Finals Study

"Democracy" Langston Hughes (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

"I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. / I cannot live on tomorrow's bread." "I have as much right / As the other fellow has / to stand / On my two feet / And own the land."

Walt Whitman, selection from Song of Myself (Nineteenth-Century American Literature)

"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, / You shall possess the good of the earth and sun ... there are millions of suns left, / You shall no longer take things at second or third hand ... nor look through the eyes of the dead ... nor feed on the spectres in books, / You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, / You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself." Other than that, it's complete nonsense.

Iroquois Prayer Song (Early American Literature, 1607 - 1800)

"Stronger" chant.

"Dover Beach" Mathew Arnold (Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Romanticism and the Victorian Period)

"With tremulous cadence slow, and bring / The eternal note of sadness in."

"On Being Brought From Africa to America" Phillis Wheatley (Early American Literature, 1607 - 1800)

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Ince I redemption neither sought nor know. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. This is her writing to please her white publishers.

"Fowles in the Frith" Anonymous (Old English and Medieval Literature)

Fowles in the frith, the fisshes in the flood, and I mon waxe wood Much sowre I walke with For beste of boon and blood

Renaissance

French for "rebirth". Began in fourteenth century Italy and spread throughout Europe during the fifteenth century. Most scholars agree that the Renaissance ended during the seventeenth century; in England, the ensuing Neoclassical Period is often said to have begun in 1660, with the Restoration of the monarchy. The change associated with the Renaissance were both sweeping and revolutionary, transcending national boundaries within Europe as well as altering the way in which life was lived and understood. The most important of these changes was a paradigm shift from a predominantly theocentric, Christian perspective to an increasingly secular, anthropocentric one, as humankind rather than God became the center of human interest. Other significant changes included: a cosmological revolution during which the Ptolemaic theory of an earth-centered universe was abandoned in favor of the Copernican understanding that the earth revolves around the sun; a dramatic schism within Western Christendom that led to the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism; the discovery of the so-called New World; the emergence of nationalism and international commerce as we now know them; the rise of an imperialism that would culminate with Europe dominating the globe in the nineteenth century; and German printer Johann Gutenberg's invention of the printing press, whose movable type greatly facilitated book production and thus made possible an unprecedented explosion of communication, knowledge, and scholarship. Classical scholars (later referred to as humanists) revitalized interest in the pagan authors and texts of ancient Greece and Rome. By 1500, the works of the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle had been translated; within decades, Aristotle's ideas about biology, like Plato's philosophies of politics and love, were published in book form. Plato's writings about love in the Symposium, together with the Platonic love philosophies developed by subsequent Neoplatonist Roman philosophers such as Plotinus, gave rise to a Renaissance Neoplatonism that colored a variety of works. Courtesy books- published first in Italy, then in France, and finally in England- set forth rules governing cultivated behavior in royal and noble courts as well as the relationships between aristocratic men and women. They also extolled the accomplished, well-rounded gentleman, counseling aspiring courtiers to cultivate a wide range of artistic, athletic, conversational, intellectual, and romantic capabilities. Renaissance art tended to represent individuals, not types, suggesting that during the Renaissance the human individual came to be seen AS a work of art. Central to the Reformation was the idea that although ecclesiastical intermediaries may provide comfort and guidance, they are neither necessary nor sufficient for an individual's salvation. Protestant reformers insisted that believers were their own priests, capable of a direct personal relationship with God; consequently, they were empowered to confess their own sins, read scripture on their own, and interpret God's word in light of their own experience. The spirit of questioning was as characteristic of the Renaissance as was the focus on the individual. The tendency to question received "truth" led to a growing skepticism regarding supernatural and occult explanations for everyday occurrences and behaviors. Increasingly, scientists and nonscientists alike argued that all of known reality could be explained in accordance with natural laws, some of which were not yet known or understood but all of which were potentially knowable and provable. Nicolaus Cusanus, a fifteenth century German cardinal, is generally credited with proving that air has weight by showing that plants derive some of their own weight from the atmosphere. Leonardo da Vinci introduced the idea that visual representations should reflect correct geometric perspective. Significantly, Leonardo's emphasis on accurate perspective inspired more careful study of living and nonliving things, which in turn led to new levels of geometric sophistication that laid the groundwork for technological illustration and design as we now know them. Scholars have argued, for instance, that the design and development of the internal combustion engine would have been impossible without Leonardo's emphasis on perspective. Meanwhile, perspective in the visual arts allowed for the development of realistic representation, which remained a generally accepted convention of artistic representation until the rise of modernism in the twentieth century. L.V. therefore established the link between the arts and sciences, as they developed in tandem, reinforcing one another.

Romanticism

A broad and general term (like classicism, with which it is often contrasted) referring to a set of beliefs, attitudes, and values that was characterized by a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism and an emphasis on emotion, innovation, nature, the individual, and subjective experience. Most critics agree that romanticism arose first in Germany and England, followed by America and other European countries. For instance, England's Romantic Period spanned 1798-1837, while America's spanned 1828-65. Romantics rejected many of the artistic forms and conventions associated with classicism and neoclassicism, considering them to be overly constricting and detrimental to the artistic mission. They differed, however, in their interests and emphases. Some urged a revival of medievalism (an interest in emulating certain aspects of the Middle Ages); others emphasized the importance of freedom from all traditions. Some tended to turn literature into a vehicle for the fancy, a mode of escapism: still others drew a distinction between fancy and imagination, privileging the latter as the source of creativity. But they generally shared the view that spontaneous writing was essential to a true representation of subjective experience and thus put a premium on original expression as well as the use of everyday language rather than poetic diction. Romantics also embraced primitivism, which postulates that people are good by nature but corrupted by civilization. Closely related to the belief in humanity's original goodness was the romantic esteem, even reverence, for childhood and emotions, the most "natural" of human manifestations. In fact, romantics often regarded emotions as more reliable than reason, which they tended to view as a negative product of civilization, unlike the Enlightenment philosophers who celebrated reason as the vehicle furthering and expanding human capabilities. The conception of civilization as a corrupting influence also led romantics to glorify nature, which they tended to view as the antithesis of materialism and artifice to which they often imputed a mystical or even sublime quality. Finally, looking outward, and believing in the essential goodness of human beings, many romantics demanded political and social change. Some looked to the French Revolution as a political blueprint for improvement, at least before the excesses of the Reign of Terror became widely known; others focused on the unparalleled (if unfulfilled) possibilities for beneficial social change that the revolution engendered. Romantic writers frequently perceived themselves as both sensitive and unappreciated. (In fact, the romantics may be chiefly responsible for popularizing, and even glorifying, the theme of the suffering artist - the lonely, misunderstood artistic genius.) Although romantics recognized the potential represented by the new machinery and scientific developments so prized in the industrial era, they also felt undervalued (or even rejected) by a world increasingly fixated on progress and what Wordsworth called "getting and spending". The intensity of personal self-assessment and the pursuit of the spiritual or otherwise fantastic often seemed to create an unbridgeable chasm between the susceptible romantic poet and an increasingly commercial and technologically oriented society. Not surprisingly, the heroes and heroines of romantic literature often share their creators' perceptions of alienation and difference from the society at large. Many romantics also felt an affinity with the Gothic and the grotesque. Gothic literature is typically characterized by a general mood of decay, suspense, and terror; action that is dramatic and generally violent; loves that are destructively passionate; and grandiose yet gloomy settings. The grotesque, which Gothic literature often invokes, involves artistic representations that are always strange -- even bizarre or unnatural - and often disturbing. Unlike the neoclassicists, who viewed the Gothic as crude or even barbaric, romantics celebrated its freedom of spirit, mystery, and instinctual authenticity, which meshed well with their own emphasis on individuality, imagination, and sublimity. As with all other literary movements, a reaction against romanticism eventually set in. Realism, an effort to "write reality" that emerged in the later half of the nineteenth century, emphasized the objective presentation of details and events rather than personal feelings or perceptions. At the same time, romanticism became the target of increasing criticism. The self-centeredness, sentimentalism, and improbability of many romantic works incited some of the harshest attacks.

