Us Literature MidTerm

Speaker of the Poem

The identity or narrator voice in a poetic work

Free Verse

Poetry that lacks a regular meter and rhyming schem, and that uses irregular line lengths.

Regionalism

Writing that seeks to capture the topography, people, speech, and ways of life from distinct regions.

Epistolary Writing

composed of a series of documents, such as letters, newspaper clippings, or diary entries.

Literary Gothic

fiction with a focous on decay, terror, and suspense

Realism

Writing that works to depict everyday life in a particular time and place with accuracy and detail.

Dramatic Monologue

a poem in which the speaker addresses a silent listener that is (usually) not the listener

Metaphor (Tenor)

the object in writing, or the thing that is being described

Metaphor (Vehice)

the object external to the writing that provides the traits for the description of the tenor

Modernism

An artistic movement. of the early 20th century centered on breaking with past tradition and exploring new forms of experimentation, community, and subjectivity expression

Documentary Poetry

poetry that seeks to present reality, or a particular historical moment, through a combination of poetic expression and factual information, records, and/materials.

“There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”

“We have tramped down a road three hundred years long. We have been shunted to and fro by cataclysmic social changes.”

Richard Wright, “Men in the Making”

“Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon”

Langston Hughes, “The Weary Blues”

“The oldest son was twenty-three.
The next son was twenty-one.
The youngest son was eighteen.
They called it pneumonia at first.
They would pronounce it fever.
Shirley asked that we try to find out.
That’s how they learned what the trouble was.”

Muriel Rukeyser, “Absalom”

he sun had burned July to August. The heat steamed down like a million hot arrows, smiting all things living upon the earth. Grass withered, leaves browned, snakes went blind shedding and men and dogs went mad. Dog days!”

Zora Neale Hurston, “Sweat

he speaker of Whitman’s poem worked as a wound dresser in what conflict?

the American Civil War

We first encounter Sylvia as she is completing this task.

Bringing the cow home

The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is confined to her room because of what treatment? 

the rest cure

The men discussing Sykes’ cruelty toward Delia do so while preparing to share this food. 

a watermelon

• Documentary (Dorothea Lange, Muriel Rukeyser, Richard Wright)

• Regionalism (Sarah Orne Jewett, Zora Neale Hurston)

• Free Verse (Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Muriel Rukeyser)

• Literature of Confinement (Gilman)

• Modernism (Dorothea Lange, Muriel Rukeyser, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Huston)

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