English and American Literatures Review Flashcards

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards covering major literary periods, movements, authors, and terms in English and American literature as outlined in the lecture notes.

The Venerable Bede

Considered as the Father of English History and the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholar, he wrote the 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People'.

Alfred the Great

King of Wessex from 871-899 who championed Anglo-Saxon culture by writing in his native tongue and encouraging translations from Latin into Old English.

Cædmon’s Hymn

A 7th-century nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem produced by an unlearned cowherd inspired by a vision.

Beowulf

The national epic of England that blends Christianity and paganism; it is the most notable example of the earliest English poetry found in the Nowell Codex.

Epic

A long narrative poem written about the exploits of a supernatural hero.

Dream of the Rood

One of the earliest Christian poems, preserved in the 10th-century Vercelli book, which uses dream vision to narrate the death and resurrection of Christ from the perspective of the Cross.

The Wanderer

A 115-line alliterative lyric poem that reminisces about a wanderer’s past glory and his solitary exile after losing kinsmen in battle.

Everyman

Regarded as the best of the morality plays, it is an allegorical work where characters are personifications of abstractions like Death, Fellowships, and Good Deeds.

Allegory

A form of extended metaphor where objects, persons, and actions in a narrative have moral, social, religious, or political meanings lying outside the narrative itself.

Ballad

A narrative poem meant to be sung, characterized by repetition and often a repeated refrain; earliest versions were anonymous works transmitted orally.

Medieval Romance

A long narrative poem idealizing knight errantry, featuring chivalrous knights engaged in adventures to protect their King and prove their honor.

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer’s frame narrative featuring 29 pilgrims sharing stories on their way to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket.

Christopher Marlowe

Known as the Father of English Tragedy, he wrote 'Doctor Faustus,' which exemplifies the intellectual aspirations of the Renaissance.

Spenserian stanza

A nine-line verse containing eight lines of iambic pentameter followed by a single line of iambic hexameter, known as an 'alexandrine'.

King James Bible

Published in 1611 and known as the Authorized Version, this translation was made by 47 scholars and is considered a supreme achievement of the English Renaissance.

Shakespearean Sonnet

Also known as Elizabethan or English sonnets, these are composed of three quatrains and one heroic couplet with the rhyme scheme abab-cdcd-efef-gg.

Francis Bacon

Hailed as the Father of Inductive Reasoning and the Father of the English Essay; his essays are considered the greatest literary contribution of the 17th century.

Metaphysical Poetry

A style of poetry, such as that by John Donne, that uses conceits or farfetched similes intended to startle the reader into awareness of unusual relationships.

Cavalier Poems

Poems known for elegant and courtly culture that often espouse 'carpe diem' or 'seize the day', popularised by poets like Robert Herrick.

Gulliver's Travels

A satire on human folly and stupidity written by Jonathan Swift, featuring the tiny Lilliputians and huge Brobdingnagians.

Romanticism (Tenets)

Literary movement emphasizing the individual, imagination, and intuition, marking a shift from reason to feelings and interest in the rural and natural.

Gothic Literature

A style popular during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that portrayed fantastic tales dealing with horror, the grotesque, and 'dark' subjects.

Jane Austen

A writer of realistic novels about English middle-class people, best known for 'Pride and Prejudice'.

Negative capability

A term coined by John Keats to describe the moment of artistic inspiration when a poet achieves self-annihilation and a delicate perception of beauty.

Dramatic monologue

A long speech by an imaginary character used to expose pretense and reveal a character’s inner self, frequently used by Robert Browning.

Naturalist writer

An author, like Thomas Hardy, who applies a philosophical attitude from science to show the futility of human struggle against natural and social forces.

James Joyce

An Irish expatriate noted for experimental use of interior monologue and the stream of consciousness technique in novels like 'Ulysses'.

Stream of consciousness

A technique that presents the thoughts and feelings of a character as they occur, pioneered by Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.

Bildungsroman

A novel of formation or development in which a protagonist transforms from ignorance and innocence to knowledge and maturity.

Puritans

Two groups (separating and non-separating) who emphasized God’s sovereignty and the three covenants of Works, Grace, and Redemption.

The American Enlightenment

An 18th-century movement marked by emphasis on rationality, scientific inquiry, and representative government instead of tradition, dogma, and monarchy.

Transcendentalism

A movement based on the belief in the unity of the world and God, independence, and the identification of the individual soul with God.

Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau’s theory of passive resistance based on the moral necessity to disobey unjust laws, which inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Boston Brahmin Poets

Patrician, Harvard-educated literati like Longfellow and Holmes who sought to fuse American and European literary traditions.

Mark Twain

The pen name of Samuel Clemens, whose style used realistic, colloquial American speech; Hemingway stated all American literature comes from Twain's 'Huckleberry Finn'.

Muckraking novels

Works that used journalistic techniques to depict harsh working conditions and oppression, such as Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'.

Objective correlative

T.S. Eliot’s formula for expressing emotion through a set of objects, a situation, or a chain of events.

Beat Generation

A group of 1950s American writers who rejected mainstream values and experimented with drugs and Eastern spirituality; major works include 'Howl' and 'On the Road'.

Confessional poetry

A kind of poetry popularized by writers like Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell that reveals the poet’s personal life, including illnesses and sexuality.