"Richard Cory" Edwin Arlington Robinson (Nineteenth-Century American Literature)

A charming poem about how great of a guy that Richard Cory was, until he put a bullet through his head.

Satire

A literary genre or mode that uses irony, wit, and sometimes sarcasm to expose humanity's vices and foibles. Generally has a moral purpose, such as provoking a response to correctable human failings, ideally some kind of reform. Satire falls into two major categories - direct and indirect. In direct satire, a first-person narrator addresses the reader or another character in the work, the adversarius. In indirect satire, satiric effect is achieved through the presentation of a fictional narrative in which characters, ideas, or institutions come accross as ridiculous. Indirect satire is often as pointed in what it doesn't say as in what it does. Practitioners included the seventh century poet Archilochus, said to have written verses so harsh that his targets hanged themselves. Satire ultimately reached its height in the Neoclassical Period.

"Beware: Do Not Read This Poem" Ishmael Reed (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

A little disturbing. Begins with a story about a woman so vain that she lived in a house of only mirrors, and eventually escaped into a mirror, so then anyone who lived in her house after that was abducted by the woman. Then, it says to back away from this poem, because it's drawing you in. Eventually, it saws go WITH the poem, and says that it has all the rest of you. "this poem is the reader and the / reader this poem." statistic: the us bureau of missing persons reports that in 1968 over 100,000 people disappeared leaving no solid clues nor trace only a space in the lives of their friends.

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" T.S. Eliot (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

A lot of references to previous readings. Asking a question? Is there a cat? Is it worth the time? That is not what I meant at all. Growing old. In the room women come and go, talking of Michelangelo. A lot of repetition.

Romantic Period

A period in American literacy history spanning the years 1828, when Andrew Jackson was elected to the presidency, to 1865, the year the Civil War ended. The limits of American unity were tested during this period, due to the rapid rate of westward expansion and, more importantly, the issue of slavery, which increasingly divided the nation. During this turbulent and often contentious time, the first truly American literature was produced, independent of English models, with significant works appearing in all areas except for drama, thereby giving rise to the appelation American Renaissance. The Romantic Period has also been called the Age of Transcendentalism. An idealistic philosophical and literary movement that arose in New England, transcendentalism maintained that each person is innately divine, with the intuitive ability to discover higher truths. They rejected dogmatic religious doctrines, praised self-reliance, and gloried in the natural goodness of the individual. Romantic writers generally emphasized emotion over intellect; the individual over society; inspiration, imagination, and intuition over logic, discipline, and order; the wild and natural over the tamed. In poetry, Edgar Allan Poe took the novel step of formulating his own theory of poetry, based on which he produced a symboolist verse that would heavily influence post-Civil War poetry and the Symbolist movement in France. Walt Whitman challenged poetic conventions with the radically personal and informal lyrics he published in Leaves of Grass (1855), a collection of poems composed in free verse addressing subject matter deemed highly taboo at the time, such as sex. In prose, on one hand, a group of Southern writers developed a plantation tradition idealizing plantation life through historical romances and sketches. On the other, slave narratives and autobiographies became increasingly popular in the North, even as they were banned in the South. Furthermore, western writers chronicled frontier life. Poe also pioneered detective fiction. American literary criticism also began during the Romantic Period.

Middle English Period

A period in English literary history often said to span the years 1100-1500 but sometimes dated to 1066, the year of the Norman (French) conquest of England. The Middle English Period was punctuated by war, including the four Crusades (late eleventh-early thirteenth centuries), the French-English conflicts during the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), and the civil war known as the War of the Roses (1455-85), but also encompassed the signing of the Magna Carta (1215), which limited the power of the monarchy, and the introduction of printing into England by William Caxton in the 1470s. It is often divided into two parts: an Anglo-Norman phase particularly dominated by French influence and ending around 1300 or 1350, and a later phase in which Middle English prevailed. Much of the literature of the period was anonymous; much was religious in nature, particularly in drama, and forms such as hagiography, sermons making use of exempla, and devotional manuals were also popular. But secular genres also thrived, ranging from ballads, legends, and tales to chronicles (histories), dream visions, and medieval romances. During the Anglo-Norman phase of the Middle English Period, a transitional form of English, bridging Old English and Middle English, competed with Anglo-Norman, a dialect of French. Thus, Middle English literature cannot properly be said to have existed before 1200. Moreover, scholarly works of the Anglo-Norman phase were often written in Latin, which was also the language of the Church, and the works of "high" literature were written in Anglo-Norman, the language of the royal court and aristocracy. The native English vernacular, by contrast, surfaced primarily in popular works, including drama; folk literature; lyrics; and metrical romances. Drama also began to develop in the Middle English Period. Miracle plays and mystery plays, forms of religious drama that arose within the Christian Church as dramatized parts of the liturgy, were subsequently sponsored by towns and religious and trade guilds, which often staged productions on festival days. Morality plays, which arose in the second half of the period and used allegory to make a moral point, portrayed the quest for salvation, featuring a protagonist who represented humanity as well as a cast of other characters vying for the protagonists soul. The interlude, a transitional form between religious and secular drama, arose toward the end of the Middle English Period. In prose, Middle English came into its own in the latter half of the period and was the vehicle of the earliest known efforts of women writers in English.

