MA Comps- Texts
An Essay on Man
Author: Alexander Pope YoP: 1734 It is an effort to rationalize or rather "vindicate the ways of God to man." Themes: morality, must be subservient to God even though it requires faith Four Major Ideas: (1) a God of infinite wisdom exists; (2) He created a world that is the best of all possible ones; (3) the plenum, or all-embracing whole of the universe, is real and hierarchical; (4) authentic good is that of the whole, not of isolated parts; (5) self-love and social love both motivate humans' conduct; (6) virtue is attainable; (7) "One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT." Partial evil, according to Pope, contributes to the universal good. "God sends not ill, if rightly understood." According to this principle, vices, themselves to be deplored, may lead to virtues. For example, motivated by envy, a person may develop courage and wish to emulate the accomplishments of another; and the avaricious person may attain the virtue of prudence.
In Memoriam A.H.H.
Author: Alfred Lord Tennyson YoP: 1850 Tennyson wrote the poem in search of hope after the great loss of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Covers span of about three years. Addresses common questions: Why do we live? Is death inevitable? Do we grieve the inevitability of death before it ever happens? Major Themes: grief, tradition, memorialization, experience, doubt, reminiscence 133 cantos including prologue and epilogue 4 lines abba iambic tetrameter, now called In Memoriam Stanzas Important Quotations Most-quoted line from Canto 27: 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.
The Rover (part 1)
Author: Aphra Behn YoP: 1677 Restoration Comedy, Play, Amatory Intrigue First major woman writer; first professional playwright Main Characters: Major Themes: love, courtship, marriage should be for love (but that's easy to say when all characters are wealthy), nationalism, gender roles and female independence (Florinda gets to choose her own husband) Plot (in brief): The Rover features multiple plot lines, dealing with the amorous adventures of a group of Englishmen in Naples at Carnival time. Five Acts. Important Quotations: Other Importance:
Autobiography
Author: Benjamin Franklin YoP: 1771-1790 Literary Period: Pre-Revolutionary War Main Characters: Benjamin Franklin Major Themes: industry, hard work, frugality, morality Plot (in brief): Benjamin Franklin tells his life story starting about the time he set out on his own to start become a printer to his role in the French and Indian War. The book was written for his son, so that his son might see how he made his fortune; however, he also writes for the more general education of future generations. He discusses his moral precepts at length, and how he attempted to arrive at moral perfection through the qualities of Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility. The autobiography ends shortly after Franklin's experiments with electricity. Important Quotations: 1. "that which was not honest could not be truly useful" (ch. 1), 2. "I never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the existence of a Deity; that he made the world and governed it by his providence ... and make us unfriendly to one another" (ch. 6), 3. "I thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction" (ch. 6), 4. "It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at any time, and to conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into" (ch. 6), 5. "To Temperance he ascribes his long-continued health, and what is still left to him of a good constitution ... I hope, therefore, that some of my decendants may follow the example and reap the benefit" (ch. 6), 6. "vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful" (ch. 6), 7. "no qualities are so likely to make a poor man's fortune as those of probity and integrity" (ch. 6) Other Importance:
Edgar Huntly
Author: Charles Brockden Brown YoP: 1799 Literary Period: early American Gothic Gothic Elements: mystery, caves and labyrinths, captive woman Major Characters: Edgar Huntly, Clithero, Waldegrave, Mrs. Lorimer, Clarisse, Arthur Wyatt Major Themes: going native, sleepwalking symbolizes subconscious desires, survival, virtuous woman (Mrs. Lorimer); Brown's novel makes the argument that the individual must use reason and rationality instead of acting on impulse—Enlightenment. Plot (in brief): Important Quotations: Other Importance: Chaotic, nonlinear narrative symbolizes Edgar's unordered, uncontrolled psyche. Frame Narrative, opens with Edgar Huntly writing a letter to his love interest.
The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales
Author: Charles Chesnutt YoP: 1899 Literary Period: Reconstruction, African American Lit Major Themes: unromanticized descriptions of Post-reconstruction South, capitalism, private vs. public, black resistance, supernatural, nature Frame Narrative: Uncle Julius tells a story within the narration of John, the white narrator Stylistic Markers: difficult to read dialect Plot (in brief): Collection of seven stories that deal with racial issues facing the South after the war, often through the comments of the character of Uncle Julius McAdoo, a freed slave who tells stories to John and Annie, a white couple from the North who are searching for property in NC Famous Stories: "The Goophered Grapevine" and "Po' Sandy"
Jane Eyre
Author: Charlotte Bronte YoP: 1847 Literary Period: blend of the Gothic, Romance, and Bildungsroman genres Main Characters: Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester, St. John Rivers, Mrs. Reed, Helen Burns, Mr. Brocklehurst, Bertha Mason, Major Themes: Morality and Religion, Social Class, Gender Politics/Role of Women, Feminism, Passion vs. Reason Plot (in brief): Jane's abusive childhood with her aunt and cousins in Gateshead Hall, her education at Lowood Institution, her time as a governess at Thornfield Hall where she falls in love with her employer, Mr. Rochester, her time with the Rivers siblings where St. John proposes she become a missionary's wife, and her reunion and marriage to Rochester. Important Quotations: "Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for the faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they out to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags" (129-130). "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad - as I am now" (365). "Reader, I married him" (517). Other Importance: uses Gothic motifs: the manor (Thornfield), the Byronic hero (Rochester), the madwoman in the attic (Bertha), supernatural (lightening strike, Jane and Rochester hear the other's voice). Ahead of its time for its exploration of classism, sexuality, morality, and proto-feminism, as well as its portrayal of inner consciousness. Stylistic Markers: engaging narration with direct address to "Reader"; first person
Doctor Faustus
Author: Christopher Marlowe YoP: 1592-1593 (published 1604,1616) Play, Tragedy, Folklore Pioneered use of blank verse Main Characters: Faustus, Mephastophilis, Chorus, Old Man, Wagner, Lucifer Major Themes: Christianity: sin, repentance, damnation, divided will (good angel and evil angel), and Medieval vs. Renaissance, or theological vs. secular: "the story of a Renaissance man who had to pay the medieval price for being one." The medieval world placed God at the center of existence and shoved aside man and the natural world. The Renaissance emphasized the individual, classical learning, and scientific inquiry into the nature of the world. Corruption of Power: Faustus has grand ambitions, but essentially wastes his supernatural power on pranks and entertainment. "Once he can do everything, he no longer wants to do anything." Plot (in brief): Faustus sells his soul to Lucifer in exchange for twenty-four years of service from the devil Mephastophilis. Important Quotations: The reward of sin is death? That's hard. Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas. If we say that we have no sin, We deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us. Why then belike we must sin, And so consequently die. Ay, we must die an everlasting death. What doctrine call you this? Che sarà, sarà: What will be, shall be! Divinity, adieu! These metaphysics of magicians, And necromantic books are heavenly! (1.40-50) Other Importance:
Blood Meridian
Author: Cormac McCarthy YoP: 1985 Literary Period: Historical Novel, Postmodern, Western Main Characters: the Kid, Judge Holden (the Judge), Glanton, Tobin (the ex priest), Captain White, Toadvine Major Themes: the natural state of man, Manifest Destiny, violence and depravity Setting: United States-Mexico borderlands in 1849 and 1850 following the Mexican-American War Plot (in brief): The 14 year old Kid decides to run away from home to try his luck at survival in the Wild West. Hard up for food and clothing, he joins a filibustering expedition that plans to assert American dominance over Mexico. The group is wiped out by Apache warriors and the kid becomes imprisoned. He's bought out of prison by Judge Holden who's helping Glanton form a gang to hunt down Indians and receive bounty for their scalps from the Mexican government. Violence soon overtakes the gang as they turn to senseless killing of Indians and Mexicans alike. The gang becomes a problem for their Mexican employer, and eventually, a group of Yuma aboriginals kill Glanton and nearly all of his men. After surviving the Yuma attack, Judge Holden acts on his belief that only the strong can survive and decides to kill the kid for being too weak and sensitive. The kid escapes, but ten years later, the judge finds him in a bar. The kid wanders to the outhouse and finds the judge waiting inside for him and locks the door. The novel ends without explaining what happens in the outhouse, but we can assume it wasn't good for the kid. Important Quotations: "War is god" (261, the Judge). "If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now?" (153). Example of the gory violence: "...the viscera spilled from their sides and the naked torsos bristling with arrowshafts. Some of their beards were men but yet wore strange menstrual wounds between their legs and no man's parts for these had been cut away and hung dark and strange from out their grinning mouths" (159). Glanton gang becomes subhuman: "all tattooed, branded, sutured, the great puckered scars inaugurated God knows where by what barbarous surgeons across chests and adomens like the trats of gigantic millipedes, some deformed, fingers missing, eyes, their foreheads and arms stamped with letters and numbers as if they were articles requiring inventory" (174). "Whatever in creation exists wtihout my knowledge exists without my consent" (207). Other Importance: campfire storytelling similar to Biblical parables
Moll Flanders
Author: Daniel Defoe YoP: 1722 Literary Period: Rise of the Novel Main Characters: Moll Flanders, narrator and protagonist Major Themes: morality, survival, wealth/poverty, gender roles and the plight of women, sexuality, marriage, motherhood, guilt and repentance Plot (in brief): Moll Flanders narrates her life adventures from a orphan girl to a wealthy woman in old age, including twelve years as a mistress, five marriages—including one to her brother—her time as a thief and later felon in America, and her repentance and attainment of wealth and happiness. Important Quotations: "If a young woman has beauty, birth, breeding, wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all to an extreme, yet if she has not money, she's nobody" (19). "The fear of not being married at all and of that frightful state of life called an old maid...This, I say, is the women's snare" (69). "I knew that with money in the pocket one is at home anywhere" (164). "I should be driven by the dreadful necessity of my circumstances to the gates of destruction, soul and body" (178). Other Importance: To validate the rise of the novel, Defoe appeased audiences with scandalous entertainment censored by the narrator's moralizing lessons to readers regarding virtue.
White Noise
Author: Don DeLillo YoP: 1985 Literary Period: Postmodern Main Characters: Jack Gladney, his wife Babette, and their children, Heinrich, Steffie, Denise, and Wilder, and a fellow professor, Murray Jay Siskind Major Themes: Image Culture, Consumerism, Academia, Simulacra (reality and representation), Fear of Death Plot (in brief): Important Quotations: Other Importance:
The House of Mirth
Author: Edith Wharton YoP: 1905 Literary Period: Realism, America's Gilded Age Wharton wrote an American Novel of Manners. The genre features a single woman looking to get married, where socio-economic factors determine her marriage prospects, and the novel includes scenes that highlight class differences. Pioneered by Jane Austen. Main Characters: Lily Bart, Lawrence Seldon, George and Bertha Dorset, Gus and Judy Trenor, Simon Rosedale Major Themes: moral corruption of upper class, reputation, dependence on marriage for women, socialite society, "the struggle between who we are and what society tells us we should be" Plot (in brief): Important Quotations: "She was so evidently a victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate." Seldon to Lily: "Because you're such a wonderful spectacle: I always like to see what you are doing."
Faerie Queene (book 1)
Author: Edmund Spenser YoP: 1590 Epic Poem Spenserian Stanza: contains 9 lines; 8 in iambic pentameter followed by 1 in Alexandran pentameter Allegory: Faerie Queene = Queen Elizabeth, Faerie Land = England, Redcrosse = individual Christian on search for Holiness armed with faith in Christ and shielded with bloody cross, Villains = false Roman Catholic Church Main Characters: Redcrosse, Una, Duessa, Archimago, Gloriana Major Themes: Plot (in brief): Important Quotations: Other Importance:
The Sun Also Rises
Author: Ernest Hemingway YoP: 1926 Literary Period: Modernism; travel novel Lost Generation/postwar generation Main Characters: Jake Barnes, Brett Ashley, Robert Cohn Major Themes: Dissatisfaction with modern life, alienation, the nature of masculinity, use/abuse of sex, alcohol, entertainment to fill the void after the Great War, the liberated New Woman, failed communication Veterans want to avoid conflict at all costs in post-war environment, so must abandon values to prevent conflict. Care about nothing, lose nothing. Firm commitment to nothing. Plot (in brief): The novel follows a group of American and British expatriates living in Paris, going on a fishing trip in Spain, and traveling to Spain for the bullfight. Important Quotations: Loss of Purpose, Unfulfilled, Discontent [Cohn:] "I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it." [Jake:] "Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters." "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another." "Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together." Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me. "Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?" Other Importance: Minimalist style marked by short declarative sentences. "Roman à clef": a novel in which real people or events appear with invented names
The Secret Garden
Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett YoP: 1911 Literary Period: end of Victorian Gothic, beginning of Realistic period Main Characters: Mary Lennox, Dickon Sowerby, Colin Craven, Ben Weatherstaff Minor Characters: Mrs. Sowerby, Martha Sowerby, Mrs. Medlock Major Themes & Symbols: damage of emotional and physical neglect, Imperialism (Anti-Imperialism), The Secret Garden = The Garden of Eden, the power of positive thinking, Magic and Religion, parallels between Mary, Colin, and the garden, parent/child relationships Plot (in brief): A young English girl named Mary, who lives in India with her parents gets sent to live with her Uncle, Mr. Craven, on the English moors after her parents die of cholera. While living with her Uncle at Misselthwaite Manor, Mary hears about a garden on the manor grounds that has been locked up since the death of Mr. Craven's wife. Mary is determined to find the key and door to this "secret garden," and once she does she becomes determined to bring the dying garden back to life. She befriends a local boy named Dickon, the younger brother of her maid Martha, who has a way with nature, and he helps her bring the garden to life and teaches her about the moors. She also befriends the ill and hypochondriac Colin, Mr. Craven's spoiled son. The moors and the garden slowly transform Mary and Colin, teaching them both how to have friends and be a friend, and helping them gain health and vitality. Important Quotations: 1. "One of the new things that people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts - just mere thoughts - are as powerful as electric batteries - as good for one as sunlight is... If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live" (beg. of ch. 27). 2. "Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow" (ch. 27). 3. "One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live for ever and ever and ever..." (beg. of ch. 21). 4. " 'Even if it isn't real Magic,' Colin said, 'we can pretend it is. Something is there - something!' " (ch. 23). Other Importance: children's literature
Canterbury Tales
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer YoP: 1390? Literary Period: Middle English Mini stories within the larger story, early frame narrative Early use of dialect "General Prologue," "Knight's Tale," "Miller's Tale," "Reeve's Tale," "The Cook's Tale" Fabliau: bawdy humor, sexual misadventures Plot: Pilgrims traveling through England to the shrine of the martyr Saint Thomas Becket decide to travel together and share entertaining stories. The host determines that each pilgrim will share two stories, then the winner of the best story will win a meal at Bailey's Tavern. Important Quotations: Other Importance:
Mill on the Floss
Author: George Eliot YoP: 1860 Literary Period: Victorian, but more similar to Realism Main Characters: Maggie Tulliver (protagonist), brother Tom, parents Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver, cousin Lucy and her fiancé Steven Guest Major Themes: education (business sense vs. academic/intellect); gender relations; sibling relationships; complications of love; religion vs. passion/reason/intellect Plot (in brief): Plot centers on antagonism with the Wakem family; Tom educated for practical knowledge, Maggie is the smarter sibling, but isn't sent to school. Important Quotations: Other Importance: Semi-autobiographical
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Author: Harriet Jacobs YoP: 1861 Literary Period: Early American Lit, Slave Narrative, Autobiography Main Characters: Linda (pseudonym for the author), Dr. Flint, Benjamin, Ellen, Aunt Martha, Mr. Sands, Mrs. Bruce Major Themes: slavery/freedom, motherhood, virtue and the woman's role, Psychological Trauma of Slavery Plot (in brief): Harriet Jacobs, under the pseudonym Linda Brent, relates the story of her life as a slave from her childhood to her eventual freedom. Linda struggles to choose between protecting herself from her abusive master and protecting her children, Benjamin and Ellen. Her narrative pays special attention to the hardships particular to women slaves and takes down the institution of slavery by showing how it destroys the humanity of both slaves and slaveowners. Important Quotations: "Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another." Jacobs demonstrates how her narrative differs from the autobiographical and sentimental conventions she has drawn upon: "Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage. I and my children are now free! We are as free from the power of slave holders as are the white people of the north; and though that, according to my ideas, is not saying a great deal, it is a vast improvement in my condition." Other Importance: Harriet Jacobs uses the engaging narration of sentimental novels and draws on the 19th century cult of domesticity to address white women in the north who do not understand the perils of slavery. She also narrates gory details of slave violence to shock the reader. Earliest Black Feminist Text. Stylistic Markers: Direct address to reader (engaging, calling for sympathy, didactic), First Person, "Slavery" personified
The Ambassadors
Author: Henry James YoP: 1903 Literary Period: proto-Modernism Main Characters: Strethers, Chad, Mrs. Newsome, Madame Marie de Vionnet, Maria Gostrey, Little Bilham Major Themes: the American abroad, the importance of place, doubling (ambassador=standing in for someone else), hybridity, modernity and acquisition vs. inheritance Plot (in brief): Important Quotations: Other Importance: Free Indirect Discourse, Internal Focalization, largely a series of conversations
The Castle of Otranto
Author: Horace Walpole YoP: 1764 Gothic Romance; First Gothic Novel Gothic Elements: architecture (castle, dungeons, trapdoors, labyrinths), virginal maiden pursued by lustful man and imprisoned, grotesque, including distortion, incest, and brutality towards women, supernatural events (helmet falling from sky, moving portrait, skeletal monk) Amatory intrigue, "found" text, fixation on female virtue characteristic of 18th century Allusions to Shakespeare's Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Midsummer Night Dream, Julius Caesar Main Characters: Manfred, Theodore, Hippolita, Matilda, Isabella, Conrad, Friar Jerome Major Themes: gender roles and female virtue, royal right, marriage, female empowerment (choose husbands, escape from men, rebellious daughter Plot (in brief): Important Quotations: Other Importance:
Dubliners
Author: James Joyce YoP: 1914 Literary Period: Realism, Irish Lit Main Characters: Father Flynn, Leo Dillon, Mahony, Mangan's sister, Eveline, Jimmy Doyle, Corley, Lenehan, Mrs. Mooney, Mr. Doran, Polly, Little Chandler, Gallaher, Mr. Kearney, Mr. Holohan, Maria, Farrington, Mr. Duffy, Mrs. Sinico, Tom Kernan Major Themes: Paralysis, the desire for escape, the intersection of life and death, betrayal, routine, epiphanyPlot (in brief): 15 short stories that reflect the every day life of the middle class during Irish Independence. "Araby": A boy falls in love with his friend's other sister but fails in his quest to buy her a worthy gift from the Araby bazaar. "The Dead": classified as a novella; Gabriel Conroy attends a party, and later, as he speaks with his wife, has an epiphany about the nature of life and death. Style: Straightforward language. Very different from the complicated, experimental, modernist language of Ulysses. Other Importance: Irish Literature—allows the Irish to observe and study themselves Mundane experiences reveal profound epiphanies
Cane
Author: Jean Toomer YoP: 1923 Literary Period: Harlem Renaissance Lyrical book comprised of vignettes with similar themes that evokes an overall impression rather than a unified narrative. Because the structure varies between short stories (7), poems (15), character sketches (6), and a play, the book is often called a composite novel or a short story cycle. The book makes a circular motion beginning in the South, moving to the North, and moving back to the South. Main Characters: Karintha, Becky, Avey, King Barlo, Fern, Esther, Carma, Dan Moore, Muriel, Kabnis Major Themes: race relations, gender roles, especially women as sex objects, miscegenation, sexuality Plot (in brief): 1. The first section takes place in rural Georgia and depicts the lives of poor blacks, with a particular focus on black women. 2. The second section takes place in the north in Chicago and Washington, D.C and depicts black urban life. 3. The third section consists entirely of the novella "Kabnis." It tells the story of a mixed race man who goes to Georgie to teach and is shocked by the harsh treatment of blacks. This section uses elements of drama with untagged dialogue and stage directions. Important Quotations: Other Importance: Its experimental structure identifies the book as an example of High Modernism.
