American Literature CLEP

Metaphysical Poetry

Uses conceits and uses intellectual and philosophical language. Makes abstract comparisons using conceits. ie. John Donne.

Michael Wigglesworth

Clergyman who wrote "Day of Doom" and "Meat out of the Eater". He wrote lyrical, theological poems. Puritan.

Connotation

the feelings or emotions surrounding a word. (ie. home = pleasant haven)

motif

Phase, image, action, that unifies a work of literature by recurring throughout it. A theme or idea in a work of art or literature that is developed or repeated.

Theme

central idea of a work of literature, general topic or subject.

Apostrophe

A figure of speech in which one directly addresses an absent or imaginary person, or some abstraction. Often used to address deep emotion.

Philip Freneau

Transitional poet. Between Enlightenment and the Romantic age. " "The Wild Honeysuckle". Published National Gazette that promoted anti-federalism. Considered "the poet of the American Revolution."

picaresque

novel about lower-class character who triumphs through wit instead of hard work. Usually autobiographical and in the first person.

J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur

•French-born American who wrote "Letters from an American Farmer". First successful American author. First to examine the idea of the "American Dream" and attempted to explain what an "American" was.

Concepts by him that influenced America culture.
• American Adam - uniqueness of new people called "Americans".
•Melting Pot - America's uniqueness transcends ethnic, religious, cultural backgrounds.

Huswifery

by Edward Taylor. "Make me, O Lord, thy Spinning Wheele compleat"

W.E.B. DuBois

Opposite of B.T. Washington. Black should engage in higher education. Challenges Washington's inability to see complete integration in America. Not only work for freedom but demand rights and participation in office. Disagrees on how "liberation" should be defined.

Alliteration

Repetition of consonant sounds.

Stephen Crane

A "realistic" writer. Wrote The Red Badge of Courage.
Irony: Henry's only wound comes from retreat, not battle.
-Humans are left on this world to fend for themselves without help from divine creator.

Heroic Couplet

a couplet consisting of two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter (ie. aa, bb, cc) and written in an elevated style. (tradition of the epic form)

imagery

The use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, thing, place, or experience.

Edward Taylor

Wrote Preparatory Meditations. God's Determinations touching His Elect. His work not meant for publication. Uses conceits and unusual images. Inspired metaphysical poets like Ezra Pound. T.S. Eliot.

Metonymy

One word or phrase is substituted for another with which is closely associated.
"crown → royalty",
"ring →marriage"
"heart→love"

Bluest Eye

Pecola wants_ to be beautiful.
-She is considered a scapegoat because her ugliness has made the towns people beautiful, her suffering made them feel lucky, her silence, their chatter.

By Toni Morrison.

Huck Finn escaped his father by

faking his death.

End of book: different from classic American success myths. Instead of being free of moral corruption into wilderness, it is being adopted into moral corruption away from wilderness.

Brook Farm

A transcendentalist Utopian experiment, put into practice by transcendentalist former Unitarian minister George Ripley. Emerson declined to live there. Hawthorne was there, but wrote a satire about it in "Blithedale Romance".
Margaret Fuller joined.

Olaudah Equiano

wrote The first slave narrative. "Interesting Narrative of the life of _". Powerful abolitionist voice against inhumanity. He bought his freedom and traveled and taught.

Close reading

ignores author's intent or any commentary outside the particular work

viewed each work as a piece of art. Trend from 1920 to 1960. It scrutinized words and their order within a literary work.

Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds within words.

William Dean Howells

leading realist who seriously considered the problems of industrialization and unequal rights in his novels. wrote bio of Abe Lincoln. Wrote "The Rise of Silas Lapham" - rags to riches story

moral and ethical dilemmas. Wrote "Edith".

William Hill Brown

wrote First American Novel - The Power of Sympathy (1789), a fictitious romance novel based on contemporary scandel between the Mertons and Sarah Merton's sister.

William Bradford

wrote Of Plymouth Plantation records why he wrote the forerunner of the US Constitution, The Mayflower Compact. Pilgrim Leader.

Ezra Pound

Subcategories of Modernism he was famous for expanding were Imagism and Vorticism. Vorticism describes a partiular type of art influenced by cubism and futurism. Wrote The Cantos and "In a Station of the Metro" Used Free Verse.

Thomas Paine

Common Sense, Age of Reason, The Rights of Man, The American Crisis. Revolutionary leader who argued for American independence from Britain.

Thomas Morton

satirized the rigidity of the New England Separatists New England Canaan. Bradford, horrified, wrote of Plymouth Plantation.

The literary periods of American Literature

1) Colonial and Early National Period (Beginnings to 1830)
2) Romantic Period (1830 to 1870)
3) Realism and Naturalism Period (1870 to1910)
4) Modernism Period (1910 to1945)
5) Contemporary period (1945 and on)

Benjamin Harris

_wrote the New England Primer, the first textbook used in the colonies. Wrote first newspaper as well.

James Fenimore Cooper

wrote Precaution, The Spy (About the American Revolution)
imitated English Novels. Author of The Leatherstocking Tales. Natty Bumppo aka Leatherstocking aka Hawkeye aka Deerslayer (superman with moccasins)
-Father of American Novels.

Order of The Leatherstocking Tales

1)The Pioneers
2) The Last of the Mohicans
3) The Prairie
4) The Pathfinder
5) The Deerslayer (when Natty's the youngest)

John Winthrop

"A model of Christian Charity" by ____ __". Sermon written on Arbella.
He recorded daily happenings from his voyage on the Arbella in his journal "The History of New England.
-major and minor events are no different and are all under the will of God.

William Cullen Bryant

he uses blank verse.
explored beauty of nature, considered the visible expression of God.
Death = unavoidable.
wrote "Thanatopsis" and "To a Waterfowl.
-He is a Fireside Poet.