Modernism

A revolutionary movement encompassing all of the creative arts that had its roots in the 1890s, a transitional period during which artists and writers sought to liberate themselves from the constraints and polite conventions associated with Victorianism. Modernism exploded onto the international scene in the aftermath of WWI, a traumatic transcontinental event that physically devastated and psychologically disillusioned the West in an entirely unprecedented way. Modernist authors experimented with new literary forms, devices, and styles; incorporated the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung; and paid particular attention to language. Included Dadaism, expressionism, formalism, and surrealism.

Neoclassicism

A style of Western literature that flourished from the mid seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth century and the rise of romanticism. The neoclassicists looked to the great classical writers for inspiration and guidance, considering them to have mastered every major genre, including the "noblest" literary forms, namely, tragic drama and the epic. They thought of literature as an art, a craft requiring long and careful study. While they acknowledged the importance of individual inspiration and talent, many practiced imitation of the "masters" in order to perfect their work and foster proper models of expression. Second, they emphasized adherence to form and to the conventions and rules associated with given genres. Third, they thought that literature should both instruct and delight and that the proper subject of art was humanity. Unlike some of the more idealistic and expansive writers who preceded them during the Renaissance, neoclassicists started from the assumption that humanity is imperfect and limited. Nevertheless, many neoclassicists found cause for optimism, particularly in the power of reason to perfect human civilization gradually, in keeping with the Enlightenment thinking of the period. Neoclassicism stressed reason, harmony, balance, restraint, order, serentity, decorum, and realism - above all, an appeal to the intellect rather than emotion. Preferred literary forms included the comedy of manners, epigram, essay, fable, letter, ode, and satire.

"A Far Cry From Africa" Derek Walcott (20th and 21st Centuries: Transnational and Postcolonial Literature)

A warzone, now over, is the setting. "Again brutish necessity wipes its hands Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again A waste of our compassion, as with Spain, The gorilla wrestles with the superman. I who am poisoned with the blood of both, Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have cursed The drunken officer of British rule, how choose Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? Betray them both, or give back what they give? How can I face such slaughter and be cool? How can I turn from Africa and live?"

Kiowa Tale (Early American Literature, 1607 - 1800)

About how a good arrow will have teeth marks upon it, and tale of the onlooker being shot when he did not respond to the man.

"To Night" Charlotte Smith (Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Romanticism and the Victorian Period)

About how despite that complaining to the night is fruitless, and the whole thing looks depressing, it's all rather calming, and good.

"Note on Commercial Theater" Langston Hughes (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

About how they've taken her blues and 'fixed them' so they don't sound like her anymore. She wraps up with saying that someday somebody will stand up and talk about and write about and sing about her, and then she says "I reckon it'll be / Me myself! / Yes, it'll be me."

"The Author to her Book" Anne Bradstreet (Early American Literature, 1607 - 1800)

About the author's frustrations in writing her book, and how nothing is going correctly.

"To His Coy Mistress" Andrew Marvell (The Early Modern Period)

All about how he would spend eternity loving her with complete patience if he could, but alas, we only have so much time to do so.

Celtic Revival

Also known as Celtic Renaissance, Irish Literary Renaissance, or Irish Revival. Of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to revive and promote an indigenous Celtic cultural, literary, and artistic tradition to counter centuries of imperial English domination. Writers sought to construct an independent, nationalistic literature based on Irish traditions, themes, and subject matter, such as those preserved in Celtic folklore and legend.

Commonwealth Age

Also known as the Puritan Interregnum (literally, "between reigns"), an age often classified as the last of the five literary eras within the Renaissance Period in English literature. The Commonwealth Age began with the beheading of King Charles I in 1649 and ended with the restoration of the Stuart monarchy via the coronation of Charles II in 1660. During the interregnum, England was ruled by a Puritan dominated Parliament. Writers of prose and nondramatic poetry dominated the literary arena during the Commonwealth Age.

Old English Period

Also referred to as the Anglo-Saxon Period by historians, usually said to have begun in the first half of the fifth century A.D. with the migration to Britain by members of four principal Germanic tribes from the European continent: the Frisians, the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles (whose name, by the seventh century, was used to refer to all of the germanic inhabitants of "Engla-land", hence, England). Old English refers to the synthetic, or fairly heavily inflected, language system of these peoples, once they were separated from their Germanic roots. By the time the Germanic tribes arrived, the British Isles had been inhabited for centuries by Celtic peoples, who had been under Roman occupation for nearly four hundred years (43-410). While some of these native British had learned latin, their Celtic language and culture had remained intact. Christianity had also been introduced under the Roman occupation, and a British (as well as Irish) church flourished almost completely independent of Rome, helping to sustain the literate and learned traditions of the Latin West when non-Christian Germanic peoples swept into the Roman Empire. According to Bede, the Britons, abandoned by the Romans, invited help from the Anglo-Saxons against marauding tribes to the north, only to have the mercenaries turn on them. King Arthur - if he ever existed - may have been a Romano-British war leader and is credited with holding off the first waves of Germanic invader-immigrants in the early fifth century. But the Anglo-Saxons soon drove the native British into Wales and Cornwall. The invaders were themselves converted to Christianity after the arrival of Augustine in 597, whose mission from Rome also included bringing the British Christian clergy into the Roman Catholic sphere. Christianity brought literacy to the orally based culture of the Anglo-Saxons; by the eighth century, Anglo-Saxon monks were prominent scholars and leading missionaries among the Germanic peoples on the Continent. England was invaded several more times during the Old English Period by Germanic cousins of the Anglo-Saxons: Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes, all of whom were called "Vikings" by the English. These peoples were not Christianized when they arrived, beginning in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, and again in the tenth century, but eventually, like the Anglo-Saxons, they settled the lands they seized and adopted the religion of their inhabitants. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 - at the hands of still other Germanic peoples, the "Northmen" who had settled the northern area of modern France and whose language was a dialect of Old French - is generally said to have ended the Old English Period and to have inaugurated the subsequent Middle English Period. King Alfred, often referred to by the epithet "Alfred the Great", is the best known figure of the old English Period because of his success in unifying the Anglo-Saxons against the Vikings during the ninth century. Alfred also sponsored the translation of several Latin works into Old English and inaugurated the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of events in England that was kept through the twelfth century. Under his influence, West Saxon, the language of almost all of the period's surviving manuscripts, emerged as a sort of "standard" among the four principal dialects. The epic Beowulf, parts of which may have taken shape in early Germanic oral tradition but which was written down in Old English after 1000, is the period's most famous literary work and is concerned exclusively with Scandinavian peoples and events.