Collected Poems, 1956-1987
Author: John Ashbery YoP: 2008 Literary Period: Main Characters: Major Themes: Plot (in brief): Important Quotations: Other Importance:
Songs and Sonnets
Author: John Donne YoP: 1590s Literary Period: Renaissance Poetry Major Themes: Love, poems often addressed to his beloved, thoughts/feelings of the beloved, not always positive—women lure men Metaphysical Poet: intellectual analysis of emotion, far-fetched but striking parallels, often argumentative constructive, dramatic, frequent use of hyperbole, paradox, and rhetorical questions, immediacy: always speaking to someone in present tense, colloquial language, uneven metrics, very little reference to classical mythology, ancient/medieval "The Flea" = the world The Petrarchan (used more often) and Shakespearean Sonnet
Paradise Lost
Author: John Milton YoP: 1667 Epic Poem in blank verse, elevated diction, sublime; writing to "justify the ways of God to man" Milton gives us the first and greatest of all wars (between God and Satan) and the first and greatest of all love affairs (between Adam and Eve). His theme is the destiny of the entire human race, caught up in the temptation and Fall of our first "grand parents." Main Characters: Satan (anti-hero), Adam, Eve, God, Son of God, Beelzebub, Michael Major Themes: the greatest sin is disobedience to God; two moral paths after disobedience: downward spiral of increasing sin (Satan) or remorse, repentance, and redemption (Adam and Eve); government/democracy/power (Satan as democratic figure; God as tyrannical figure, absolute monarch); ambiguous morality (Satan as sympathetic figure); spiritual love vs. lustful love; gender roles and marriage, Milton sets up a gender hierarchy, but Eve's character is fully developed, complex, and central to the Fall of mankind and its promised restoration. Unequal roles: Adam created for God, Eve created for God and Adam. Eve must submit to Adam out of love and duty to God; Hierarchical realm of the universe: God, the son of God, angels, humans, animals, Satan and fallen angels; hierarchy based on proximity to God; Satan creates his own hierarchy in hell, but he remains the lowest in the universal hierarchy; The Fall as "Felix Culpa," or partly fortunate: Adam and Eve's disobedience allows God to show his mercy through the son of God. Humankind must suffer pain and death, but, as a result of the Fall, humans can also experience mercy, salvation, and grace in ways that would not have been possible without the Fall.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Author: Junot Diaz YoP: 2008 Literary Period: Postmodern, Postcolonial Bildungsroman, Magic Realism (fuku, man with no face; zafa, the mongoose) Main Characters: Oscar, Yunior (primary narrator), Lola, Beli, La Inca Major Themes: violence linked with love; outcast/other; women as sexual objects (but used to their advantage); Dominican hyper-masculinity—abusive to the women they love; Oscar represents the Dominican diaspora; silence or "paginas en blanco" (missing manuscript, dashes for missing words) Plot (in brief): The novel depicts Dominican-American experience through the life of Oscar De Leon, an overweight Dominican boy who is obsessed with science fiction, falling in love, and the curse that plagues his family. The novel interweaves historical context of the dictator Trujillo, as well as the life expriences of Oscar's family. Style/Form: Uses direct address, multiple narrators, footnotes, street slang, pop culture references (esp. science fiction), Spanglish
Ceremony
Author: Leslie Marmon Silko YoP: 1977 Literary Period: Postmodern, Native American Lit Form: mixes poetry about Native American legends/creation stories (real Pueblo stories) within narrative (clash of Native American and White culture); the stories in the poems mirror Tayo's narrative Main Characters: Tayo (half-white, half-Laguna), his uncle Josiah, Auntie, her husband Robert, and son Rocky; Harley, Rocky, Tayo, and Emo all fought in WWII Major Themes: storytelling, PTSD and war experience, identity and heritage, guilt, Native American experience, tradition and change, collective memory (war as a shared experience), cultural miscegenation and clash of cultures, nature (fire, wind, drought) Important Quotations: "I will tell you something about stories, [he said] They aren't just for entertainment. Don't be fooled They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death. You don't have anything if you don't have the stories. Their evil is mighty but it can't stand up to our stories. So they try to destroy the stories let the stories be confused or forgotten They would like that They would be happy Because we would be defenseless then." Non-linear Narrative: (1) WWII, (2) post-war, (3) present. End of novel ends the poem, "Sunrise," that begins in the epigraph. Symbolizes the circular nature of time in the novel, which mirrors The Pueblo Native Americans' view of time as cyclical rather than linear.
Little Women
Author: Louisa May Alcott YoP: 1868/1869 Literary Period: Romantic, Transcendentalist, Bildungsroman set from Civil War to America's Gilded Age Main Characters: Margaret "Meg" March (vanity, beauty, riches, domestic); Josephine "Jo" March (tomboy, quick temper); Elizabeth "Beth" March (traditional values, quiet, submissive, domestic); Amy Curtis March (ditzy, ambitious); Mr. and Mrs. (Marmee) March; Laurie (neighbor who lives with Mr. Laurence) Mr. Brooke (Meg's husband), Mr. Bhaer (Jo's husband) Major Themes: gender identity, role of women, female independence, family dynamics, morality Critiques the traditional role of submissive women, but valorizes the characteristics of compassion, charity, and agreeableness. Uses direct address to actual reader, especially in part two. Allusions: John Bunyon's Pilgrims Progress, Charles Dickens Bleakhouse Plot (in brief): Part I: domestic sphere, set at the girls' home Part II: the girls' development into women Important Quotations: Other Importance:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Author: Mark Twain YoP: 1885 Literary Period: Reconstruction Era, Realism Main Characters: Huck Finn (narrator), Jim, Tom, Widow Douglas, Mrs. Watson, Pap, Duke and Dauphin Major Themes: childhood, religious satire, morality, racism and slavery, intelligence vs. education, civilized society, freedom, friendship Motifs: Mississippi River (pastoral, freedom from society/civilization in nature), organized religion (hypocrisy) vs. superstition, capital (necessary but corrupting) Unreliable Narration: Huck believes he has made a "wicked" decision by helping Jim escape slavery, but we, the reader, know that he is good. Huck is unreliable in that he misregards his own character. A narrator is unreliable when he speaks against the norms of the work. Pastoral: iterative narration during the scenes on the Mississippi River shows the timelessness of nature, the desire to be away from prejudice of society Other Importance: frequently banned for its use of the n-word/racism. Hemingway cited it as "the one book from which all modern American literature came"
The Sovereignty and Goodness of God
Author: Mary Rowlandson YoP: 1682 Literary Period: early American Lit, autobiography, captivity narrative Main Characters: Mary Rowlandson (narrator and protagonist), Reverend Joseph Rowlandson (husband), their children Joseph (captive), Mary (captive), and Sarah (died from wounds), and King Philip, leader of the Wampanoag Indians. Major Themes: prisoner/freedom, power and loss of, survival, civilization vs. savagery, Christianity, fear of "going native," woman's virtue Plot (in brief): After a brutal massacre against British settlers, Mary Rowlandson is taken captive by Indians from her home in New England. Her narration of her time in captivity and eventual restoration to civilization is organized into the twenty "removes," or moving from place to place, that occur. During her 11 weeks in captivity, Rowlandson sews for her captors in exchange for food and finds solace and meaning in her Christian faith. Important Quotations: Rowlandson believes God is testing her faith through trials: "The Lord hereby would make us the more acknowledge His hand, and to see that our help is always in Him" (258). Rowlandson credits God for her salvation and writes her narrative for His glory: "O the wonderful power of God that I have seen, and the experience that I have had...I speak it in the presence of God and to his Glory" (285). Scripture with Biblical reference frequently interwoven into narrative: "Then I may say as Job 6.7, 'The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat'" (277). Rowlandson frequently aligns the Indians with the language of hell: "dancing devils," "heathen," "barbarous creatures," "like the liar from the beginning." Other Importance: First captivity narrative, which became the first genre of American Lit. Also known as, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. No mention of sexual violence; Rowlandson claims to have preserved her purity while in captivity so she can assimilate into civilization. Stylistic Markers: first person narration, sermon-y, Scripture references, hell/devil metaphors to refer to the Indians, some Indian language like "papoose"
Invisible Man
Author: Ralph Ellison YoP: 1952 Literary Period: Modernism, African American Lit, Existentialism, Bildungsroman Main Characters: The Narrator (nameless protagonist of the novel), Brother Jack, Tod Clifton, Ras the Exhorter, Dr. Bledsoe, Mr. Norton, Rinehart Major Themes: race relations, double consciousness, stereotypes, Is Brotherhood formed by ideology or race? Plot (in brief): The underground narrator begins his story by claiming that he is an "invisible man" as a result of others' refusal to see him. He tells his life story beginning with his naive youth in the South, where he is humiliated by white men in his town who invite him to give a speech, but force him to fight in a "battle royal" against other blindfolded young black men for their entertainment. He is expelled from college after showing a white trustee the "black" side of the community. He arrives in Harlem, where he finally finds a job working at a paint factory. After a work-related injury, he wakes up in the factory hospital to experimental electric shock treatments. His impassioned speech against evictions gains community attention, and he is recruited by the Brotherhood to be their spokesman for Harlem. After violent race riots in Harlem, the narrator ends up living underground where he writes his life story. Important Quotations: "And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man" (564). "What was I, a man or a natural resource?" (297). Other Importance: Experimental Style, Ellison attempted to create the literary equivalent of jazz music.
