American Literature part 2 ?102/ 304
Consistent with the poetry of the era, Anne 's ____________ poems, such as "Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666," and "In Reference to Her Children, 23 June 1659," offered moral interpretation of events through imagery and allusion to the classics and the Bible.
Bradstreet's
Thornton Wilder earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1928 for his novel The of San Luis Rey (1927), in which the Franciscan Brother Juniper chronicles the stories of a group of travelers in Peru who die when a bridge over a canyon collapses as they are crossing it. Characters include the Marquesa de Montemayor and the child Pepita, the twin Esteban, Uncle Pio, and La Périchole's son, Jaimé.
Bridge
William Hill wrote what is considered the first American novel, The Power of Sympathy (1789), a fictitious romance based upon the contemporary scandal between Perez and Sarah Morton and Sarah Morton's sister.
Brown Brown also wrote the novel Ira and Isabella; or, The Natural Children (1807), with a similar plot as his first novel, yet with a happy ending. In addition, Brown wrote verse fables, a comedy, and West Point Preserved (1797), a tragedy.
Ezra Pound's free-verse (1925) __________weave together social commentary, mythology, and history, sprinkled with words from many languages. The fragmented effect is consistent with Imagism, the portrayal of distinct images rather than discussion about them.
Cantoes
Confident that he could write a better book than the English novel he was reading to his wife, James Fenimore ___________ accepted her challenge with Precaution (1820), a society novel, and The Spy (1821), an instant success about the American Revolution.
Cooper Cooper wrote tales of dramatic adventure in the frontier and on the sea—32 novels in all. His novels imitated the form of English novels, yet used Americanized settings. His first bestseller was The Pioneers (1823), about the American frontier. Cooper is considered the Father of the American Novel.
One of America's most popular 20th-century poets, Robert_____________ , used traditional verse forms and plain rural speech in his New England poetry. One of his most well-known poems is "The Road Not Taken" (1916), which begins "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . ." and explores choices and their results.
Frost
Sara Willis Parton, whose pseudonym was Fanny _________, wrote Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time (1855), a fictional satire of her brother, who undermined her literary aspirations. In her most popular novel, she also identified difficulties encountered by aspiring authors who were wives and mothers.
Furn
The writer of ironic short stories with surprising plot endings, William Sydney Porter (pseudonym O. _________) wrote the famous tales "The Gift of the Magi" (1906), "The Furnished Room" (1906), and "The Ransom of Red Chief" (1910). Porter's numerous short stories tell of life in Texas, South America, New York, and prison.
Henry "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Furnished Room" are from The Four Million (1906), which may be O. Henry's best work; the stories illustrate the lives of the "four million" commonplace New Yorkers whom some claim are not worth noticing. Porter's collections of short stories include Cabbages and Kings (1904), Whirligigs (1910), Waifs and Strays (1917), and many others.
Great-grandson of John Adams and grandson of John Quincy Adams, the second and sixth Presidents of the United States, the cultured historian ____________ Adams wrote biographies of politicians and novels of the corruption of government and the re-evaluation of traditional religion. In addition, he published The History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (1889-1891), which is still an esteemed source.
Henry Henry wrote many other books, including Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904) and The Education of Henry Adams (1907).
Which of the following contributed to the lack of American literature produced during the Colonial and Early National literary period (Beginnings-1830)? (Check all that apply.)
High mortality Availability of English literature Low demand for American literature
Nella Larsen wrote the novel, __________ (1928), about a half-white, half-black woman who marries an African-American evangelist and experiences alienation living with him in Alabama. Larsen's other novel, Passing (1929), is about a fair-skinned black woman who marries a white man.
Quicksand
A believable portrayal of common experiences with unavoidable conclusions characterizes the literature of the _____________ and Naturalism Period (1870-1910).
Realism
Narrative of Sojourner___________ ; A Bondswoman of Olden Time, with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her "Book of Life" (1851) chronicles the experiences of this religious orator for women's rights and the abolition of slavery.
Truth Former slave Sojourner Truth delivered her famous speech on women's rights, "Ain't I A Woman" (1851), at a women's convention in Akron, Ohio. Following perceived revelations from God, she began to "sojourn" in the land and spread God's truth; this anti-slavery activist changed her name from Isabella Baumfree to Sojourner Truth in 1843.
Unlike the original Colossus, "The New Colossus" ________________ symbolized .
freedom for immigrants The "brazen giant of Greek fame" was Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the world, a statue of the sun god Helios, also known as Apollo. The statue, reportedly over 100 feet tall, commemorated the successful defense of the city of Rhodes against a siege in 305-304 B.C. In contrast, the Statue of Liberty, the focus of Emma Lazarus' poem "The New Colossus," was erected as a symbol welcoming immigrants to the United States.