Caroline Age

An age spanning the reign of Charles I (1625-49) that is often classified as the fourth of the five literary eras within the Renaissance Period in English literature. Derived from Carolus (Latin for Charles). Was racked from 1642 to 1651 by civil war between the Cavaliers, royalists who supported the king, and the Roundheads, who supported the Puritan parliamentary opposition. In their satirical history of England entitled 1066 and All That (1931), Walter Carruthers Sellar and Robert Julian Yeatman described this war as the "utterly memorable struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Romantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive)." While drama flourished throughout most of the Caroline Age, the genre was strongly constrained from 1642, the year in which the Puritan-dominated Parliament closed all theaters to suppress stage plays, until 1660, with the end of the Puritan Interregnum and the restoration of the monarchy to power.

Jacobean Age

An age spanning the reign of James I (1603-25) that is often classified as the third of five literary eras within the Renaissance Period in English literature. The Jacobean age, which was nearly cut short by the failed Gunpowder Plot to blow up the king and the parliament in 1605, derives from Jacobus. Playwrights Sir Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher are generally credited with developing the hybrid genre of tragicomedy.

Enlightenment

An eighteenth-century philosophical movement in Europe and America that critically examined traditional ideas and institutions, privileged reason, and championed progress. Thinkers associated with the Enlightenment sought to uncover fundamental principles governing humanity and nature and believed in universal order and the perfectability of the individual and society. They advocated the use of the scientific method, observation, and experience to understand and modify both the natural world and human society. Believed that reason could overcome ignorance, intolerance, superstition, and tyranny with the truth. Do we at present live in an enlightened age? No. But we do live in an age of enlightenment. Presently, we still have a long way to go before men as a whole can be in a position of using their own understanding confidently and well in religious matters, without outside guidance. But the obstacles to universal enlightenment are gradually becoming fewer. The Enlightenment motto: "Dare to Know" or "Dare to Think". Enlightenment thinkers were particularly concerned with religion and governance. They sought to humanize religion, rejecting religious dogma and promoting tolerance, and opposed religious interference with science, arguing that religion had nothing to do with inquiries into the natural and human worlds. In search of a universal "natural religion", many rejected organized religion and embraced deism, belief in the existence of God based on reason and experience rather than revelation. Deists viewed God as an impersonal deity, the source of the universe, and linked reverence and worship with a rational moral code. Regarding governance, Enlightenment thinkers explored the relationship between the individual and the state, developing the idea of the social contract, an implicit agreement forming the basis for society that sets forth the rights and responsibilities of individuals and the state. They also viewed the state as a tool for progress, supporting centralization and standardization. Given the widespread chaos and violence stemming in large part from religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most supported monarchical government and even absolute monarchy, though many called for enlightened absolutism as a means of imposing Enlightenment reforms. Ultimately, however, the thinking of absolutists who asserted the divine right of kings as rulers enthroned by and accountable only to God gave way to the competing concept of natural law and its corollary, natural rights. "I think, therefore I am."

Harlem Renaissance

An intellectual and cultural movement that presented black life from a black point of view and was centered in Harlem, an African American area of New York City, developed and flourished during the 20s.

Epigram

From the Greek word for "inscription," originally an inscription on a monument, then simply a short poem; now either a short poem with a brief, pointedly humorous, quotable ending or simply a witty, terse prose statement.

"The Sun Rising" John Donne (The Early Modern Period)

Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus Through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late schoolboys and sour prentices, Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. Thy beams, so reverend and strong Why shouldst thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so log; If her eyes have not blinded thine, Look, and tomorrow late, tell me, Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me. Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday, And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay. She is all states, and all princes I, Nothing else is. Princes do but play us; compared to this, All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy. Thou, sun, art half as happy as we, In that the world's contracted thus; Thine age asks ease, and since they duties be To warm the world, that's done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

Emily Dickinson, poem #501 (Nineteenth-Century American Literature)

Basically, we cannot comprehend all that the world is, because there's something here that we cannot possibly see, hear, or understand.

"The Tables Turned" William Wordsworth (Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Romanticism and the Victorian Period)

Basically: Bruh. Whatchu doin' readin' dem books? Nature's a much better teacher. Let's go outside! :D

Naturalistic Period

Began around 1900 and ended with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Derives from naturalism. Realistic novels continued to flourish. Imagism, an avant-garde movement emphasizing concise, direct expression and clear, precise images, was born in 1909. Significant American drama began to emerge. The Little Theater Movement, which had arisen in France in 1887 to promote the development of plays with serious literary value, appeared in Chicago in 1906 and then spread to other American cities. Finally, the rise of muckrakers, investigative journalists and other writers who sought to expose abuse and corruption in big business and government, which they believed were responsible for numerous social problems, also occurred during the Naturalistic Period.

Modern Period

Began in 1914 with the outbreak of WWI and ending in 1945 with the conclusion of WWII. The term modern here should not be confused with modern as it is more commonly used, that is, to refer to recent or contemporary times. The Modern Period is noted for works characterized by a transnational focus, stylistic unconventionality, or interest in repressed sub- or un- conscious material; it includes works written in just about every established genre. Although the beginning of the Modern Period in English literature coincides with the beginning of the Georgian Age, the term Georgian is usually used in connection with relatively traditional pastoral or realistic poems. A number of Georgian poets had been horrified by the tragic results of WWI and wrote poems attacking the absurdity of war in general. Virginia Woolf experimented with stream of consciousness, a style of writing reflecting a character's flow of perceptions, thoughts, memories, and feelings. American writers of the period who felt disillusioned by the experience and aftermath of WWI quickly came to be termed the Lost Generation. These writers generally viewed the "traditional" American values of their youth as a sham, given the senselessness of the war and its devaluation of human life. As such, members of this goroup deliberately rejected American culture as hypocritical; many even moved to Europe during the 1920s, participating in movements such as Dadaism and surrealism. the Fugitives- a group of Southern poets

Sonnet 1, Edmund Spenser (The Early Modern Period)

Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands, Which hold my life in their dead doing might, Shall handle you and hold in loves soft bands, Lyke captives trembling at the victors sight. And happy lines, on which with starry light, Those lamping (flashing) eyes will deigne sometimes to look And reade the sorrowes of my dying spright, (spirit) Written with teares in harts close bleeding book And happy rymes bath'd in the sacred brooke Of Helicon whence she derived is, When ye behold that Angels blessed looke, My soules long lacked foode, my heavens blis. Leaves, lines, and rymes, seeke her to please alone, Whom if ye please, I care for other none.

"I, Too, Sing America" Langston Hughes (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-- I, too, am America.

Constructionists

Contend that gender and sexuality are cultural artifacts. View sexuality not as a fixed set of binary oppositions (heterosexual/homosexual) but as a continuum encompassing a range of behaviors and responses. They emphasize, for instance, that sexuality is not restricted to homosexuality and heterosexuality but also includes practices such as bondage, sadomasochism, and transvestism. They also note that many people have felt attracted to members of both sexes even if they are predominantly hetero- or homosexual.