Cathedral
Author: Raymond Carver YoP: 1983 Literary Period: Dirty Realism Collection of 12 short stories Style: Minimalist, "zero endings," dialogue mimics realistic speech Dirty Realism focuses on down-and-out, blue-collar, middle class people facing bleak truths, disappointments, and small revelations in their ordinary lives. "Cathedral": best short story Main Characters: the narrator, his wife, her friend Robert (the blind man) Major Themes: blindness and seeing vs. looking, change in perspective, marriage, failed communication Plot (in brief): The narrator has a profound experience while unhappily hosting his wife's blind friend. Important Quotations: Other Importance:
Waiting for Godot
Author: Samuel Beckett YoP: 1952 Literary Period: Modernism (transitional Modernism/Postmodernism) Tragicomedy, Surrealism Theatre of the Absurd: postmodern theater movement in the 1950s written by primarily European playwrights who abandon conventional dramatic form to portray the existentialist theme of the futility of human struggle in a senseless world. Modernist for its experimental lack of plot, lack of character development and failure to adhere to dramatic convention. Surrealist because it has no clear system of logic, rules, or values. Minimalist style Main Characters: Estragon "Gogo," Validimir "Didi," Pozzo, Lucky, the Boy Major Themes: inability to act, existentialism Motifs: repetition, pairs, Biblical allusions Plot (in brief): Estragon and Vladimir pass the time with repetitive habitual acts while they wait endlessly and in vain for the arrival of Godot. Important Quotations: Estragon: "Let's go." Vladimir: "We can't." Estragon: "Why not?" Vladimir: "We're waiting for Godot." Estragon: "Ah!" Other Importance:
The Wasteland
Author: T.S. Eliot YoP: 1922 Literary Period: Modernism, Poem Addresses the fragmentation and alienation characteristic of modern culture. Eliot draws on wide cultural references to depict a modern world that is in ruins, yet somehow beautiful and deeply meaningful. Major Themes: alienation, war, decline and decay of postwar modernity, memory, especially remembering the dead Known for its allusions: Biblical, Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, St. Augustine, epics, mythology Contains multiple languages: German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Sanskrit Multiple speakers, settings, religions 1. The Burial of the Dead 2. A Game of Chess 3. The Fire Sermon 4. Death by Water 5. What the Thunder Said Important Quotations: collage effect Alludes to The Canterbury Tales and The Tempest
Utopia
Author: Thomas More YoP: 1516 Literary Period: Renaissance Main Characters: Thomas More, Peter Giles, Raphael Hythloday Major Themes: communism, conformity, proper role of government, wealth and distribution of wealth, religion, war, social class disparity Plot (in brief): Thomas More recounts Hithloday's account of an island country called Utopia, the perfect society. Important Quotations: Other Importance: influenced by Plato's Republic, later influences Communist Party (no more private property) and middle class liberal (free education)
The Things They Carried
Author: Tim O'Brien YoP: 1990 Literary Period: Post-modern; war novel Main Characters: Narrator (Tim O'Brien?), Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins, Kiowa, Mary Anne Major Themes: physical and emotional burdens (guilt, fear, reputations), motivated by fear of shame, storytelling and blur between fact and fiction Plot (in brief): The narrator recounts a series of events which are centered around the Vietnam War, including his near- draft dodging, war experiences, and post-war comprehension of Important Quotations: "They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment." "By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain." "I'd come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person, a college grad, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, all the credentials, but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight of the simple daily realities. I'd turned mean inside." Other Importance: semi-autobiographical, metaficiton Identification Clues: Discussion of fiction/fact and what IS storytelling?
Beloved
Author: Toni Morrison YoP: 1987 Literary Period: English Literature After 1960 Setting: Reconstruction Era, late 1800s Main Characters: Sethe, Beloved, Denver, Paul D, Baby Suggs, Halle Suggs Major Themes: slavery and freedom, identity/naming and the agency of language, memory, home and community, motherhood, female relationships, survival, storytelling, spirituality, allusions to Christianity with sacrifice Plot (in brief): Sethe escapes slavery in Kentucky and runs to Cincinatti, Ohio with her three children. After twenty-eight days of freedom with her mother-in-law, four slaveowners find her to bring her back under the Fugitive Slave Act. Rather than face slavery again and put her children in danger, Sethe kills her two-year-old daughter and marks her tombstone with "Beloved." After being haunted by the baby's ghost for eighteen years, a young woman named Beloved shows up to love and torment Sethe and her only remaining child, Denver. Important Quotations: Each of the novel's three parts begins with a statement about the haunted house at 124 Bluestone Road: 124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom" (3). Sethe's thoughts on why she killed her daughter and her feelings towards her children: "And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them" (192). The institution of slavery and dehumanization: "White people believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle" (234). Identity and redemption: "You your best thing, Sethe. You are" (322). Other Importance: Magical Realism, African American Literature, Psychic Trauma of Slavery, Pulitzer Prize 1988, 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, Oprah stars in the film adaptation
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Author: Unknown YoP: 1390? Literary Period: Middle English, Chivalric Romance "Alliterative Revival": replaces meter and rhyme with longer, alliterative lines with each stanza ending in five short lines rhyming a b a b a, known as "bob and wheel" where the shortest first line is the "bob" and the last four lines, often with internal rhyme, form the "wheel" Early Quest Main Characters: Gawain, Lord Bertilak, Lady Bertilak, the Green Knight (Bertilak in disguise) Major Themes: chivalry, bravery, honest, courtly love, Christianity, temptation and moral virtue Important Quotations: "There hurtles in at the hall-door an unknown rider, One the greatest on ground in growth of his frame: From broad neck to buttocks so bulky and thick, And his loins and his legs so long and so great, Half a giant on earth I hold him to be, But believe him no less than the largest of men, And the seemliest in his stature to see, as he rides, For in back and in breast though his body was grim, His waist in its width was worthily small, And formed with every feature in fair accord was he. Great wonder grew in hall At his hue most strange to see, For man and gear and all Were green as green could be." -Narrator (136-150) "But if a dullard should dote, deem it no wonder, And through the wiles of a woman be wooed into sorrow, For so was Adam by one, when the world began, And Solomon by many more, and Samson the mighty— Delilah was his doom, and David thereafter Was beguiled by Bathsheba, and bore much distress... For these were proud princes, most prosperous of old, Past all lovers lucky, that languished under heaven, bemused. And one and all fell prey To women they had used; If I be led astry, Methinks I may be excused." -Gawain (2414-2419, 2422-2428) Other Importance:
The Second Shepherd's Play
Author: Unknown (Wakefield Master) YoP: 1500? Literary Period: Medieval Mystery Play Main Characters: the three shepherds, Coll, Gyb, and Daw; the sheep-stealing couple, Mak and Gill; Mary, the mother of Christ; an Angel; baby Jesus Major Themes: By linking the comic subplot of sheep-stealers with the solemn story of Christ's nativity, the play reminds the audiences of the two-fold nature of man's existence—the real world on earth and the spiritual afterlife. Plot (in brief): The play imagines the biblical Visitation of the Shepherds at Christ's birth with an inventive subplot in which the shepherds must first rescue one of their sheep from the comically evil sheep-stealing couple, Mak and Gill, before visiting the newborn Messiah. Important Quotations: Stylistic Markers: Middle English. The stanza is traditionally printed as nine lines with an opening quatrain of four long lines with an internal rhyme scheme. The 1994 edition revises the stanza as "thirteeners" rhyming a b a b a b a b c d d d c Other Importance:
Mrs. Dalloway
Author: Virginia Woolf YoP: 1925 Literary Period: Modernism Main Characters: Clarissa Dalloway, Septimus Smith, Peter Walsh Major Themes: communication vs. privacy—the struggle to form meaningful connections in the disjointed postwar world; disillusionment with British Empire—as English citizens, the characters feel the failure of the empire as strongly as they feel their own personal failures (loss of old order); fear of death; oppression of religion, science, and social convention; marriage and identity Major Motif: time Plot (in brief): The novel depicts the subjective experiences and memories of its central characters of a single day in post-World War I London. Style: Stream of consciousness, Free indirect discourse, Immediate past tense Long sentences, very little dialogue Important Quotations: "For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life." "She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."
