English Literature CLEP

Old English

A time in history where literature was written to foster bravery and promote heroic deeds.

Middle English

A time in history where literature was written to promote knightly ideals that stabilized social hierarchy.

Renaissance

A time in history where literature was written to entertain through stage plays, comedies, and histories.

Augustan Period

A time in history where literature was written for the emerging middle class. Manuscripts were made accessible through the invention of the printing press.

Romantic Period

A time in history where literature was written mainly in flowery poetry while promoting individualism.

Victorian Period

A time in history where literature was written for a secularized society.

Modern Period

A time in history where literature was written to produce literary "art". New criticism established.

Postmodern Period

A time in history where literature was written for ideological aims.

Close Reading

Following a text closely and making your own decisions about that text.

Denotation

The accepted meaning of a word.

Connotation

The significance of a word through association.

Tone

The author's mood in a text.

Diction

Choice of words or utterance.

Imagery

______ enables writers to show events and relationships.

Concrete Term

A term for anything tangible.

Figurative Language

Language that is meant to mean something other than what it literally means.

Metaphor

A term that is used figuratively to represent something that isn't actually there.

Simile

A figurative comparison between two things.

Canon

English Standard. Helps preserve quality. Contains the greatest literary achievements in the western world.

Mystification

The process of denying political values by misrepresenting them as natural ideals.

Ode

A song made up of three parts: strophe, antistrophe, and epode.

Sappho of Lesbos

Teacher of a school for girls. Wrote love poetry to her favorite students.

Panegyric

Poem that praises others for their achievements.

John Keats

Wrote "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

Apostrophe

The direct address to something that is not alive.

Genre

Organizing and categorizing.

Pindaric Odes

Odes that focus of worldly achievement.

Structuralism

Organizing internally.

Signifier

A word that refers to something else.

Deconstruction

The view that language is "unstable".

Trace

Things that are absent from, yet suggested by a text.

Differance

The belief that you can't locate a fixed, stable meaning in any one place.

Aporia

The absence of meaning/many possible meanings.

Presence

The belief that stable meaning is located within a text.

Ideology

Shared made up beliefs.

Virginia Woolf

A woman who wrote about woman's rights. Wrote stream of consciousness novels.

Multiculturalism

Different cultures within the society.

Abstraction

Anything that isn't tangible.

Metonym

Uses an attribute of a thing to stand for the thing itself (Paw=cat, etc.)

Onomatopeoia

Words that sound like what they mean.

Prosody of Versification

Features that account for the sound and structure of a verse.

Meter

Rhythmic Structure.

Stanza

A repeaed pattern of lines and rhymes.

Rhyme Scheme

The pattern of rhymes in a stanza.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds.

Alliteration

The repetition of consonant sounds.

Iambic Pentameter

A poem with 5 beats per line.

Iamb

A beat with non-stressed, then stressed syllables (U/)

Trochee

A beat with stressed, and then non-stressed syllables (/U).

Anapest

A beat with two non-stressed syllables, then one stressed (UU/).

Dactyl

A beat with one stressed syllable, and then two non-stressed (/UU)

Spondee

A beat with two stressed syllables (//)

Pyrrhic

A beat with two non-stressed syllables.

Caesura

A break in a line of verse.

Blank verse

Un-rhymed iambic pentameter lines.

John Milton

_____ wrote the famous epic poem "Paradise Lost", which he wrote in blank verse.

Free verse

No fixed meter with some rhyming lines.

Sophocles

Wrote the plays Oedipus and Antigone.

Euripides

Wrote the plays Alcestic and Medea.

Aeschylus

Wrote Prometheus and Agamemnon.

Mimesis

Imitation of something else.

Catharsis

The purging of emotions by attending a tragedy play.

Hamartia

The flaw of the protagonist.

Allegory

An extended metaphor used in a dramatic narrative.

Masques

Shows with music, dancing, and a little plot (The very first musical theater or opera).

George Bernard Shaw

Wrote satirical drama informed by socialist ideas. Wrote "Mrs. Warren's Confession".

Plot

Pattern of events.

Characterization

Personality

Perspective

Position of the narrator.

Epic Simile

Extended comparison.

Rhetoric

The art of persuasion.

Accismus

The pretended refusal of something that you want.

Anacoluthon

A sentence that changes structure in the middle.

.Anadiplosis

A repetition of a word at the end, and at the beginning of a sentence.

Chiasmus

A verbal pattern in two parts.

Hyperbole

A grand exaggeration.

Polyptoton

A construction that brings together different grammical forms.

Syllepsis

The use of a single word in two sentences at once.

Hagiography

The study of sounds.

Essay

A way of organizing information. Originated from Michael de Montaigne

Typology

The study of biblical symbolism.

Geoffery Chaucer

Wrote the Canterbury Tales. Emphasized syllabic meter.

Edmund Spencer

Wrote the Faerie Queen (written about queen Elizabeth).

Deism

The belief that God watches us from afar.

Secularization

During the 19th century people looked for ways to get rid of the presence of God in their lives. (people choose to ignore Him). This is known as....?

Oral Poetry

People used _____ to tell stories before people began writing stories down.

Vunerable Bede

Wrote "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" telling about the first english poet, Caedmon.

Kenning

A figurative stock phrase used to describe things in Old English.

Snorri Sturluson

Wrote Heinskringia about norse mythology. Developed kennings.

Kend Heiti

A literal interpretation of an object instead of figurative (kenning).

Bard

Old English minstrel.

Sir Thomas Malory

Wrote LeMorte d'Arthur and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Wrote some of the best Arthurian romances in the middle ages.

The Canterbury Tales

A story about a group of pilgrims all over England gathering to travel to the cathedral where Thomas Becket was murdered. Along the way, the pilgrims tell tales that reflect Christian values and morals.

Cycles

The combination of different author's books into one work.

The Divine Comedy

A story written by Dante. The story illustrates Virgil the poet guiding the writer to hell, while the writer's love, Beatrice tries to guide him to heaven.

Ovid

Wrote "Metamorphosis" where a god tries to pursue a mountain nymph.

Florentine Petrarch

Created a model for writers to express their goals and love.

Spenserian Stanza

When a line of poetry lasts one iamb longer.

Metaphysical

The bizarre use of a metaphor.

Cavalier

Smooth elegance.