The popularity of _____________ pictures (silent films and "talkies") and of Rogers and Hammerstein plays during the Modernism Period (1910-1945) exemplified America's prosperity as emphasis shifted from survival to entertainment.
motion During World War II, motion pictures broadcasted updates on the war.
During the 1700s, American literature focused on ___________ freedom; the purpose of literature was secular instruction.
political Third- and fourth-generation colonists no longer relied on England for protection or preservation. Their clever originality and business savvy identified their competence to exist as a separate nation. The colonists' quest for self-governance culminated in the Revolutionary War (1775-1783).
The ________________ of Black Folk (1903), W.E.B. Du Bois' most popular work, is a collection of 15 essays that explore African-American culture and leaders. In this book, Du Bois introduced the concept of "two-ness," that of "an American" and that of "a Negro," which consisted of opposing ideals and souls. In The Negro Problem (1903), Du Bois advocated "The Talented Tenth," in which college-educated African-Americans could lead other African-Americans after the Civil War during the period called Reconstruction.
soles Remembered as a civil war activist, the highly educated W.E.B. Du Bois organized the Niagara Movement, which demanded equal rights for African-Americans; helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); joined the Communist party; and became a citizen of Ghana.
____________is the dictionary definition of a word (such as "house" referring to a dwelling place), while connotation conveys the feelings associated with a word (such as "home" being a pleasant haven).
Denotation Connotations vary because of disparity between individual experience and community or cultural meanings. For example, for a well-adjusted person with fond recollections of his childhood the word "home" might convey pleasant images, while the same word might conjure images of terror and vulnerability to a victim of abuse or poverty.
Named "Class Poet" in elementary school, the most popular Harlem Renaissance writer Langston became known as the "bard of Harlem" by the 1930s. He sought to depict African-American urban culture through his poetry, using jazz rhythms and common black language patterns.
Hughes
________________ challenged poetry by insisting on using precise, sharp images (instead of verbosity) to convey ideas; Ezra Pound, the leader of the movement, urged the use of things, rather than ideas.
Imagism Imagism also advocated the use of common language and freedom regarding subject matter. The anthology Some Imagist Poets (1915) and Poetry: A Magazine of Verse contained imagist poetry.
With the rise of factories, iron and coal plants, textile mills, and steam power, the United States transitioned from an agricultural society to an urban manufacturing culture. This eighteenth and nineteenth century period of invention and advancement emphasized mass production and came to be known as the ___________ Revolution.
Industrial The population shifted from the country to the cities; urban areas exploded throughout the United States, and the number of cities with over 100,000 people increased between 1860 to 1900. Areas that had been agrarian and rural in Europe and America instead became industrial and urban.
Caroline Stansbury _______________wrote various books about life on the frontier, including A New Home—Who'll Follow? (1839), Forest Life (1842), and Western Clearings (1845).
Kirkland
The American _________—an explosion of literature with a distinct American identity—climaxed between 1850 and 1855, with such classics as Representative Men (1850), by Ralph Waldo Emerson; The Scarlet Letter (1850), by Nathaniel Hawthorne; Moby Dick (1851), by Herman Melville; Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Walden (1854), by Henry David Thoreau; and Leaves of Grass (1855), by Walt Whitman.
Renaissance
____________ scheme is a pattern of repeating sounds in a poem.
Rhyme
John Alden
The speaker in a work of literature is not the author; in this excerpt by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), the speaker is John Alden. Priscilla Mullens rejects Miles Standish's proposal, yet urges John to ask on his own behalf: "Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes over-running with laughter, Said, in a tremulous voice, 'Why don't you speak for yourself, John?'" Angry over her refusal, Standish leaves the colony and is believed to be killed by Indians. He returns to give his blessing at John and Priscilla's wedding ceremony, and the three remain friends for the rest of their lives.
Disillusioned, modernists scrutinized literary, religious, and social tradition as deceptive or inadequate, choosing abstract _______________ over continuity. Modernist literature searches for meaning; it does not provide instructional insights.
fragments
Henry David _________ was a naturalist who promoted individualism, a student of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a leading Transcendentalist. Ignoring the communal Brook Farm (1841-1847), he conducted his individualized pursuit of simplification by living in a cabin he built on Walden pond.
Thoreau Thoreau lived on Walden pond for two years because he wanted to see if he could live intentionally and simply. After two years, two months, and two days, Thoreau "left the woods for as good a reason as [he] went there," concluding that his experiment had been successful but that mankind should avoid routines and complacency.
According to Thoreau's essay, the _____________ of the American people accomplished all changes.
character
What is the name of this document by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott?
"The Declaration of Sentiments" Presented in 1848 at the Seneca Falls convention on women's rights, the Declaration was modeled after the Declaration of Independence and signed by 68 women and by 32 men. It was included in A History of Woman Suffrage (1889), co-authored by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
Most slant rhymes (such as "Heaven," "even"; "tone," "one"; or "blood," "food") are examples of , in which the final consonants in a word sound the same, but the vowels preceding them differ.