Leaves of Grass
Author: Walt Whitman YoP: 1855, first edition Literary Period: Post-Romantic, influenced by Transcendentalism Major Themes: America, nature, working class everyday man, very inclusive of all races, gender, classes, unification of body, mind, and spirit, sensual imagery Interconnectedness of the body and soul "Father of Free Verse" Frequent use of lists "Song of Myself" uses universal I that represents the narrator as well as every person, 52 sections "I Sing The Body Electric" explores the physical body at length, celebrates the primacy of the body and its importance in forging connections between people.
Selected Poems and Four Plays of WBY
Author: William Butler Yeats YoP: written 1880s-1930s, published 1962 Literary Period: Victorian-Modernism Celebrating Ireland and poetic form, folklore, mythology→ → →political, Irish Nationalist "The Second Coming" "Easter 1916" "Purgatory" Important Quotations: Other Importance: Irish Lit
The Sound and the Fury
Author: William Faulkner YoP: 1929 Literary Period: Modernism Main Characters: Caddy Compson, Quentin Compson, Benjy Compson, Jason Compson, Miss Quentin, Mr. Jason Compson, Mrs. Caroline Compson, Dilsey Major Themes: time, place, decline of the Old South, Southern Gothic, sibling relationships: all Compson brothers are obsessed with their sister, Caddy. Benjy sees Caddy as a mother figure, Quentin fixates on his sister's purity/promiscuity and fabricates a narrative of incest between them. Jason sees his sister's pregnancy as the cause of the family's downfall and resents her for losing him a job in banking. Plot (in brief): The novel tells of the fall of the Compson family and the decline of the Old South as the family loses their faith, financial standing, and the respect of the Jefferson community. Benjy's section introduces us to the Compsons on Easter weekend in 1928 through the voice of the developmentally challenged youngest brother. Quentin's section describes the day of his suicide while at Harvard University in 1910. Jason's section brings us back to the present as he narrates his obsession with money and hatred towards his sister and her daughter. The fourth section focuses on the black servant, Dilsey, and Jason as Miss Quentin runs away with her uncle's money. Important Quotations: Other Importance: stream of consciousness, four narrative voices: Benjy, Quentin, Jason, and the author, Faulkner experimented with italicized text to show shift in narrative time, unreliable narration, Faulkner added an appendix to the novel to fill in the gaps of characterization and reveal the characters' fates.
The Tempest
Author: William Shakespeare YoP: 1610? Literary Period: Main Characters: Prospero, Miranda, Antonio, Ariel, Caliban, Ferdinand, Alonso Major Themes: justice, love (marriage), magic, royal right, the "other" (Caliban) Plot (in brief): Important Quotations: Other Importance: last Shakespeare play; Prospero's metafictional ending commentary
Lyrical Ballads
Author: Wordsworth and Coleridge YoP: 1798 Marked the start of the English Romantic movement Narrative—each poem tells a story; Colloquial Language; poetry should be about nature; the focus on simple, uneducated country people as the subject of poetry marked a signal shift to modern literature. Wordsworth emphasizes the use of prose language in poetry; Coleridge uses more musical, rhyming language Major Themes: return to the original state of nature, in which people led a purer existence; Wordsworth believed that humanity was essentially good but corrupted by society, feelings/emotion, death, motherhood, memory and past, supernatural element "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Simon Lee," "Old Man Traveling," "Tin Turn Abbey," "The Thorn" Important Quotations: From Rime of the Ancient Mariner: "He holds him with his glittering eye —The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years child: The Mariner hath his will." (Part 1) "Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire. O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. The self-same moment I could pray; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea." (Part 4) "Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all. The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar, Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest Turned from the bridegroom's door. He [Wedding Guest] went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn." (Part 7) From "Lines Above Tintern Abbey: "Though absent long/These forms of beauty have not been to me/As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, And passing even into my purer mind/With tranquil restoration:—feelings too/Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps, As may have had no trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love." "...that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on, Until, the breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things." Other Importance:
White Teeth
Author: Zadie Smith YoP: 2000 Literary Period: Contemporary Main Characters: Jones family—Archie and his second wife, Clara, and their daughter Irie (Jamaican); Iqbal family—Samad and his wife, Alsana, and twins Millat, Magid (Bengali); Chalfen family —husband Marcus and son, Joshua (English) Divided into sections based on characters; third person but focalized through one character Major Themes: immigration and integration, national identity, religion, science, morality, race, past vs. present and memory, fate vs. free will, gender roles and women's identity in contemporary London Plot (in brief): The novel focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends and their families in London. Important Quotations: Other Importance:
Things Fall Apart
Author: Chinua Achebe YoP: 1958 Literary Period: Post-colonialism Main Characters: Okwonko, Ekwefi, Ezinma Minor Characters: Ikemefuna, Obierika, Chielo Major Themes and symbolism: Masculinity in Igbo culture, pride (hubris), clash of cultures, conflict between change and tradition, the use of religion as a way to control people, locusts are a symbol of the Europeans (the locusts in ch. 7 foreshadow the arrival of the Europeans later in the book), African oral literature and folktales (the language used to tell Okwonko's story and the repetition of sentences is reminiscent of oral literature and folktales), fire = masculinity. Plot (in brief): In 1890s Nigeria a man named Okwonko works hard to overcome his father's legacy of laziness. The main thing Okwonko cares about is being seen as a "man." His pride eventually alienates his son and leads to his 7 year exile from the Umuofia village. When he finally returns to Umuofia he finds everything changed. European white men have infiltrated his fatherland. They set up schools, a government, and churches. As the tensions between European society and culture and African society and culture escalate, Okwonko feels like it is his duty to make sure his culture comes out on top. Important Quotations: 1. "He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger" (last page), 2. "Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten" (ch. 1), 3. "Okwonko never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength" (ch. 4), 4. "Your duty is to comfort your wives and children and take them back to your fatherland after seven years. But if you allow sorrow to weigh you down and kill you, they will all die in exile" (ch. 14). Other Importance: African Literature
Geography III
Author: Elizabeth Bishop YoP: 1976 Literary Period: Main Characters: Major Themes: Plot (in brief): Important Quotations: Other Importance:
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe YoP: 1852 Anti-slavery novel, pre-Civil War Stowe's goal was to convince Northern readers of the necessity of ending slavery in response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Sentimental Novel: heart wrenching scenes + moralizing rhetoric First widely read political novel, protest lit Main Characters: Uncle Tom, Eliza and George Harris, St. Clare, Eva, Ophelia, Simon Legree, Tom Loker, Cassy, Emmeline, Arthur and George Shelby Major Themes: the evil and immorality of slavery; redemption of Christianity and its incompatibility with slavery (the more religious a character is, the more he or she objects to slavery); supernatural events against slavery explained as divine intervention; moral authority of women: female empowerment/women as agents of social change (Eliza saves her family, Eva models ideal Christianity); redefines masculinity from aggressive and dominant colonizers to compassionate citizens—must redefine manhood so men could oppose slavery without jeopardizing their self-image; family (and how slavery separates) Style: Engaging Narration, Melodrama, Domestic Fiction, preachy Other Importance: Popularized black stereotypes, such as "Uncle Tom," mammy, pickaninny, happy darky, sexualized mulatto Important Quotations: This passage between Senator Bird and his wife condemns slavery as opposing Christianity, portrays a woman as the moralizing figure of the family, and specifically attacks the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: "You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures! It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!...I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow"
Benito Cereno
Author: Herman Melville YoP: 1855 Literary Period: early American lit, novella, sea adventure, mystery Main Characters: Captain Don Benito Cereno, Captain Amasa Delano (focalizer), Babo (Cereno's black servant and leader of revolt) Major Themes: master/slave relationship, race relations. Who's the antagonist: the revolting slaves, or their white slaveholders? Is the novella anti- or pro-slavery? Plot (in brief): Off the coast of Chile in 1799, Captain Delano of The Bachelor's Delight decides to investigate a ship in apparent distress. Once on board the Spanish ship San Dominick, Delano becomes suspicious of the strange passivity of the captain, Benito Cereno, and the inappropriate behavior of the slaves on board. Delano dismisses the strange behavior as a result of the crew's suffering from sickness, storms, and lack of supplies and offers his help. When Delano returns to his own ship, Cereno jumps after him, and it is revealed that the slaves had revolted and taken command of the ship. Court documents explain that Babo, the leader of the revolt who masqueraded as Cereno's faithful servant, orchestrated a plan to force the surviving white men to pretend all was normal aboard the ship. Important Quotations: Inscription on hull of ship: "Follow Your Leader." After Cereno's death, the story ends with "Benito Cereno...did, indeed, follow his leader" (235). Does this refer to his friend and the ship's captain, Alexandro Aranda? Or is the Babo the true leader? This famous line occurs at the end of the story, and serves as the epitaph to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: "'You are saved,' cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and pained; 'you are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?' 'The Negro'" (234). Delano sees slaves as docile pets, never suspecting that he has been tricked by the cunning Babo: "The Negro....the most pleasing body servant in the world; one, too, whom a master need be on no stiffly superior terms with, but may treat with familiar trust - less a servant than a devoted companion" (159). "In fact, like most men of a good, blithe heart, Captain Delano took to Negroes, not philanthropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs" (196). Other Importance: Internally focalized through Captain Delano's unreliable perception of the events. Melville's major source for the novella comes from the 1817 memoir of the real Captain Amasa Delano.
Mumbo Jumbo
Author: Ishmael Reed YoP: 1972 Literary Period: Postmodern, Magic Realism, African American Lit, Revisionist History Experimental Form: photos, radio dispatches, letters, illustrations, poems Different fonts, sizes, footnotes, limited use of commas Major Themes: white oppression and appropriation of black culture Plot (in brief): Important Quotations: Other Importance:
Remains of the Day
Author: Kuzuo Ishiguro YoP: 1989 Literary Period: Historical Post-WWII England Main Characters: Mr. Stevens, Miss Kenton, Lord Darlington, Mr. Farraday, Mr. William Stevens Major Themes: social class, dignity and duty, performativity, nostalgia and loss of the old order, memory, American vs. European society Plot (in brief): Follows the six day trip of the butler, Mr. Stevens to visit Miss Kenton, the previous housekeeper of Darlington Hall. He receives a letter from Miss Kenton that makes him believe her marriage is unhappy and she wants to return to Darlington Hall. Important Quotations: "Dignity is keeping with one's position." Other Importance: unreliable narration
The Woman Warrior
Author: Maxine Hong Kingston YoP: 1976 Collection of Memoirs, Creative Nonfiction Main Characters: Kingston, Brave Orchid (mother), Moon Orchid (aunt) Major Themes: the role of women in Chinese society, silence (both gendered and racially constituted) power of written word, memory, family and community, Chinese vs. American femininity Motifs: ghosts—American and Chinese, malevolent, ancestral, everyday; her mother refers to all white people as ghosts, Kingston refers to ancestors and silenced women as ghosts Plot (in brief): Throughout the book's five chapters, Kingston blends autobiography with old Chinese folktales. The book provides a complex portrayal of the 20th century experiences of Chinese-Americans living in the U.S. in the shadow of the Chinese Revolution. Important Quotations: Other Importance:
Astrophil and Stella
Author: Philip Sidney YoP: 1580? 108 sonnets, 8 songs Major Themes: writing and metatextual, love as painful and trapping, reason versus love and passion Undermines Petrarchan love conventions (e.g. "not at first sight") and uses unconventional metaphors Uses Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets; most popular cycle of Elizabethan poetry Most Poems reference the woman, "Stella"
Frankenstein
Author: Mary Shelley YoP: 1818 Literary Period: Technically in the Romantic period, but has Victorian Gothic themes (see other importance). Victorian period was from 1837-1901. Main Characters: Walton, Victor Frankenstein, the Monster/Creature, Elizabeth Lavenza, Henry Clerval Minor Characters: William, Justine, within the monster's story - Felix, Agatha, De Lacey (old man), Safie Major Themes: the importance of companionship, the power and danger of knowledge, danger of ambition, nature Plot (in brief): Victor Frankenstein attempts to create life and ends up creating a monster. The monster, rejected by society, feels alone and seeks revenge on Frankenstein. He kills Frankenstein's younger brother, William, and frames his friend, Justine, for the murder. Frankenstein sinks into a pit of despair and regret over creating the monster. The monster approaches Frankenstein and implores him to make a female companion for him. Frankenstein at first agrees, but later refuses to make the monster a companion. Important Quotations: 1. "It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or, in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world" (ch. 2), 2. "treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation" (ch. 3), 3. "how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow" (ch. 4), 4. "Alas! why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows, and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us" (ch. 10), 5. "I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous" (ch. 10), 6. "Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed" (Walton, in continuation). Other Importance: Interesting use of frame narrative, Victorian Gothic themes: abject, combination of science with spiritualism and horror.