"The Indian Burying Ground" Philip Freneau (Early American Literature, 1607 - 1800)

Covers Indian burial practices and beliefs. For instance, they bury their own in a sitting position, and leave them with their personal effects that detail their life.

Emily Dickinson, poem #241 (Nineteenth-Century American Literature)

I like a look of Agony, Because I know it's true- Men do not sham Convulsion, Nor simulate, a Throe- The Eyes glaze once-and that is Death- Impossible to feign The Beads upon the Forehead By homely Anguish strung.

psychoanalytic criticism

Emerged in the early twentieth century, and analyzes the relationship between authors or readers and literary works, emphasizing the unconscious mind, its repressed wishes and fears, and sublimated manifestations in the text. Originated in the work of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who developed a theory of human psychology. He suggested that the powers motivating men and women are mainly and normally unconscious. He also identified three components of the human psyche: the id (the inborn, unconscious part of the psyche, and the source of our instinctual physical desires), the superego (which internalizes the norms and mores of society and almost seems outside the self, making moral judgements and counseling sacrifice regardless of self-interest), and the ego (the predominantly rational, orderly, and conscious part of the psyche that mediates the often competing demands of the id and the superego. The id, insatiable and pleasure-seeking, is ruled by the pleasure principle; the ego, based on the reality principle, must choose between balance liberation and self-gratification on one hand and censorship and conformity on the other). Freud argued that we often repress what the id encourages us to think and do, thereby forcing these "unacceptable" wishes and desires into the unconscious. We are particularly likely to censor infantile sexual desires, which then emerge only in disguised forms: in dreams, in language (so-called Freudian slips), in creative activity that may produce art (including literature), and in neurotic behavior. One commonly repressed unconscious desire is the childhood wish to displace the parent of the same sex and take his or her place in the affections of the parent of the opposite sex, which Freud referred to as "Oedipal". Notably, Freud viewed the manifestation of the Oedipus complex as a universal experience, a normal stage of psychosexual development central to the development of the superego, and for much of his career attributed neurosis chiefly to unresolved Oedipal conflicts. Freud used dream analysis as a tool for uncovering our repressed feelings and memories. He believed that the repressed urges of the id surface in dreams, masked in symbolic form, and that analysis is therefore required to reveal their true meaning. The psychoanalytic approach to literature not only rests on the theories of Freud, it may even be said to have BEGUN with Freud, who believed that writers write to express their personal, repressed wishes and who was especially interested in writers who relied heavily on symbols. Some psychoanalytic critics have viewed literary works as analogous to dreams and have used Freudian analysis to help explain the nature of the minds that produced them. Such critics therefore employ Freud's dream analysis procedures to reveal subconscious motivations. Freud used the words condensation and displacement to explain two of the mental processes with which the ind disguises its wishes and fears in dream stories. Condensation involves the consolidation of several thoughts or persons into a single manifestation or image; displacement involves the projection of an anxiety, wish, or person onto the image of another. Psychoanalytic critics treat metaphors as dream condensations, metonyms as dream displacements. Figurative language is treated as something that evolves as the writer's conscious mind resists what the unconscious tells it to picture or describe. Daniel Weiss defined a symbol (one type of figurative language) as "a meaningful concealment of truth as the truth promises to emerge as some frightening or forbidden idea."

"Going to Meet the Man" by James Baldwin (Narrative Technique/Sexual Studies)

Fixation with sexual prowess. Racism is learned. Very psychological.

gay and lesbian criticism

Focused on textual representations of and readings responsive to issues of homo- (and hetero-) sexuality. Since gay and lesbian criticism both feature sexuality as the issue that troubles gender as a category, the approaches are typically classified more specifically as types of gender criticism, though not all critics would so categorize their work. Emerged in the mid-1980s with the publication of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. In this pioneering work, Sedgwick adapted feminist critical theory to analyze relationships between men. Some practitioners debate over whether there is such a thing as "reading like a woman" (or man) by arguing that there are gay and lesbian ways of reading. The work of gay and lesbian critics who are more theoretically oriented than text-centered has come to be called queer theory.

gender criticism

Focuses on gender as it is commonly conceived, seeking to expose its insufficiency as a categorizing device. Gender critics draw a distinction between gender, the identities and characteristics commonly associated with men and masculinity, and women and femininity, and sex, the biological designation of male or female. They typically reject the essentialist view that gender is natural or innate, and instead take the contructionist position.

"The Darkling Thrush" Thomas Hardy (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

He views winter in a very desolate life, like nothing has energy, everything is dead. And then, he sees a thrush in bloom, striving up, and he's not sure what gives this little thrush hope, but it's it makes the thrush happy, and the author is missing out.

The Dead, by James Joyce

Heavily symbolism with the statues. Suddenly very moody at the end.

"A Description of the Morning" Johnathan Swift (Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature)

Hired coaches appear. Betty flees her masters bed. Moll mopped up. Bill collectors met at a lords gate. A jailer takes back in the prisoners that he let out to steal to pay their fees. Schoolboys head out.

"Frost at Midnight" Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Romanticism and the Victorian Period)

His surrounding are so calm that it's freaking him out. He is all alone. Everything is still. Only his infant child. Then there's some kind of stranger that he calls to mind that he wishes to see? He then speaks of his child, and how rather than growing up in a bustling city like he did, he'll be growing up in a quiet village, with the majesty of nature all around.

"Epigram Engraved on the Collar" Alexander Pope (Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature)

I am his Highness' dog at Kew: Pray tell me sir, whose dog are you?

"The Second Coming" William Butler Yeats (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

I believe it is about WWI, as this poem came out 4 years after WWI began. It talks about how everything is falling apart, there is anarchy, and the waters are tinted with blood. He says "Surely the Second Coming is at hand." Not only this, but this second coming is of the anti-Christ. "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" John Keats (Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Romanticism and the Victorian Period)

I can't even say what this was about, really. It was 5 stanzas that I couldn't really wrap my head around.

Emily Dickinson, poem #657 (Nineteenth-Century American Literature)

I dwell in Possibility- A fairer House than Prose- More numerous of Windows- Superior-for Doors- Of Chambers as the Cedars- Impregnable of Eye- And for an Everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky- Of Visiters-the fairest- For Occupation-This- The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise-

"On Monsieur's Departure", Elizabeth I (The Early Modern Period)

I grieve and dare not show my discontent, I love and yet am forced to seem to hate, I do, yet dare not say I ever meant, I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate. I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned, Since from myself another self I turned. My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, lies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done. His too familiar care doth make me rue it. No means I find to rid him from my breast, Till by the end of things it be suppressed. Some gentler passion slide into my mind, For I am soft and made of melting snow; Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind. Let me or float or sink, be high or low. Or let me live with some more sweet content, Or die and so forget what love e'er meant.

