Literature Cards

Dawson T.

-Fishmonger = Polonius 

-”fellow of infinite jest”

Hamlet (Shakespeare)

-This character meets Theseus in Athens in a play titled for this character “at Colonus.”

Oedipus (Rex) (Sophocles)

-Tasked with stopping a plague by finding out who killed the former king at a crossroads (Laius)]

Oedipus (Rex) (Sophocles)

-King Creon attempts to execute this character’s daughter, Antigone

Oedipus (Rex)  (Sophocles)

-Jocasta hangs herself (due to him)

Oedipus (Rex) (Sophocles)

-Tiresias accused this character of bringing a plague to his kingdom

Oedipus (Rex) (Sophocles)

-Play opens with wool-wrapped olive branches on an altar

Oedipus (Rex) (Sophocles)

-The central character swaps execution letters before entering England, leading to the deaths of two friends from Wittenberg (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

Hamlet (Shakespeare)

-Character is stabbed through a curtain by this man

Hamlet (Shakespeare)

-Reynaldo is sent to France in order inquire about the dealings of his master’s son in this play

Hamlet (Shakespeare)

-Features most famous soliloquy, play within a play “The Mousetrap”

Hamlet (Shakespeare)

-A goblet of poisoned wine and a poison-coated sword are prepared for a duel in this play

Hamlet (Shakespeare)

-This play’s title character, a friend of Banquo, is called a thane by three witches

Macbeth (Shakespeare)

-“screw your courage to the sticking place”

Macbeth (Shakespeare)

-“all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”

Macbeth (Shakespeare)

-“look the innocent flower/but be the serpent under’t”

Macbeth (Shakespeare)

-He claims that life is a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury”

Macbeth (Shakespeare)

-Character sleeps with stranger at Spouter’s Inn

Moby-Dick (Melville)

-New Bedford, Stubb, Samuel Enderby, the cook Fleece

Moby-Dick (Melville)

-Features sermon by Father Mapple

Moby-Dick (Melville)

-A doubloon is nailed to ship’s mast to motivate crew

Moby-Dick (Melville)

-Forces led by Diomedes and Agamemnon are listed in this poem’s “Catalogue of Ships”

Iliad (Homer)

-The funeral games of Patroclus are at the end of this work between the death and burial of Hector

Iliad (Homer)

-This epic is about a war that started when Paris abducted Helen

Iliad (Homer)

-A group of warriors argue over Briseis and Chryseis - takes place in Troy

Iliad (Homer)

-Opening that describes “When in April the sweet showers fall”

The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)

-One character becomes a page and takes on the pseudonym, Philostrate, in attempt to get closer to Emily

The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)

-Nicholas, outwits the carpenter John and sleeps with Alisoun

The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)

-Harry Bailey, a possible allegory for God, is the narrator from Tabbard’s Inn

The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)

-Oxford student has an affair with the wife of a carpenter who believes the flood has come

The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)

-Two characters walk “hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow”

Paradise Lost (Milton)

-Antagonist commanded the character Mammon/Beelzebub/Mulciber to construct his abode, later named Pandemonium

Paradise Lost (Milton)

-This poem aims “to justify the ways of God to man” - features Tree of Knowledge

Paradise Lost (Milton)

-The angel Michael gives one character a vision of the future, while Raphael earlier explains to the same character the origins of the world

Paradise Lost (Milton)

-"Here comes a chopper to chop off your head"

1984 (Orwell)

-Paperweight containing a piece of coral from Mr. Charrington’s shop, and later rents a room above his store

1984 (Orwell)

-The principles of Neo-Bolshevism and Death Worship are compared to Ingsoc in this book

1984 (Orwell)

-Emmanuel Goldstein, Julia — Symes and Parsons take part in the Two Minutes’ Hate

1984 (Orwell)

-In this play, Brabantio is told that his daughter is “making the beast with two backs”

Othello (Shakespeare)

-This man kills himself after being fooled by a scheme involving his wife's handkerchief, “green-eyed monster”

Othello (Shakespeare)

-Iago, Desdemona, Cassio, Brabantio, Emilia

Othello (Shakespeare)

-Montano precedes the titular character in the government of Cyprus

Othello (Shakespeare)

-A group of characters in this work offers a “honey-sweet fruit” that causes amnesia

The Odyssey (Homer)

-In this work, opening a bag of wind causes a storm

The Odyssey (Homer)

-The dog Argos dies after seeing his master

The Odyssey (Homer)

-The protagonist passes the monsters Scylla and Charybdis after he angers Poseidon by wounding the cyclops Polyphemus

The Odyssey (Homer)

-The title character of this work is given a quiz about his bed after a staying with Nausicaa and the Phaeacians

The Odyssey (Homer)

-Characters sacrifice Helios cattle; later, the sorceress Circe turns half of those men into pigs

The Odyssey (Homer)

-This novel’s frame story describes a manuscript written by Jonathan Pue found in a Custom House

The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)

One character in this novel is summoned by the jailer Master Brackett and is repeatedly referred to as “the leech”

The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)

-Mistress Hibbins invites this novel’s protagonist into the woods to meet the “Black Man” — says that she would have gladly signed her name in the Black Man’s book

The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)

-A child states that her mother plucked her from a rosebush

The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)

-Mistress Hibbins invites another character to a witches’ gathering, and a different character sees a meteor while standing on a scaffold after his daughter asks him to stand with her the following noon