Midnight's Children
Author: Salman Rushdie YoP: 1981 Literary Period: Postcolonial, Magical Realism, Postmodern Main Characters: Saleem Sinai, Aadam Aziz, Naseem Aziz, Amina Sinai (Mumtaz), Ahmed Sinai, Mary Pereira, Shiva, Parvati-the-witch, Padma, Jamila Singer (Brass Monkey) Major Themes: Saleem's life acts as an allegory of the history of postcolonial India. Violence against different religions, classes, languages, and geographical regions. Unreliability of memory and narration, especially memory versus historical truth. Destruction versus creation, especially storytelling as creation. Identity and naming. Language: primarily English, sprinkled with Hindu and Urdi to create a hybrid, slang language. Plot (in brief): Saleem Sinai, the narrator and protagonist, explains that he was born at the exact moment of India's independence and begins to tell his life's story as he nears his thirty-first birthday and fears his death is imminent. Saleem begins by narrating his family's history leading up to his birth, where a nurse swaps the name tag on the two baby boys born at midnight, thereby giving the poor born Saleem a life of privilege and the high born Shiva a life in the slums. Because of his birth at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem receives national attention and celebrity. After a strange incident in a washing chest, Saleem begins to hear a multitude of voices in his head and discovers his power of telepathy. Eventually, he learns to communicate with the other Midnight's Children, all born during the midnight hour of India's birth and all possessing various supernatural abilities. After surgery on his enormous cucumber-like nose, Saleem loses his powers, but instead gains the power of smell that gives him supernatural tracking ability and the ability to smell emotions. After his family is killed by a war bomb, Saleem's injury causes him to lose his memory and revert to an animalistic state. He finds himself recruited to the Pakistani military as a tracker, but escapes with help from Parvati-the-witch, a fellow Midnight's Child. Disappointed that Saleem won't marry her, Parvati becomes pregnant with his enemy Shiva's child. Shiva captures Saleem and the government forces him to give up the names of the Midnight's Children, who are then rounded up and sterilized to diminish any political threat. Important Quotations: Memory vs. Historical Accuracy: "'Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own'" (242). Saleem places himself at the center and root of major political events: "Let me state this quite unequivocally: it is my firm conviction that the hidden purpose of the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965 was nothing more nor less than the elimination of my benighted family from the face of the earth" (386). Individual private life and the collective public: "To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world. I told you that" (121). Saleem acknowledges his unreliability and the privilege of storytelling: "Rereading my work, I have discovered an error in chronology. The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi occurs, in these pages, on the wrong date. But I cannot say, now, what the actual sequence of events might have been; in my India, Gandhi will continue to die at the wrong time. Does one error invalidate the entire fabric?" (190). Other Importance: Saleem uses film language to describe scenes: "Close-up of my grandfather's right hand: nails knuckles fingers all somehow bigger than you'd expect...(we cut to a long-shot--nobody from Bombay should be without a basic film vocabulary) as he entered the hotel foyer" (30). Engaging Narration: "Please believe that I am falling apart" (36). Frequent switch between "I" and "he" unnatural narration: "I must doggedly insist that I, he, had begun again" (403). Frequently references The Arabian Nights and the literary significance of 1,001. Booker Prize 1981 and "Booker of Bookers." Despite the critical success of Midnight's Children, Rushdie is most famous for his controversial novel "The Satanic Verses" for its sacrilegious and critical portrayal of Islam. The novel is banned in India and prompted the Iranian government to issue a religious ruling for Rushdie's death.
Angels in America
Author: Tony Kushner YoP: 1993 Literary Period: Postmodern, Political Drama Main Characters: Louis Ironson, Prior Walter, Joe Pitt, Harper Pitt, Roy M. Cohn, Hannah Pitt, Belize, The Angel Major Themes: homosexuality, AIDS crisis, mental illness and addiction, allusions to Christianity, religion: Mormon and Jewish, politics, identity and labeling, characters include supernatural beings and ghosts Plot (in brief): The play focuses on two troubled marriages, the gay couple Louis and Prior and the straight, Mormon couple Joe and Harper. After Prior is diagnosed with AIDS, Louis panics and struggles to remain in the relationship and care for Prior. Meanwhile, Joe, is offered a high profile job in D.C., but his Valium-addicted wife begs him not to leave. The lives of the two couples intersect when Louis and Joe meet at work, and Louis suspects Joe is a closeted homosexual. After Prior tells Harper that her husband is gay in a drug-induced hallucination, Harper confronts her husband. Joe reveals that he has struggled with his sexuality and religion his entire life. Joe and Louis grow closer, and Joe comes out of the closet to his mother, Hannah, and declines the job offer. Harper leaves Joe in the same scene that Louis moves out on Prior. As he nears death, Prior is visited by the ghosts of two ancestors and a supernatural angel who proclaims, "The Great Work Begins." Important Quotations: "Imagination can't create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions...So when we think we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it's really only the same ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable" (32). "Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian...Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout" (45). "there are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there's only the political" (92) Other Importance: Full Title: "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes" Part One: Millennium Approaches and Part Two: Perestroika; Tony Award Winner, 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Beowulf
Author: Unknown YoP: 700-900? Literary Period: Old English Main Characters: Beowulf, Hrothgar the Danish king, Unferth a Danish warrior, Grendel, Grendel's mother, Wiglaf the warrior/servant to Beowulf Elegaic, Grand Style, Christianity Major Themes: The value of bravery/courage, the question of how good and evil coexist (consider the spin-off story, "Grendel" by J. Gardner), reputations are important, (not exactly a theme but) references to Cain and other Biblical references Important Quotations: "So times were pleasant for the people there until finally one, a fiend out of hell, began to work his evil in the world. Grendel was the name of this grim demon haunting the marches, marauding round the heath and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time in misery among the banished monsters, Cain's clan, whom the creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts" (Narrator, 99-107); "Beowulf got ready, donned his war-gear, indifferent to death; his mighty, hand-forged, fine-webbed mail would soon meet with the menace underwater. It would keep the bone-cage of his body safe: . . [His helmet] was of beaten gold, princely headgear hooped and hasped by a weapon-smith who had worked wonders. . . " (Narrator, 1442-1452); "O flower of warriors, beware of that trap. Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part, eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride. For a brief while your strength is in bloom but it fades quickly; and soon there will follow illness or the sword to lay you low, or a sudden fire or surge of water or jabbing blade or javelin from the air or repellent age. Your piercing eye will dim and darken; and death will arrive, dear warrior, to sweep you away." (Hrothgar, 1758-1768) Other Importance: The oldest surviving long poem in Old English. Widely taught in high schools and colleges (students may write their own boast or taunt). Identification Clues: Mention of "thanes," "givers of rings," courage/honor/manliness, passages that read as a boast or "sermon"
The Souls of Black Folk
Author: W.E.B. DuBois YoP: 1903 Literary Period: African American Lit, Sociology Thesis: Blacks in the South need the right to vote, the right to a good education, and to be treated with equality and justice. He coins the term "double consciousness" as the "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity." Chapter I "Of Our Spiritual Strivings": The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line. Uses famous metaphor of "the veil" as a visual manifestation of the color line. Each essay begins with intertextual poems followed by bars of music. Direct address to the reader, especially in the last chapter.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Author: Zora Neale Hurston YoP: 1937 Literary Period: African American Lit, Southern Lit, Feminist Lit Main Characters: Janie Crawford, Logan Killicks, Joe (Jody) Starks, Tea Cake Major Themes: gender relations, marriage, sexuality, language: speech and silence Plot (in brief): In response to town gossip after she returns home after a long absence, forty-year-old Janie Crawford tells her story to her friend, Pheoby. Janie's life can be separated into her three marriages. First, her grandmother marries her off to a much older farmer named Logan Killicks in hopes that Janie will find security. Janie is miserable with her unromantic husband who treats her like an employee, and she finds herself falling in love with the charismatic Joe Starks. Janie runs off with Joe to the all-black town Eatonville, where he hopes to be a community leader. Joe quickly becomes the mayor, postmaster, storekeeper, and biggest landlord in town. Life becomes monotonous for Janie because Joe shields her from any social interaction as he shapes her into his ideal wife. Janie finally lashes out at Joe in front of the town, and he becomes ill as their marriage falls apart. On his deathbed, Janie chastises him for the way he treated her during their two decades of marriage. Janie falls in love with Tea Cake, a man twelve years her junior, despite gossip in the town. They move to the Everglades, and Tea Cake is bitten by a rabid dog during a hurricane. He attacks Janie, and she is forced to shoot and kill him. Important Quotations: "Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin' but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nig... man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don't tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nig... woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see" (14). Stylistic Markers: heavy, difficult dialect Other Importance:
