Semester Exam Study Guide - American Literature (copy)

Flashcards for reviewing literary terms and author facts.

Allegory

a work in which the characters, events, or settings symbolize, or represent, something else

Alliteration

the repetition of initial consonant sounds in consecutive or slightly separated words

Analogy

a comparison of two things alike in some ways but otherwise quite different. Often, an analogy explains or describes something unfamiliar by comparing it to something more familiar.

Autobiography

the story of a person’s life written by that person

Catalog

a list of people or things

Dialect

a version of a language spoken by the people of a particular place, time, or social group

Diction

refers to the author’s choice of words

Figurative Language

writing or language meant to be understood imaginatively instead of literally. Many writers, especially poets, use figurative language to help readers see things in new ways.

First Person Point of View

the story is told by someone who participates in or witnesses the action

Foreshadowing

the technique of hinting at events that will occur later in a story

Free Verse

poetry that does not use regular rhyme, meter, or stanza division. Free verse may contain irregular line breaks and sentence fragments, and tends to mimic the rhythms of ordinary speech.

Gothic Fiction

a style of fiction characterized by the use of medieval settings, a murky atmosphere of horror and gloom, and grotesque, mysterious, or violent incidents. Essential to Gothic Fiction is a setting that evokes strong feelings of foreboding or anticipation.

Imagery

the figurative or descriptive language used to create word pictures, or images

Local Color

the details used to create a particular regional setting

Lyric Poem

a highly musical type of poetry that expresses the emotions of a speaker. Lyric poems are often contrasted with narrative poems, which have storytelling as their main purpose. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are two of the most recognized American lyric poets.

Memoir

a type of autobiography that focuses on one incident or period in a person’s life

Metaphor

a figure of speech in which one thing is spoken or written about as if it were another.

Modernism

an artistic and literary movement of the early twentieth century characterized by a rejection of artistic conventions of the past. As such, it was a response to the perceived breakdown of American culture. Significant Modernist writers included poets Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot and novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

Mood

the emotion created in the reader by part or all of a literary work. The writer can evoke in the reader an emotional response - such as fear, discomfort, longing, and anticipation - by using descriptive language and sensory details.

Narrator

a character or speaker who tells a story

Personification

a type of figurative language in which an animal, thing, force of nature, or idea is described as if it were human or given human characteristics.

Point of View

the vantage point, or perspective, from which a story is told - in other words, who is telling the story.

Regionalism

characterized by works that are set in a particular geographical region

Rhyme Scheme

a pattern of end rhymes, or rhymes at the end of lines of verse

Romanticism

a literary and artistic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that placed value on emotion or imagination over reason, the individual over society, nature and wildness over human works, the country over the city, common people over the ruling class, and freedom over control or authority.

Setting

the time and place in which a literary work occurs, together with all the details used to create a sense of a particular time and place

Simile

a comparison of two seemingly unlike things using the word like or as

Style

refers to the manner in which something is said or written. A writer’s style is characterized by elements such as word choice, sentence structure and length, and other recurring features that distinguish his or her work from that of another. One way to think of a writer’s style is as his or her written personality.

Symbol

anything that stands for or represents both itself and something else

The Lost Generation

a group of writers in the early 1900s that rejected traditional conventions and experimented with different narrative points of view. The writers were disillusioned with American values and went to Europe, especially Paris and London. They were called the Lost Generation because of their sense of dislocation and alienation from American culture. They made significant contributions to American literature.

Theme

a central message or perception about life revealed through a literary work.

Third Person Limited Point of View

the narrator usually stands outside the action and observes, and is limited to the thoughts of only the narrator or a single character.

Third Person Omniscient Point of View

the narrator usually stands outside the action and observes, and the thoughts of all the characters are revealed.

Tone

the emotional attitude toward the reader or toward the subject implied by a literary work. Tone may be revealed by such elements as word choice, sentence structure, and use of imagery. Examples of tone include familiar, ironic, playful, sarcastic, serious, and sincere.