Amory Originally titled The Romantic Egoist, this first book of Fitzgerald's was published on his third attempt, selling 3,000 copies in 3 days and yielding the money he needed to marry the society belle, Zelda Sayre. This Side of Paradise (1920) was viewed as an accurate representation of the extravagance of the 1920s.
The ____________ Covenant (1630) established Massachusetts as a theocracy, government by God or, in this case, by officials guided by Puritan ideals.
Arbella John Winthrop's sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," also known as his "City Upon a Hill" sermon, includes the "Arbella Covenant," an agreement among English settlers made while on the ship the Arbella. The Mayflower Compact and the Arbella Covenant were precursors of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Richard Wright's autobiography, ____________ Boy (1945), vividly portrays the author's unsettled, impoverished childhood in the South after his father's abandonment. It also traces the development of a writer who rebelled against traditional religion and education to accurately depict the suffering of African-Americans.
Black Wright's posthumously published (after the author's death) autobiographical sequel is titled American Hunger (1977). Other posthumous works include Eight Men (1961) and Lawd Today (1963). Watch Video
An African-American neighborhood called the ______________, the setting of Toni Morrison's novel Sula (1973), is being demolished in preparation for the Medallion City Golf Course. In this story, the childhood best friends Sula Peace and Nel Wright eventually drift apart as their values diverge: Nel maintains traditional expectations, while Sula pursues freedom through amoral actions.
Bottom Other characters include Eva Peace, Hannah Peace, the Dewey boys, Shadrach, and Ajax. Additional novels by Toni Morrison include The Bluest Eye (1970), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), and Jazz (1992). Her lectures are collected in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992).
Thomas Morton humorously satirized the rigidity of the New England Separatists in New English ____________ (1637). His licentious settlement was called Merry Mount.
Canaan Horrified by Morton's scandalous behavior, William Bradford wrote about the heathen practices promoted at Merry Mount in Of Plymouth Plantation (1856). Nathaniel Hawthorne, an author during the Romantic Period (1830-1870), wrote "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" (1836) about Thomas Morton.
Lydia Maria ______________ was the abolitionist author of An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (1833); she and her husband edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1840-1849), and their home was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Child Her first book, Hobomok (1824), was a romance glorifying the "noble savage." The concept of the "noble savage," an individual who has not been corrupted by society's influences and is viewed as more worthy and dignified than someone with a traditional, civilized upbringing, was first used by French philosopher Rousseau, an inspirational influence behind the Romantic Period. Other romances by Child include The Rebels; or, Boston Before the Revolution (1825), and Philothea (1836), about classical Greece.
Although an ardent abolitionist, Lydia Maria _________ also wrote fiction. Her first book, Hobomok (1824), was a romance glorifying the "noble savage." Other romances included The Rebels; or, Boston Before the Revolution (1825), and Philothea (1836), about classical Greece.
Child Lydia's fiction was didactic, intended to teach moral lessons. The poem that memorialized her was "Thanksgiving Day" (1857), where Child created the famous lines "Over the river and through the wood To grandmother's house we go."
Pearl Buck sensitively portrayed _______________ culture in her book, The Good Earth (1931), about the peasant farmer Wang Lung and his wife O-lan.
Chinese Buck earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for her book, The Good Earth (1931). She actively promoted welfare for Asian children. Another of her books was East Wind: West Wind (1930), about Eastern and Western cultures. Buck was the first American woman to earn a Nobel Prize for literature in 1938, for biographies of her parents.
Disputes over slavery, states' rights, and trade culminated in the American War (1861-1865), which resulted in the deaths of over 600,000 soldiers.
Civil
__________reading was a literary trend during the 1920's through the 1960's that scrutinized words and their order within a literary work.
Close Close reading disregarded the author's intent or any commentary outside the particular work; it viewed each literary work as a self-contained piece of art.
Which of the following terms means "informal, conversational speech"?
Colloquial means informal conversational speech with a relaxed and plain style. Dialect is the way people talk in a particular region. Rhetoric is persuasive language designed to provoke an emotional response; it can also refer to ostentatious language. Diction can mean one's choice of words, or one's clarity in enunciating.
Thomas Paine wrote which of the following pamphlets?
Common Sense The Age of Reason The American Crisis The Rights of Man Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (16 essays written between 1776 and 1783) argued the colonists' right to achieve independence from England. The Rights of Man (1791-1792) contends against hereditary monarchy. The Age of Reason (1794-1796) promotes Deism (God's indifference to the world he created). John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton wrote The Federalist Papers (1787-1788) to promote favor among colonists for the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America.