Postmodern Period

Less coherent and less well defined than many other literary eras, said to have begun after WWII. Follows the Modern Period. Both modernist and postmodernist works tend to express feelings of anxiety and alienation experienced by individuals living in the twentieth century, but postmodernist works tend to be even darker, suggesting the meaninglessness of the human condition in general through radically experimental works that defy conventions of literary cohesion and even coherence. Postmodernist novels fitting this description are often referred to as antinovels.

Sonnet 1, Sir Philip Sidney (The Early Modern Period)

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain, Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain, I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain, Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain. But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay; Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows, And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way. Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, Biting my trewand (truant) pen, beating myself for spite, "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."

"The Disappointment" Aphra Behn (Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature)

Lysander and Cloris. She is a maid, and I assume that he's of higher station. He was lusting after her hardcore. She warns him that she'll call out for help, and then what would he do? But he is unused to fear and apparently not capable of love, and continues on anyway. But, she's alright with it, because she's pretty into him by this point and has had her fill of saying "no, please senpai, stop it". They go to a private place, and are macking on one another, panting hard, wriggling their little bodies up against each other, and she offers her booty up to him, and he strips her, but then... Nature's power seems to have left him. He has all this desire for her, but he can't seem to get it up. And this knowledge only serves to increase his rage and shame, leaving no spark for new desire, to the point that no matter how bootylicious she is, she couldn't wake the beast. She touches his junk with her hand to try to rile him up, but jerks back because it's freaking COLD from lack of blood. All had abandoned his poor man bits. She gtfo's, leaving him to curse just about every god and fate that he knew of. The end.

Essentialists

Maintain that gender and sexuality are natural or innate (vs. constructionists)

"A Married State" Katherine Phillips (The Early Modern Period)

Marriage is awful for women. Don't ever enter one. RUN WHILE YOU CAN.

"Ulysses" Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Romanticism and the Victorian Period)

NOOOOO LAZY KIIIIINGS PASS DOOOOWN

"To Her Father With Some Verses" Anne Bradstreet (Early American Literature, 1607 - 1800)

Not sure how to repay her debt to her father for giving her life.

"The Lynching" Claude McKay (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

Obviously from the title, about a colored person being burned at the stake. There is no pity in the eyes of the women, and the children dance about the body.

Postcolonial Literature

Refers to a body of literature written by authors with roots in countries that were once colonies established by European nations. Postcolonial theory refers to a field of intellectual inquiry that explores and interrogates the situation of colonized peoples both during and after colonization. Post-colonial lit and theory are often, but not always, anti-imperialist in character. The period after a former colony becomes independent. Connotes political and moral opposition to colonization. Sometimes used to refer to similar situations, like the enslavement of African Americans and English domination of the Irish. Said "Orientalism".

Early Modern Period

Refers to a period beginning around the latter half of the fifteenth century in Western Europe and extending to some point between the mid-seventeeth century and the end of the eighteenth century. Significant developments in the early modern period, which roughly bridged the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution, included the decline of feudalism; the invention of the printing press; the discovery of the Americas; the Protestant Reformation; the rise of modern science; the establishment of nation states, often with associated empires; and the emergence of modern capitalism, through the protectionist economic system of mercantilism. With capitalism came a non-aristrocratic merchant class able to patronize the arts, literature, and other realms that had earlier been financially supported and controlled by the aristocracy and the Church. The term early modern period is often used to refer to the Renaissance, but this usage is misleading. Renaissance is a cultural marker denoting the rebirth of learning, literature, and the other arts that began at different times in different regions of Europe, whereas early modern is a term more appropriately applied to: (1) a global historical period spanning some three centuries, from about 1500-1800; (2) language as it evolved and became standardized following the Middle Ages, with Early Modern English and Early Modern French, for instance, succeeding the Middle English and Middle French linguistic stages of the late Medieval Period; and (3) literature produced in early modern languages.

"Desiree's Baby" by Kate Chopin (Narrative Technique/Race Studies)

Revealing attitudes toward blacks of the time. Narrative techniques of prose writing, with a twist at the end.

Early National Period

Roughly spans the years 1790-1828, was significantly shaped by the work of building the US as a new nation. Sometimes referred to as the Federalist Age for the conservative federalists who dominated American government from 1789, when the federal government was formed, to 1828, when Andrew Jackson won the presidential election (an event often called the "second revolution"). Jackson, a slaveholder who implemented some brutal policies affecting Native Americans, was widely characterized as a populist, a proponent of frontier individualism, and a champion of the common people. While writers of the preceding Colonial and Revolutionary Periods tended to imitate English precursors, more distinctively American voices began to emerge in most genres during the Early National Period. Except in drama, a relatively independent and imaginative literature began to arise as the nation developed, marking a shift from the didactic or polemical character of much prior "american" writing. Novels, most of which were sentimental or Gothic, also began to flourish during the Early National Period. Sentimental novels generally claimed to set forth a "true" story for the purpose of moral instruction in general. Gothic novels were characterized by their focus on the grotesque or supernatural and their preoccupation with doom, horror, mystery, passion, and suspense. + Spy fiction.

"A Supermarket in California" Allen Ginsberg (20th and 21st Centuries: Postmodernism)

Shopping for images. No questioning of the produce. Neon fruits. All is dark and lonely.

"My Last Duchess" Robert Browning (Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Romanticism and the Victorian Period)

Showing off a painting of his last Duchess, and describing her manner. She was very curious. Too easily impressed.

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" Thomas Gray (Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature)

So, this talks a little bit about the dead first, how they led lives just like ours before they came here, and now, no earthly means can cause them to rouse.. And yet.. I'm pretty sure that it talks about seeing someones ghost in the second half of the play.

Realistic Period

Spans 1865-1900. In the wake of the devastation of the Civil War, forces including capitalist industrialization; Reconstruction; northern urbanization; and rapid advances in communications, science, and transportation contributed to a great change in American literature as well as American society and politics. The work of many writers continued to exhibit a romantic strain throughout much of this period, but realism dominated the national literary scene by the epoch's end. So-called romantic realists, for instance, essentially presented their subject matter accurately but wrote only about subject matter that was pleasant or positive. Unlike romantic writers, who emphasized emotion, imagination, and individuality, realists aimed to present life as it realy is, in its nobility as well as its banality. Although realistic authors sought to represent their subject matter in an unidealized, unsentimentalized way, they did not set out to emphasize the negative, the distorted, or the ugly. Rather, they sought to create truthful portraits, unlike naturalistic writers who depicted life with a decidedly deterministic, pessimistic bent. Local color literature, which emphasizes the setting, customs, dialects, and other features peculiar to a given region of the country, also developed and thrived.