The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)

-The opening scene in this play sees Gonazalo and Sebastian disobey the boatswain’s [“bow-sun”] orders

The Tempest (Shakespeare)

-“let your indulgence set me free”

The Tempest (Shakespeare)

-Performances of this play often omit an Act IV masque featuring Iris and Ceres

The Tempest (Shakespeare)

-After a masque within this play, one character delivers a speech that compares people to actors and ends "We are such stuff as dreams are made on

The Tempest (Shakespeare)

-Sycorax, Antonio, Alonso, Trinculo, Caliban, Ariel, Ferdinand, Miranda, Stephano, Prospero (Duke of Milan)

The Tempest (Shakespeare)

-A reverend in this novel offers a man an olive branch and accepts the patronage of Catherine de Bourgh

Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

-Lydia runs off with the militia soldier Wickham

Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

-"dancing with the only handsome girl in the room" — "tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me"

Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

-Teeth are described as “tolerable” by Miss Bingley

Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

-Miss Bingley, Charlotte Lucas, Lydia, George Wickham, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Collins

Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

-A character disguised as Tom O’Bedlam (Edgar) leads Gloucester off an imaginary cliff

King Lear (Shakespeare)

-A character in this play is repeatedly called “nuncle”

King Lear (Shakespeare)

-“twelve or fourteen moon-shines” — "Out, vile jelly" — “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods”

King Lear (Shakespeare)

-A kingdom must be divided amongst Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia

King Lear (Shakespeare)

-Helen Burns dies of typhus in this novel because of the bad practices of Mr. Brocklehurts at the Lowood school

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

-The protagonist of this novel gets into a fight with their cousin and is sent to the room where their uncle died (the red room)

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

-Grace Poole is blamed for strange occurrences at Thornfield Hall that were actually done by Bertha Mason, the first wife of Edward Rochester

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

-A haracter rejects a marriage proposal and an offer to go to India from her missionary cousin St. John Rivers

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

-“I sing of arms and the man” — “If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell”

The Aeneid (Virgil)

After recognizing the belt of his dead friend Pallas, this work’s title character kills Turnus

The Aeneid (Virgil)

-Its namesake loses his wife Creusa before seeing Dido kill herself

The Aeneid (Virgil)

-Epic about the founding/founder of Rome who was legendarily an ancestor of Romulus and Remus

The Aeneid (Virgil)

This work’s main character leaves the Underworld through an ivory gate after the Cumaean Sibyl helped him get there with a golden bough

The Aeneid (Virgil)

-A character in this novel drinks Coca-Cola out of a sack as part of an effort to convince people that he is an alcoholic (Dolphus Raymond)

To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)

-The father of this novel’s protagonist gains the nickname “One Shot”

To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)

-A character in this novel is forced to read to the morphine addict Mrs. Dubose until her death

To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)

-A literate garbage collector named Zeebo helps the parishioners of a church nicknamed First Purchase perform hymns

To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)

-The central character of this novel throws a pinecone at a squirrel before being hit with a rifle butt

The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)

-Bill Smithers complains about his hospital being bombed after his hand is crushed by one of his comrades

The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)

-304th regiment — Wilson carries Union flag and gives the protagonist a yellow envelope to deliver to his family in case he dies in battle

The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)

-This novel sees the protagonist witness the death of the “tall soldier,” Jim Conklin

The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)

-One character in this novel accidentally tears a page out of Mr. Dobbin’s anatomy textbook

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain)

-A character in this work brings a dead cat to a graveyard at midnight in an attempt to ward off evil spirits and witnesses the murder of Dr. Robinson during a robbery by Injun Joe

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain)

-Character visits a graveyard where he witnesses the framing of Muff Potter

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain)

-“I will show you fear in a handful of dust” — “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME”

The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot)

“Phoenician Sailor” in this poem who was “once handsome and tall as you” appears on a tarot card shown to the speaker by Madame Sosostris

The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot)

Madame Sosostris reads tarot cards for the narrator in this poem

The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot)

-This poem’s last section, What the Thunder Said, interprets the Sanskrit word “da” three times before repeating “shantih shantih shantih”

The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot)

-A character in this play takes her sister to Eunice’s apartment after her husband, enraged at his sister-in-law’s dancing, throws a radio out of a window during a poker game with Mitch

A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams)

-After, another character rips their Chinese paper lantern, and earlier recalls dancing the Varsouviana polka

A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams)

-A blue piano appears frequently in the stage directions of this play

A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams)

-Elysian Fields Avenue, Stella and Stanley Kowalski — Blanche DuBois is sent to an asylum after being raped at the end of this work — “kindness of STRANGERS”

A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams)

-That protagonist sees Count Ugolino eating Archbishop Ruggieri, and witnesses the punishment of Paolo and Francesca da Rimini

The Divine Comedy (Dante)

-An inscription in this work reads "Through me you pass into the city of woe"

The Divine Comedy (Dante)

-The narrator of this work meets Count Ugolino and Montefeltro, and describes the fate of Francesca

The Divine Comedy (Dante)

-The narrator is guided through Heaven by his love Beatrice

The Divine Comedy (Dante)

-Enjolras (“EN-joll-ras”) acts as the leader of the revolutionary group known as the Friends of the A·B·C in this novel

Les Misérables (Hugo)