One of the most talented late-19th-century authors of fiction, Charles W. Chesnutt, used irony and humor to portray slavery. He is best known for The ___________ Woman (1899), slavery stories told in dialect by the character of a black gardener to his Northern employers.
Conjure The African-American Chesnutt also wrote a biography of Frederick Douglass (1899); the novels The House Behind the Cedars (1900), The Marrow of Tradition (1901), and The Colonel's Dream (1905); and the collection of stories The Wife of His Youth (1899).
Theodore Dreiser's muckraking trilogy The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic (1947) follows the character Frank _______ , a deceptive businessman who enjoys societal acclaim and wealth.
Cowperwood
An overthrow of an Oregon mental hospital by its patients, One Flew Over the _________'s Nest (1962) is Ken Kesey's comic macabre (involving themes of horror and death) novel about a character named Randle Patrick McMurphy. The book is narrated by Chief Bromden, the janitor. Another main character is the domineering Head Nurse Ratched.
Cuckoos One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) is based on Kesey's experiences as a ward in a mental hospital. Kesey's book celebrates the overturn of conformist American society, representing the shift from the Beatniks' writings about counterculture to the hippies' pursuit of rebellion, including their encouragement of "free" sex and drug use. This book was made into a play in 1963 and a movie in 1975.
The best glimpse into daily colonial life comes from the detailed account of Samuel Sewall's ___________, which spans the years from 1674 through 1729.
Diary Samuel Sewall's Diary was published posthumously (after the author's death) in three volumes between 1878 and 1882. Samuel Sewall participated in the Salem witch trials, but later expressed regret and publically recanted this error.
In this excerpt from "The Courtship of Miles Standish," a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, what is Priscilla's response upon hearing John's message?
Disappointment News of Miles Standish's interest in Priscilla felt "like a blow," that is, a physical punch to the body, when she had no prior indication of Standish's attraction to her and was instead hoping for John Alden's proposal.
The wealthy landscape artist _____________ wrote many Naturalism-style books, including The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), and The Age of Innocence (1920). The excerpt is from Ethan Frome.
Edith Wharton
A Southern realist, ______________ depicted regional rural Mississippi culture in her books such as A Curtain of Green (1941), a collection of humorous stories about eccentric characters, and The Robber Bridegroom (1942), a fairy tale ballad about a bandit wooing a Southern farmer's daughter.
Eudora Welty Welty wrote many tales of the South, including Delta Wedding (1946) and 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner The Optimist's Daughter (1972). She also wrote books for children. Some of her novels were later dramatized.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's first of three long narrative poems, "_________________, A Tale of Acadie" (1847), was a fictionalized account of a couple separated on their wedding day when the British deported French Acadians from Nova Scotia. Evangeline Bellafontaine, the bride-to-be, spends years searching for Gabriel Lajeunesse, her intended groom. She becomes a nun, then a nurse, and finds Gabriel as he is dying; soon after his death, she dies also.
Evangeline Longfellow heard this tale from Reverend Horace Conolly, a friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne's, at a dinner party in 1840. Longfellow's epic narrative poems helped create romantic American folklore. Longfellow's other narrative poems include "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855) and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858).
What are the sections of Richard Wright's book, Native Son (1940)? (Click all that apply.)
Fear Fate Flight Native Son (1940) is separated into three sections, called "books." The first book, "Fear," chronicles Bigger's suffocation of Mary Dalton. The second book, "Flight," portrays his attempted evasion of capture. The third book, "Fate," depicts Bigger's murder sentence, despite his Communist lawyer's protests that Bigger's actions are not his fault.
Authors present stories from different perspectives, called points of view. Click on all points of view listed below.
First-person Third-person omniscient Second-person Third-person limited
Based on Kurt Vonnegut's World War II experiences during the Allied firestorm in Dresden, Germany, the fatalistic anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-_________ (1969) depicts one of the most terrifying massacres in European history. In this book, Billy Pilgrim, the main character, travels (erratically, and not in chronological order) between memories during the war; before the war; and on the planet Tralfamadore, where extra-terrestrial aliens kidnapped him and displayed him in a zoo.
Five
The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund __________________, popularized the study of repression and the unconscious, including six psychosexual stages of human development; the id, ego, and superego; and the concept of anxiety.
Freud Freud asserted that repressed desires (which are mostly sexual) cause guilt or shame. Through psychotherapy (such as hypnosis and free association), Freud endeavored to help his patients remember repressed desires and memories, thus eliminating "neurosis" (anxiety and depression).
Like Henry James, Edith Wharton creates tragedies through her examination of false values and ethical dilemmas in the lives of wealthy aristocrats. Her famous novelette, Ethan (1911), is the tragic tale of Zenobia (Zeena) and Ethan's unhappy marriage; Zeena's jealousy at Ethan's friendship with her cousin, Mattie; and Ethan and Mattie's failed suicide attempt that results in their crippled confinement for the rest of their lives under Zeena's supervision.