Revolutionary Period

Spans from 1765 to 1790, starting with the Stamp Act. For the next 25 years, until the implementation of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, the majority of american writing was politically motivated, whether supportive of English rule or revolutionary in character. Most of the poetry of the Revolutionary Period was neoclassical in style and used forms such as the burlesque, satire, and epic for patriotic political ends. Revolutionary prose was often polemical, written to encourage and even inspire the movement for political independence from England and to promote national unification. The African American literary tradition, inaugurated late in the Colonial Period, also developed.

Colonial Period

Spans the years 1607, when the English settlers founded Jamestown, Virginia, to 1765, when the passing of the Stamp Act by the English parliament enraged the colonists in America. The influence of England on every "American" institution was overwhelming. Furthermore, the very fact that the colonists came from diferent lands and religious backgrounds with few unifying influences made it difficult to form any "national" literature. Could hardly be considered literature. Imaginative literature was banned thanks to the Puritans, who viewed drama and the novel as paths to perdition. Drama was explicitly labeled an evil akin to cockfighting by the Continental Congress as late as 1774. With practical needs and survival as priorities for settlers, colonial works were largely historical and didactic, intended to record, instruct, or even warn. Letters, journals, narratives, and histories were popular forms of writing. Many colonial works were also polemical or religious in nature. Also, first slave narratives.

Neoclassical Period

Spans the years 1660-1798. Is usually divided into three literary eras: the Restoration Age, which ended around 1700; the Augustan Age, which spanned the first half of the eighteenth century; and the Age of Johnson, which spanned the second half of the eighteenth century.

"Digging" Seamus Heaney (20th and 21st Centuries: Transnational and Postcolonial Literature)

Speaks of his father and grandfather "digging" as potato farmers. He decides to dig with his "squat pen" instead.

"Sailing to Byzantium" William Butler Yeats (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

Speaks of riches and old men... Hm.

"To Penhurst" Ben Jonson (The Early Modern Period)

Talks about how even though his hometown of Penhurst isn't necessarily luxurious by monument standards, it is so through his growing up there, and the simple nature there.

"The Cry of the Children" Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Romanticism and the Victorian Period)

The author asks, "Why do the children cry, when old wounds and an older world are what makes us grown men cry?", and he provides the childrens answer that basically says "This world is very old, and sad and dreary, and as young children, we have a long way to go in it before our time. In fact, it's a blessing when we've gone before our time". And when the author tries to get them to live like children should, they offer pitiful responses that show that they are already too far gone to do these things. They take no pleasure in much of anything, really. All they do is work, and they are miserable. They cry out for God, who is supposed to be good and merciful, but they are offered no rest or mercy. "We look up for God, but tears have made us blind." "They know the grief of man, without its wisdom; They sink in man's despair, without its calm"

"The Weary Blues" Langston Hughes (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

The author hears an African American playing those "Weary Blues" on a piano, and singing the sorrows out of his heart.

"The Coora Flower" Gwendolyn Brooks (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

The author learns that the coora flower grows high in the mountains of Itty-go-luba. "It was restful, learning nothing necessary." "Now I am coming home. / This, at least, is Real, and what I know." "School is tiny vacation. At least you can sleep." "The crack is gone. So a Man will be in the house. I must watch myself. I must not dare to sleep."

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" William Butler Yeats (Twentieth-Century Modernisms: Britain and America)

The authors heart belongs on the lake isle of Innisfree, for he hears the sound of the waves there no matter where he is. He plans to build a small cabin, along with a bean farm enriched with honeybees.

"The Grauballe Man" Seamus Heaney (20th and 21st Centuries: Transnational and Postcolonial Literature)

The body of a man who was slain by the "Grauballe Man". The body isn't looking too good.

Restoration Age

The first of the three literary eras within the Neoclassical Period in English literature, generally characterized by satire, wit, and a reaction against Puritanism. Began in 1660 when the House of Stuart was restored to the English throne after the eleven-year Commonwealth Age, or Puritan Interregnum (which means, literally, "between reigns"). It is generally said to have ended in 1700. The libertine spirit of Restoration Age literature - which focused on the royal court, aristocratic intrigues, and clever repartee - starkly contrasts with that of the preceding, Puritan-dominated era, during which public dancing was virtually eliminated and public theaters closed. With the reopening of theaters and the support of the king, drama flourished during the Restoration Age. Particularly popular was Restoration comedy, a type of comedy of manners. Major forms of tragedy include the heroic drama and the she-tragedy, which centered on the unjust suffering of a virtuous woman. In poetry, the heroic couplet was the dominant form. Values associated with Neoclassicism: reason, balance, decorum, and order.

"On The Burning Of Our House" Anne Bradstreet (Early American Literature, 1607 - 1800)

The house is burning, with the final lines being "There's wealth enough, I need no more, / Farewell, my pelf, farewell my store. The world no longer let me love, / My hope and treasure lies above."

direct discourse

The narrator relates a character's thoughts and utterances in an unfiltered way, conveying precisely what the character thinks or says. (She thought, "I'll demand the money from him, or else!")

indirect discourse

The narrator takes a more independent approach, reporting - and sometimes paraphrasing - what characters think or say. (She planned to demand the money from him, coupling it with a threat.)

"History" by Bennett and Royle (Old English and Medieval Literature)

The relationship between a literary text and history: 1. Literary texts belong to no particular time, they are universal and transcend history: the historical context of their production and reception has no bearing on the literary work which is aesthetically autonomous, having its own laws, being a world unto itself. 2. The historical context of a literary work- the circumstances surrounding its production- is integral to a proper understanding of it: the text is produced within a specific historical context but in its literariness it remains separate from that context. 3. Literary works can help us to understand the time in which they are set: realist texts in particular provide imaginative representations of specific historical moments, events or periods. 4. Literary texts are bound up with other discourses and rhetorical structures: they are part of a history that is still in the process of being written. These four models of literature and history characterize various schools of criticism. The first model is often associated with new criticism or more generally with formalism. The second model is the kind of approach favored by philological or what we might call 'background' critics. Such critics are concerned to describe and analyse literary texts through a consideration of their historical 'background', whether biographical, linguistic, cultural or political.For such critics, knowledge of a literary text's historical circumstances forms the basis for understanding of that text. The third model tends to be associated more with traditional historical scholarship than with literary criticism, as it assumes that literary texts are in some respect subordinate to their historical context. It also tends to assume that literary texts provide un-distorted 'reflections' of their time. The last model is associated with a new kind of concern with the historical dimensions of literary studies particularly since the early 1980s. This model is specifically associated with new historicist critics in the United States and with cultural materialist critics in Britain. In both cases, this new interest in history has been refracted through the concerns of both Marxism and post-structuralism to produce a complex model of the literary. The rest of the chapter will be focused on strategies of reading developed by new historicism in order to consider ways in which literary texts may be thought about in historical terms. New historicists argue that to ask about the relationship between literature and history is the wrong question. The form of the question presupposes that there is literature on the one side and history on the other. Despite their differences, new critics, background critics, and reflectionists tend to rely on precisely such a polarity: they assume that the categories of 'literature' and 'history' are intrinsically separate. They distinguish, more or less explicitly, between the need for the interpretation of literary texts on the one hand, and the transparency of history on the other. 'Literary study differs from historical study in having to deal not with documents but with monument', and the literary critic 'has direct access to his object' while the historian 'has to reconstruct a long-past event on the basis of eye-witness accounts', They also assume that it is possible for our knowledge of both historical events and literary texts to be detached and objective, outside the forces of history. New historicism may be understood as a reaction against such presuppositions: put briefly, it may be defined as a recognition of the extent to which history is textual, as a rejection of the autonomy of the literary text and as an attempted displacement of the objectivity of interpretation in general. 'Methodological self'consciousness is one of the distinguishing marks of the new historicism in cultural studies as opposed to a historicism based upon faith in the transparency of signs and interpretive procedures'. Then, new historicism involves a questioning of the critics' own position and interpretative procedures. No absolute distinction can be made between literary and other cultural practices. Literary texts are embedded within the social and economic circumstances in which they are produced and consumed. But what is important for new historicists is that these circumstances are not stable in themselves and are susceptible to being rewritten and transformed. From this perspective, literary texts are part of a larger circulation of social energies, both products of and influences on a particular culture or ideology. What is new about new historicism in particular is its recognition that history is the 'history of the present', and history is radically open to transformation and rewriting. "histories ought never to be read as unambiguous signs of the events they report, but rather as symbolic structures, extended metaphors, that 'liken' the events reported in them to some form with which we have already become familiar in our literary culture..." William Wordsworth, "Alice Fell"

Elizabethan Age

The second of five literary eras within the Renaissance Period in English literature, an age spanning the raign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) that is often considered the ehight of the Renaissance in England. The Elizabethan Age, which reached its pinnacle with the English navy's victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, is closely associated with the transnational and transcultural Renaissance. The term Elizabethan is sometimes extended beyond Elizabeth I's reign to include literature, particularly drama, of the Jacobean Age or even the Caroline Age.

free indirect discourse

The thoughts or statements of characters in a work that blends third-person narration with the first person point-of-view. Combines elements of direct discourse and indirect discourse to give the reader a sense of being inside a character's head without actually quoting his or her thoughts or statements. "On the one hand it evokes the person, though his words, tone of voice, and gesture, with incomparable vivacity. On the other, it embeds the character's statement or thought in the narrative flow, and even more importantly in the narrator's interpretation, communicating also his way of seeing and feeling." "Dual voice" In the twentieth century, modernist writers made particular use of the mode, which remains common today.

Emily Dickinson, poem #258 (Nineteenth-Century American Literature)

There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons- That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes- Heavenly Hurt, it gives us- We can find no scar, But internal difference, Where the Meanings, are- None may teach it-Any- 'Tis the Seal Despair- An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air- When it comes, the Landscape listens- Shadows-hold their breath- When it goes, 'tis like the Distance On the look of Death-

"Punishment" Seamus Heaney (20th and 21st Centuries: Transnational and Postcolonial Literature)

There's a drowned body, suspended in the bog, who was a scapegoat for the author, who kept quiet as her sisters turned against her. She's black. A tale of adultery.

"Expostulation and Reply" William Wordsworth (Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Romanticism and the Victorian Period)

There's someone criticizing William, asking why he's sitting on this rock and wasting his life away. "Where are your books?", he's asked, used to breathe the spirits of dead men. He's criticized as looking around as if he doesn't have a purpose, like no one had lived before him. William responds with that our bodies will do what they do, with or without our will, and "That nothing of itself will come, But we must still be seeking?". So basically, life will happen, so why not?

"The Imperfect Enjoyment", John Wilmot, The Second Earl of Rochester (Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature)

They're both all for doing the do, but he's just so excited that at one touch he cums, and she kinda laughs, and says "is there no more?" and he tries to comply and make her feel good as well, but the pressure of it all frustrates him and he lies impotent and flaccid. He curses his own "prick", says that maybe she should just go rub herself like a hog on a post, and hopes that maybe next time she'll be done in by an abler prick.

Age of Johnson

Third in the Neoclassical Period, ranges from the middle of the eighteenth century to 1798, the year in which William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, often cited as inaugurating the Romantic Period in English literature. While the Age of Johnson spans the same time period as the Age of Sensibility, the two names for this era reflect different literary interests and priorities as well as its transitional status. Critics using the term Age of Johnson - the older and more traditional of the two names - focus on the era as the final stage of English neoclassicism; those using the term Age of Sensibility see it as anticipating romanticism in English literature. Named for the influential poet, critic, and writer Samuel Johnson, the Age of Johnson calls to mind neoclassical aesthetics and Enlightenment values such as reason, balance, order, and a focus on humanity in general. By contrast, the Age of Sensibility evokes an emphasis on feeling and sinsibility and a shift toward new forms of literary expression including the sentimental comedy and sentimental novel. Unlike neoclassicists, who looked to classical writers for guidance and inspiration, writers associated with the Age of Sensibility developed an interest in medieval history, bardic poetry, folk literature such as ballads, and primitivism, trending toward romanticism's emphasis on individualism, imagination, and the language of the common people.

"A Political Litany" Philip Freneau (Early American Literature, 1607 - 1800)

Very systematically TEARS POLITICAL ISSUES APART. *clap clap clap*

Augustan Age

Was once commonly used to refer to the literary age of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid (27 BC to 14 AD), now used to refer to the second literary era within the Neoclassical Period. These English writers, or "Augustans" modelled themselves after their classical precursors, emphasizing the importance to society of order, balance, propriety, civility, and wit.

Sonnets 29 and 55, William Shakespeare (The Early Modern Period)

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless (futile) cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. ________________________________________________ Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. 'Gainst death and all-oblicious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out the ending doom. So, till the judgment that yourself arise You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

queer theory

With reference to sexual relations, queer encompasses any practice or behavior that a person engages in without reproductive aims and without regard for social or economic considerations. As a critical term, queer refers to writings that question generally accepted associations and identities involving sex, gender, and sexuality. "Queer is less an identity than a critique of identity." "Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers." Is an outgrowth of gender criticism, and more specifically, gay and lesbian criticism. More theoretically oriented, however.