

Saul Bellow

Jewish. Wrote The Dangling Man and The Victim, The Adventures of Augie March, Seize the Day

Bernard Malamud

Jewish. Wrote The Natural (baseball story), The Fixer, , The Magic Barrel

Metaphysical Poets

John Donne George Herbert Richard Crashaw Francis Quarles

Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck's novel about a struggling farm family during the Great Depression. Gave a face to the violence and exploitation that migrant farm workers faced in America. The Oklahoma farmers dispossessed of their land and forced to become immigrant farmers in California. The novel describes the family's (and the land's) exploitation by a ruthless system of agricultural economics. Book a plea for California land owners to be more tolerant of those who are less fortunate.

Of Mice and Man

John Steinbeck. Tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression.

William S. Burroughs works

Junky, Queer, Naked Lunch

Naturalist Authors

Kate Chopin Edith Wharton Theodore Dreiser Willa Cather Stephen Crane Jack London

Transcendentalism

Movement in the Romantic tradition (around 1840), which held that every individual can reach ultimate truths through spiritual intuition and creativity, which transcends reason and sensory experience. We can rise above doctrine and dogma. Nothing is evil. Avoid conformity. It was made famous in Self Reliance by Emerson.

Frank Norris

Naturalist wrote McTeague story about dentist and his wife, Trina, and their fatal obsession with wealth (gold). acts on his animalistic instincts, inflicting pain on those around him and eventually killing his wife and friend - reveals that humans are just animals in a world ruled by harsh laws of survival.

Great Gatsby is narrated by

Nick Caraway

The Naked and the Dead

Norman Mailer (Jewish) World War 2 combat experience at the Philippines, which was held by the Japanese.

Excuse Thoreau gave to move to Walden Pond

Not to live cheaply, not to live dearly, but to gain understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple, self sufficient living.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Novel by Ernest Hemingway set in the Spanish Civil War. The title is taken from a line in sermon by English essayist and poet John Donne.

Metonymy

One word or phrase is substituted for another with which is closely associated. "crown → royalty", "ring →marriage" "heart→love"

Jack London

Only wrote for financial rewards. Socialist, supporter of Social Darwinism. Wrote Call of the Wild. Novels based on experiences in the Klondike gold rush. "To Build a Fire" - dedication to realism and naturalism.

W.E.B. DuBois

Opposite of B.T. Washington. Black should engage in higher education. Challenges Washington's inability to see complete integration in America. Not only work for freedom but demand rights and participation in office. Disagrees on how "liberation" should be defined.

motif

Phase, image, action, that unifies a work of literature by recurring throughout it. A theme or idea in a work of art or literature that is developed or repeated.

The Awakening

Protagonist, Edna Pontillier, sexual, committed suicide. Mademoiselle Reisz: Her beautiful piano music contributes to Edna's "awakening." Attempt to find her own identity through passion.

Juneteenth

Ralph Ellison., the day when enslaved Texans celebrated their freedom.

Transcendentalist Authors

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Alcott

Alliteration

Repetition of consonant sounds.

Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds within words.

Native Son

Richard Wright. Brutal portrait of a poor black man spurred on to murder by the oppression and hatred of the white world.

Edgar Lee Masters

Spoon River Anthology, families who speak of their failures and dreams in free-verse monologues.

The Open Boat

Stephen Crane - , __________ is about four men at sea during a storm in the Commodore. Irony: the oiler drowned.

Where does the thief hide the letter in the Purloined Letter?

The thief did not hide it at all. It was in plain view.

imagery

The use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, thing, place, or experience.

The end of Fall of The House of Usher and mood of main character

Turns out the sister is alive. She attacks Roderick as the life drains from her, and he dies of fear. The narrator flees the house. As he escapes, the entire house cracks along the break in the frame and crumbles to the ground. Mood: Anxious but willing to help his friend.

Ending of Ethan Frome

Unable to start a new life together and unwilling to be separated, Ethan and Mattie try to commit suicide by sledding into a tree. Their suicide attempt is a failure: Ethan is crippled; Mattie is paralyzed.

Metaphysical Poetry

Uses conceits and uses intellectual and philosophical language. Makes abstract comparisons using conceits. ie. John Donne.

Edith Wharton

Uses realism and naturalism to depict trapped and controlled life of an upper class woman in America. Her characters faced with questions of true love and marital fidelity. At mercy of entities and events completely out of their control and understanding. Wrote Ethan Frome, Age of Innocence, House of Mirth

Authors in the Beat Movement

William Burroughs = father figure of movement. Allen Ginsberg Kerouac Gregory Corso Gary Snyder Kenneth Rexroth Usually open verse, has controversial subject matters, in first person

Ernest Hemingway wrote

Wrote Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, The Snow of Kilimanjaro, Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, True at First Light "All modern American Literature comes from one book - Huck Finn" -from Modern Period, Lived through World Wars. -writing style: less is more.

Ambrose Bierce

Wrote Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Wrote satire and war stories. Defines heaven as "place where wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs and the good listen with attention while you expound on your own."

Edward Taylor

Wrote Preparatory Meditations. God's Determinations touching His Elect. His work not meant for publication. Uses conceits and unusual images. Inspired metaphysical poets like Ezra Pound. T.S. Eliot.

Carl Sandburg

Wrote in Free Verse and in common speech. Wrote extensive bio on Abe Lincoln. Wrote "Chicago".

Bret Harte

Wrote short stories about the American West, popularized the use of regional dialects as a literary device. Wrote about gold rush. "The Outcasts of Poker Flat"

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wrote: Nature, Self-reliance, The Oversoul, The American Scholar, "Essays", Merlin. -led Transcendentalist movement. -develop ideas as individuality, freedom, ability for humankind to realize anything. -relationship between soul and surrounding world. -"infinitude of the private man" -human kind's relationship to nature.

Close reading

______ ignores author's intent or any commentary outside the particular work; viewed each work as a piece of art. Trend from 1920 to 1960. It scrutinized words and their order within a literary work.

Benjamin Harris

_____wrote the New England Primer, the first textbook used in the colonies. Wrote first newspaper as well.

Song of Myself

____of____ by Walt Whitman.

Heroic Couplet

a couplet consisting of two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter (ie. aa, bb, cc) and written in an elevated style. (tradition of the epic form)

iamb

a pair of syllables, one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. (ie. i TASTE)

O Captain! My Captain!

about Lincoln's passing.

Washington Irving

aka Geoffrey Crayon, Diedrich Knickerbocker, Oldstyle, Evergreen. Father of American Literature because he proved that memorable fiction could feature both American settings and American "types" Wrote Rip Van Winkle, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Devil and Tom Walker. His "Sketchbook" influenced Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Dickens.

Paul Reveres' Rhyme

anapestic tetrameter (by Longfellow)

Color Purple

by Alice Walker. Divides not into chapters but letters written to God. Explores adult themes such as rape, murder, homosexuality. Celie falls in love with a girl. _________symbolizes pain and suffering at first, but then it becomes Celie's new god, its new symbolism. Story about moving on from past trauma and have a better life, embracing it. Theme: self discovery. "God", her only true friend.

Joy Luck Club

by Amy Tan -about four Chinese American immigrant families in San Fran. -played mahjong for money. -inability to translate concepts from one culture to another. -language and cultural barriers. -mothers communicate through story telling because bad at English. -Chinese mothers strive to make daughters understand heritage.

Death of a Salesman

by Arthur Miller. About Willy Loman. Obsessed w/ success wants to be popular disappointed in 2 sons, kills himself. He also wrote the Crucible.

Huswifery

by Edward Taylor. "Make me, O Lord, thy Spinning Wheele compleat"

The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger. mental breakdown of a 17-year old boy named Holden Caufield - after getting kicked out of many expensive prep schools, he decides to hang around NY City for a few days - encounters people who he sees as phonies and eventually ends up in a CA mental institution - Holden has come to be a symbol for misunderstood youth.

Cane

by Jean Toomer. does not use the voice of black people of that era.

Skunk Hour

by Robert Lowell

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

by Stephen Crane. A novel of a woman who decides to become a prostitute after being cast out by her family. Later, commits suicide. First naturalistic novel.

Declaration of Independence

by Thomas Jefferson. •Idea of Individual liberty from John Locke. •Idea in Declaration - Rebellion to tyrants = Obedience to God. •Includes parallel structure, rhythm, forceful and direct language, loaded words (strong, emotional words, ie. tyranny, justice)

The American Crisis

by Thomas Paine, helped propel us into war. A model of propaganda.

Theme

central idea of a work of literature, general topic or subject.

Tales of ratiocination

coined by Poe, uses logic instead of horror. (ie. The Gold Bug)

Huck Finn escaped his father by

faking his death. End of book: different from classic American success myths. Instead of being free of moral corruption into wilderness, it is being adopted into moral corruption away from wilderness.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

feminist who wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper."

William Cullen Bryant

he uses blank verse. explored beauty of nature, considered the visible expression of God. Death = unavoidable. wrote "Thanatopsis" and "To a Waterfowl. -He is a Fireside Poet.

History of Plymouth Plantation

illustrates Bradford's unwavering Puritan beliefs. Includes story of first Thanksgiving. Recounts fate of a blasphemous sailor.

William Dean Howells

leading realist who seriously considered the problems of industrialization and unequal rights in his novels. wrote bio of Abe Lincoln. Wrote "The Rise of Silas Lapham" - rags to riches story; moral and ethical dilemmas. Wrote "Edith".

Sarah Orne Jewett

local colorist who wrote about New England, Maine. "The White Heron". Criticized for writing "sketches" with little plot.

Rip Van Winkle

marks the beginning of the "local color" school of writing, in which authors use vivid details to re-create a specific place.

Robert Frost

no free verse. yes blank verse, traditional, and plain speech. antithesis of literary modernism. Poems reflect ideas and landscape of New England. Poetry more aligned with transcendentalists. Famous for lyrical poems on country life in New England. "Death of the Hired Man", "Birches", "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" "Mending Wall", "Road Not Taken".

picaresque

novel about lower-class character who triumphs through wit instead of hard work. Usually autobiographical and in the first person.

Vernacular

ordinary language of people in a particular language. Twain used it a lot.

Thomas Morton

satirized the rigidity of the New England Separatists New England Canaan. Bradford, horrified, wrote of Plymouth Plantation.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

sparked the Civil War. portrayed slavery as brutal and immoral. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is a polemic (literary argument), not a novel.

Connotation

the feelings or emotions surrounding a word. (ie. home = pleasant haven)

Olaudah Equiano

wrote The first slave narrative. "Interesting Narrative of the life of _____________". Powerful abolitionist voice against inhumanity. He bought his freedom and traveled and taught.

William Hill Brown

wrote First American Novel - The Power of Sympathy (1789), a fictitious romance novel based on contemporary scandel between the Mertons and Sarah Merton's sister.

Maya Angelou

wrote I Know why the Caged Bird Sings. African American autobiographical work. Themes: racism, identity, family.

Cotton Manther

wrote Magnalia Christi Americana on the puritan life. He is famous for being the supporter of the Salem Witchcraft Trials.

William Bradford

wrote Of Plymouth Plantation records why he wrote the forerunner of the US Constitution, The Mayflower Compact. Pilgrim Leader.

James Fenimore Cooper

wrote Precaution, The Spy (About the American Revolution) imitated English Novels. Author of The Leatherstocking Tales. Natty Bumppo aka Leatherstocking aka Hawkeye aka Deerslayer (superman with moccasins) -Father of American Novels.