Frome Ethan Frome (1911) expresses loneliness and frustration and the Naturalistic thwarting of all efforts to overcome unpleasant circumstances. Wharton uses the imagery of cold, barren landscapes to symbolize the desolation of the characters. Even the name of the town where the story is set, Starkfield, lends to its feeling of isolation.
The pseudonym "Josiah Allen's Wife" referred to the popular Marietta _________, one of America's early female humorists, who philosophized on temperance and woman suffrage through her popular character, Samantha Allen, in books such as My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet's: Designed as a Beacon Light, To guide Women to Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, But which May Be read by Members of the Sterner Sect, Without Injury to Themselves of This Book (1873) and Samantha at Saratoga or Flirtin' With Fashion (1887), which was perhaps her most-liked book.
Holley Holley wrote prolifically; her final book was Josiah Allen on the Woman Question (1914). Her homely observations and satire rank Holley with Mark Twain and Edgar Nye. Members of the "Temperance" Movement fought for the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Champions of women's suffrage crusaded for equal rights for women (recognition of the personhood of women, and pursuit of the same privileges as those awarded to men). Proponents of women's suffrage were often also active in the Temperance (also called "Prohibition") Movement.
________ is the aspect of a story, poem, or other form of writing that is funny.
Humor can be conveyed through satire, irony, exaggeration, and word play, such as puns. Satire makes fun of people or of aspects of culture. Irony conveys the reverse of what a character or audience expects. Exaggeration stretches the details of events or the traits of characters. Puns are word that sound similar but mean different things.
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842) is told from the first-person perspective and set during the Spanish _____________ ; it details the torture of a prisoner who is the primary character in the short story. Other characters, such as guards, are implied.
Inquisition Heated walls gradually close in on the prisoner, forcing him near a seemingly-bottomless pit in the center of the cell. Rats compete for his food and chew his bonds. He is rescued just before the swinging blade of a pendulum would have sliced through him.
The author of a travel book, children's books, and poetry, Helen Hunt is best known for her romance Ramona (1884), which explores governmental mistreatment of Native Americans. She exposed the government's betrayal of California Indians and the injustices inflicted upon the Native Americans in A Century of Dishonor (1881).
Jackson As a result of her exposé in A Century of Dishonor (1881), Helen was appointed commissioner to investigate the conditions of mission Indians. Her investigations resulted in her best-known book, Ramona (1884). Helen published short stories under the pseudonym Saxe Holm.
The local-colorist James Lane Allen wrote about humanity's interdependence with nature. His vivid articles, short stories, and novels include The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky (1892), Flute and Violin (1891), A Kentucky Cardinal (1894), Aftermath (1896), and The Choir Invisible (1897). Allen's realistic descriptions and accurate portrayal of dialect depict his native state, _____________________.
Kentucky
The popular novelist of science fiction and horror, the English teacher Stephen _______has published nearly a book a year, several of which have been made into movies. A skillful writer of gripping psychological insight, this author's novels include Carrie (1973), The Shining (1977), The Shawshank Redemption (1982), and The Green Mile (1999).
King Some of Stephen King's other novels are Dolores Claiborne (1992), Rose Madder (1995), Bag of Bones (1998), and Dreamcatcher (2001). King has also written under the name Richard Bachman.
In Henry James' novel The Ambassadors (1903), ____________Strether is sent to Europe to fetch his wealthy fiancé's son, Chad, who has lived abroad for several years. Strether discovers the appeal of the Old World and the attention of Maria Gostrey, and Mrs. Newsome sends Chad's sisters to Europe to try to bring both men home.
Lambert Representative of Henry James' third phase of writing, The Ambassadors (1903) showed (rather than told) with complex psychological intensity the internal events of his international characters.
The teacher and abolitionist Lucy __________ wrote spiritual poetry about nature and children. Her poetry about life as a mill girl attracted the attention and encouragement of John Greenleaf Whittier. Lucy's poetry includes Ships in the Mist, and other Stories (1859), Poems (1868), An Idyl of Work; a Story in Verse (1875), Childhood Songs (1877), Wild Roses of Cape Ann. and other Poems (1880), all collected in Poetical Works (1884).
Larcom Larcom's autobiography, A New England Girlhood (1889), describes child labor in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. She edited "Our Young Folks" (1865-1873), a children's periodical featuring stories, illustrations, and songs.
Walt Whitman's ____________ of Grass (1855) contains the famous poem "Song of Myself," which uses the senses to reflect on the different faces of America; it features such Transcendentalist themes as the vagueness of divinity, the unity of all people, and the elevation of the individual.
Leaves Whitman published nine versions of Leaves of Grass, each expanded with additional poems. His subject matter was considered obscene by contemporaries such as Henry David Thoreau and John Greenleaf Whittier, and by an employer, the secretary of the Department of the Interior, James Harlan, who fired Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass.
J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's essays on rural American life, __________ from an American Farmer (1782), explored the qualities that make Americans distinct, regardless of ethnic or religious upbringing, and sought to answer the question, "What is an American?"
Letters Crevecoeur is also known for Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America (1925), his essays discovered in the 1920s in an attic in France and published posthumously (after the author's death).
The "_______ Generation" (coined by Gertrude Stein) refers to people who returned to the United States after World War I bitter and disillusioned by man's inhumanity to man. Many who experienced the horrors of war felt displaced in American society and moved to Europe, either temporarily or permanently.
Lost
A leading local-color author, the Confederate veteran George Washington Cable, delighted Northerners and angered Creoles (French-speaking people in Louisiana) by his portrayal of Creole culture and life in . His books include Old Creole Days (1879), The Creoles of Louisiana (1884), The Silent South (1885), The Negro Question (1890), The Cavalier (1901), and The Flower of the Chapdelaines (1918).
Louisiana
A leader within the Imagist movement, Amy ___________ collected the Imagist anthology Some Imagist Poets (1915) and wrote the concise free-verse poetry Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds (1914), Men, Women, and Ghosts (1916), Pictures of the Floating World (1919), What's O'Clock (1925) (Pulitzer prize—1926), and Ballads for Sale (1927).
Lowell Lowell liked the poetry of John Keats and wrote a biography on this famous English Romantic poet. She also wrote other poetry and A Critical Fable (1922), an exploration of contemporary poets. Her work has been criticized for its focus on sensuality to the exclusion of emotional ideals.
Raymond Chandler created the fictitious character of private detective Philip __________. His detective stories of violence and crime are mostly set in Los Angeles, California, in the 1930s and 1940s.
Marlowe Several of Chandler's stories (including the ones listed above) became movies in the 1940s and 1950s. His detective, Philip Marlowe, had a cult following. Marlow's most popular novels include The Big Sleep (1939), Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943), and The Long Goodbye (1954).
is the measurement of verse according to its specific pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables in poetry.
Meter
The first female ____________-American to write in English, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton wrote two novels, the historical romances Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) and The Squatter and the Don (1885), and a play, Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts: Taken From Cervantes' Novel of That Name (1876).
Mexican María Amparo Ruiz, of a prominent Hispanic Catholic family, married the illustrious Protestant Captain Henry S. Burton after his regiment conquered her hometown. The couple lived in Rancho Jamul, outside of San Diego, for much of their lives. She wrote about racial issues for conquered Mexicans living in the United States.
Under the pseudonym Charles Egbert Craddock, Mary Noailles __________ wrote local-color short stories about Tennessee mountain people in the Cumberland Mountains. Her collections of short stories, including In the Tennessee Mountains (1884), The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain (1895), The Young Mountaineers (1897), and The Frontiersmen (1904), were romantic, but her careful attention to detail and to dialect gave them a realistic flavor.
Murfree Murfree also wrote Southern historical novels, including Where the Battle Was Fought (1884), The Storm Centre (1905), and her best novel The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains (1885).
Influenced by Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche, the classic ____________ Jack London portrayed a bleak, rugged existence among nature, with socialistic themes of "the survival of the fittest," or with evolutionary themes of regression to earlier stages. London's writings also contrasted chaotic urban settings with the rustic and the exotic. This excerpt is from Jack London's novel The Call of the Wild.
Naturalist Most of Jack London's fiction is derived from his experiences during the Alaskan gold rush, at sea, as a hobo, or as a foreign correspondent.
The : A Story of California (1901), Frank Norris' most impressive novel from his proposed trilogy "The Epic of Wheat," told of the economic hardships experienced by California wheat farmers, whose profits were thwarted by the greed and abuses of the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Octopus
The founder of Black Horizons Theater Company, August Wilson wrote plays representing African-Americans during different decades of the 20th century. Wilson won a Pulitzer Prize for Fences (1985), about a former baseball player who juggles family obligations and his desire for freedom. He won another Pulitzer Prize for The __________ Lesson (1987), about a brother and a sister who argue about whether to sell a family piano that was once traded for their grandparents, who were slaves.
Piano August Wilson's other plays include Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984), Jitney (1982), Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1986), Two Trains Running (1990), Seven Guitars (1995), King Hedley II (1999), Gem of the Ocean (2003), and Radio Golf (2005).
O ! (1913), by Willa Cather, is the realistic story of Alexandra Bergson, who maintains and increases her family's farm after her father (Swedish immigrant John Bergson)'s death. Alexandra's brothers, Lou and Oscar, and her mother, lack the necessary qualities and skills to run the farm. Emil, Alexandra's youngest brother, has an affair with Marie Shabata, Alexandra's friend; Frank Shabata, Marie's husband, kills the couple. Alexandra eventually marries Carl Linstrum, and the two care for the farm.
Pioneers The regionalist Willa Cather usually wrote about the courage and loneliness of immigrant pioneers living on the prairies of Nebraska. She based much of her writing on her experiences.
Characters in The _________ Letter (1850), Nathaniel Hawthorne's most famous work, include Hester Prynne, Pearl, Reverend Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth.
Scarlet Hester Prynne is the heroine of The Scarlet Letter (1850). Pearl is Hester's illegitimate daughter; Reverend Dimmesdale is her pastor, adulterous companion, and Pearl's father; and Roger Chillingworth is the assumed identity of her elderly husband.
The muckraking journalist David Graham Phillips explored social issues in his essays, a play, and more than 22 novels. His acclaimed novel, _____________ Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1917), depicts life in the slums and corruption in politics while showing how an illegitimate girl rises to success through prostitution.
Susan Phillips' exposé on corruption in the Senate, a series of essays published in Cosmopolitan in 1906 ("The Treason of the Senate"), instigated the resignation of 17 senators and the ratification of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which established the votes of the American people, not the wishes of party bosses, as senators' tickets to Congress. Phillips' other novels include The Great God Success (1901) and The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig (1909).
Absalom! Absalom! (1936), by William Faulkner, is a social psychology work about the South as well as about an individual, Thomas . The story is told by four speakers. A poor white West Virginian, Thomas, runs away to Haiti, where he marries Eulalia Bon and has a son, Charles. When Thomas discovers Eulalia's partial black ethnicity, he abandons his wife and son and arrives in Yoknapatawpha County with 100 black Haitians, determined to carve out for himself a niche in the aristocracy. Instead, a string of infidelities unfolds, culminating with romantic interest and murder between Thomas' various children and the eventual collapse of his plantation, house, and family.
Sutpen Faulkner defined Yoknapatawpha County as being 2,400 square miles, with two main towns—Jefferson and Mattson—and 15,611 inhabitants (6,298 white and 9,313 black). Other characters in Absalom! Absalom! (1936) include Ellen Coldfield, Thomas Sutpen's second wife, and their two children, Henry and Judith; Wash Jones, the squatter on "Sutpen's Hundred [acres]" who kills Sutpen with a scythe after Sutpen abandons Jones' granddaughter, Millie, and the couple's child upon discovering the child is a girl; the son of Charles Bon (Thomas Sutpen's son by Eulalia Bon), Charles Etienne De Saint-Valery Bon, and his idiot son, Jim Bond; another of Sutpen's Haitian children, Cytemnestra (Clytie); and Rosa Coldfield, Thomas' sister-in-law, whom he tried to marry.
______________Is the Night (1934), by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is the story of Dick Diver, an American psychiatrist, and his marriage to Nicole Warren, a beautiful, wealthy patient who suffers with schizophrenia possibly related to her father's incestuous relationship with her. The couple lives a luxurious life with their two children on the Riviera, where Rosemary Hoyt, an American actress, falls in love with Dick, and Tommy Barban, a French soldier, begins an affair with Nicole that concludes with Nicole and Dick's divorce. Dick returns to America and is lost in anonymity.
Tender Fitzgerald and his wife lived a life of wild extravagance. After the Great Depression, they moved to England for a time; Fitzgerald became an alcoholic and his wife, Zelda, suffered mental breakdowns. Many consider Tender Is the Night (1934) Fitzgerald's narrative of his wife's journey toward insanity.
meter
The most common type of meter in English poetry is iambic pentameter, five feet—consisting of one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable each, per line of poetry. Here are some names for other meters (line lengths): 1 = "monometer" is a line of poetry consisting of one foot ("mono" means1) 2 = "dimeter" is a line of poetry consisting of two feet ("di" means 2) 3 = "trimeter" is a line of poetry consisting of three feet ("tri" means 3) 4 = "tetrameter" is a line of poetry consisting of four feet ("tetra" means 4) 6 = "hexameter" is a line of poetry consisting of six feet ("hexa" means 6) 7 = "heptameter" is a line of poetry consisting of seven feet ("hepta" means 7) 8 = "octameter" is a line of poetry consisting of eight feet ("octa" means 8)
wrote four novels, each representing an era, about the fictitious former basketball star, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, who feels unfulfilled in his life as a salesman for a vegetable peeler company, Magipeel. In some ways, this character represents Updike.
Updike
Inspired by Sir Thomas More's 1516 book about a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, the concept of __________ was embraced by Transcendentalists, who launched communal societies with the aim of fulfilling human potential through the appreciation of nature.
Utopia In reaction to the Age of Enlightenment, Transcendentalism praised intuition over reason. Its followers believed that union between the universe and the individual was possible through freedom from social complexity and contamination, and by use of the creative process. Since divinity pervaded nature and humanity, the individual could attain oneness with the Over-Soul, the "common heart" or unity of all people. "The Over-Soul" (1841) is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
______________ is when something appears different than it actually is; often, this figure of speech means exactly the opposite of what it states or implies.
Verbal irony is when someone says the opposite of what they mean, such as when an overworked employee says "I can't wait!" when apprised of an approaching increase in workload. Sarcasm is usually harsher than irony. Dramatic irony is when the audience is aware of reality that has been hidden from the characters.
This excerpt is from The ___________ of Sir Launfal (1848), by James Russell Lowell.
Vision In retelling the legend of the search for the Holy Grail (the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper), Lowell caused a knight to see that his kindness to a leper was the truly priceless relic.
Influenced by Transcendentalism, "The Good Gray Poet" endeavored to become Ralph Waldo Emerson's sought-after American poet for the common people. Walt ______________ celebrated individualism through unconventional subject matter, including his controversial exploration of sexuality, and through free verse, poetry without rhyme or meter.
Whitman Sobered by the plight of slaves, Whitman became outspoken about his free-soil views (opposition to the acquisition of additional slave territories). "I Sing the Body Electric" (1860) contains a description of a slave auction from Whitman's visit to New Orleans in 1848, as well as homosexual longings.
Depictions of specific regions, including culture, customs, and dialect, is known as local_________ .
color
In this excerpt from The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison, how are the children, including Claudia, who is the narrator, treated by the adults, according to the narrator?
contemptuously In this novel, a central character, the African-American child Pecola Breedlove, is obsessed with wanting blue eyes since she believes having blue eyes will make her beautiful and well-accepted in society. Other characters include Claudia (who narrates the story) and Freida MacTeer, and another boarder, Mr. Henry.
This excerpt highlights the of African-Americans living in the post-Civil War United States.
difficulty In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), DuBois recognized that former slaves "found the world a puzzling thing: it asked little of them, and they answered with little, and yet it ridiculed their offering."
When a thought in poetry carries into the next line, this is called _________.
enjambment
Maya Angelou usually wrote from a first-person point of view and used ____________song rhythms in her poetry. Her first two collections of poetry were Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) and Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975).
folk Other poetry by Angelou includes And Still I Rise (1978), Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? (1983), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), and Phenomenal Woman (1994). In 1953, when she began her career as an actress, Angelou changed her name from Marguerite Johnson.
The popularity of Charles Darwin's theories of evolution (published in his books, Origin of Species [1859] and Descent of Man [1870]) and the _________ attitudes of many factory owners, coupled with dangerous and inhumane working conditions, invoked a conclusion that survival or any changes were due only to the efforts of the individual.
impersonal
Themes in Moby Dick (1851) include the battles between good and evil, the ___________ and nature, and choices and consequences.
individual Nature is viewed as indifferent and destructive. Characters are shown as unable to escape the destinies fate has established for them.
In her novels, Edith Wharton emphasizes the hypocritical values often esteemed among high society. The House of Mirth (1905) can be defined as a tragedy. In this novel, the charming Lily Bart seeks wealth and position in society through ___________.
matrimony
The Imagist poet John Gould Fletcher often used the French _____________ prose, free-verse written as rhythmic prose that follows a mood rather than a meter and uses poetic devices such as alliteration.
polyphonic Fletcher's poetry includes Irradiations: Sands and Spray (1915) and Goblins and Pagodas (1916). He wrote prose about traditional issues and the South, and his native state, Arkansas; Fletcher was a leader of the Southern Agrarians, a group of 12 writers who believed in the traditional identity of Southerners and supported the return to the nation's agrarian (agriculture-based society) roots.
The speaker in this poem does not understand the ______________ in maintaining the wall between the neighbors' properties.
purpose The wall signifies separation between two people. The speaker wonders whether the tradition needs to be re-examined of maintaining the wall just because that is what has always been done, since there no longer seems to be a need to keep out of each other's fields. This excerpt is from "Mending Wall" (1914), by Robert Frost.
Literary works during the Contemporary Period (1945-Present) often reflect the style of __________ -of- consciousness writing, where authors record their uninterrupted thought process. Popular themes in Contemporary writing include irony, loss of identity, and a cultural hybridity consisting of the physical self and the cultural self.
stream Instead of the "melting pot" that characterized America in the past when people from many ethnicities and cultures sought to adopt distinctively American ideals and behaviors, people during the present age tend to consider America as more of a "salad bowl," where people of diverse ethnicities and cultures retain their individual flavors while co-existing in the same country.
The ____________ ____________freed African-American slaves and the 13th Amendment to the United States' Constitution declared slavery illegal (1865). President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, shortly after the war ended.
the Emancipation Proclamation (1863)