American Literature Exam Review

Flashcards covering key concepts and literary terms from American Literature.

Spirituals

Form of literature that emerged from slavery, based on biblical imagery expressing lamentation, comfort, and hope.

Life Stories

Nonfiction accounts that relate dramatic events and issues, such as bondage and freedom, often written in the forms of diaries, journals, and letters.

Muckrakers

Investigative journalists who exposed corruption, scandal, and incompetence in American industries.

Naturalism

Literary movement that depicted ordinary people in real-life situations shaped by powerful external forces like nature and heredity.

Incongruity

Lack of harmony or appropriateness used in literature to create irony or emphasize a point.

Hyperbole

A figure of speech that involves extreme exaggeration.

Social Commentary

Art or literature that critiques societal issues, norms, or injustices.

Dialect

A regional or social variety of language with specific vocabulary and pronunciation.

Internal Conflict

A character's emotional struggle against their own desires and values.

Dramatic Irony

When the audience knows more than the characters in a story.

Petrarchan Sonnet

A 14-line poem that adheres to a specific rhyme scheme.

Theme

The main idea or underlying meaning of a literary work.

Dramatic Monologue

A form where a character delivers a lengthy speech to an audience, either characters in the story or readers.

Imagism

A sub-genre of modernism focused on creating clear imagery using sharp language.

Metaphor

A comparison between two unrelated things.

Simile

A figure of speech comparing two dissimilar things using "like" or "as".

Personification

Attributing human qualities to inanimate objects or abstract ideas.

Oxymoron

A figure of speech that juxtaposes contradictory terms.

Paradox

A seemingly contradictory statement that reveals a deeper truth.

Understatement

A figure of speech that presents something as less significant than it is.