William Byrd

Surveyor. Wrote accounts of his expeditions to Virginia and North Carolina in "History of the Dividing Line".

Both Journey to the Land of Eden and Progress to the Mines were published after his death.

Maya Angelou

wrote I Know why the Caged Bird Sings. African American autobiographical work. Themes: racism, identity, family.

Transcendentalist Authors

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Alcott

Post World War 2 novels

-To Kill a Mockingbird
-The Catcher in the Rye
-The Bell Jar
-The Naked and the Dead
-Catch 22
-Invisible Man

Where does the thief hide the letter in the Purloined Letter?

The thief did not hide it at all. It was in plain view.

Transcendentalism

Movement in the Romantic tradition (around 1840), which held that every individual can reach ultimate truths through spiritual intuition and creativity, which transcends reason and sensory experience. We can rise above doctrine and dogma. Nothing is evil. Avoid conformity. It was made famous in Self Reliance by Emerson.

In what Poe work was the detective story popularized?

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
-main character August Dupin

Naturalist Authors

Kate Chopin
Edith Wharton
Theodore Dreiser
Willa Cather
Stephen Crane
Jack London

Authors in the Beat Movement

William Burroughs = father figure of movement.
Allen Ginsberg
Kerouac
Gregory Corso
Gary Snyder
Kenneth Rexroth

Usually open verse, has controversial subject matters, in first person

Metaphysical Poets

John Donne
George Herbert
Richard Crashaw
Francis Quarles

The Mayflower Compact

Contract established power for colonists to make and enact laws for the good of the settlement. Consent to common government.

Synecdoche

Figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole. ie. How do you like my new ride? (Meaning car)

Main point of Richard Cory

Wealth and beauty does not mean one is happy. One does not know the hearts of others. You cannot buy happiness.

(by Edwin Arlington Robinson)

Excuse Thoreau gave to move to Walden Pond

Not to live cheaply, not to live dearly, but to gain understanding of society through personal introspection.
Simple, self sufficient living.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

sparked the Civil War.
portrayed slavery as brutal and immoral.
By Harriet Beecher Stowe.
It is a polemic (literary argument), not a novel.

Carl Sandburg

Wrote in Free Verse and in common speech. Wrote extensive bio on Abe Lincoln. Wrote "Chicago".

Great Gatsby is narrated by

Nick Caraway

Anne Bradstreet

First woman to be published in Colonial America.
Have a collection of poems, "the Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America" reveals love for her husband, children, and observation of colonial life. "Verses Upon the Burning of Our House."

Edith Wharton

Uses realism and naturalism to depict trapped and controlled life of an upper class woman in America.
Her characters faced with questions of true love and marital fidelity. At mercy of entities and events completely out of their control and understanding.

Wrote Ethan Frome, Age of Innocence, House of Mirth

Ambrose Bierce

Wrote Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Wrote satire and war stories. Defines heaven as "place where wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs and the good listen with attention while you expound on your own."

Robert Frost

no free verse. yes blank verse, traditional, and plain speech. antithesis of literary modernism. Poems reflect ideas and landscape of New England. Poetry more aligned with transcendentalists. Famous for lyrical poems on country life in New England.
"Death of the Hired Man", "Birches",
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
"Mending Wall", "Road Not Taken".

Jack London

Only wrote for financial rewards. Socialist, supporter of Social Darwinism. Wrote Call of the Wild. Novels based on experiences in the Klondike gold rush.

"To Build a Fire" - dedication to realism and naturalism.

Booker T. Washington

Autobio - "Up from Slavery"
-Believe that African Americans must ignore racial segregation in favor or good, honest hard word. "Cast down the buckets where you owe. Focus on individual success and not wait for government or white population to amend past failings."

Willa Cather

•Readers experience westward expansion in real and painful terms. Wrote about Midwest, Nebraska experience for immigrants. Protagonists navigate gender + cultural issues.
•O Pioneers - Swedish family attempts to prosper as homesteaders.
•My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop

Henry David Thoreau

-Transcendentalist.
-Wrote Walden (simple life)
-Civil Disobedience (individual resistance to corrupt government)
-Poems of Nature
-abolitionist.
-influenced by Emerson.
-cease to pay taxes
-Themes: simplicity, freedom from society, ills of materialism.

"I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward."

Nathaniel Hawthorne

-Romantic Period writer.
-The Scarlet Letter
-The Token
-The House of Seven Gables
-Blithedale Romance
-The Marble Faun
-skeptic of transcendentalism
-critical of puritans.
-allegorical and symbolic works.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wrote: Nature, Self-reliance, The Oversoul, The American Scholar, "Essays", Merlin.
-led Transcendentalist movement.
-develop ideas as individuality, freedom, ability for humankind to realize anything.
-relationship between soul and surrounding world.
-"infinitude of the private man"
-human kind's relationship to nature.

William Faulkner

-uses stream of conscience.
-19 books takes place in Yoknapatwpha County, Mississippi like in Sound and the Fury.
-screenplay: "The Big Sleep"
-As I lay Dying
-Light in August
-Absalom, Absalom!

Toni Morrison

1st Black Female Nobel Prize Winner.
-"Song of Solomon"
-"The Bluest Eye"
"Jazz"
"Beloved"
"Paradise"
-Stores about poor, black woman.

Ernest Hemingway wrote

Wrote Farewell to Arms,
The Sun Also Rises,
The Snow of Kilimanjaro,
Old Man and the Sea,
For Whom the Bell Tolls,
True at First Light

"All modern American Literature comes from one book - Huck Finn"
-from Modern Period, Lived through World Wars.
-writing style: less is more.

Joy Luck Club

by Amy Tan
-about four Chinese American immigrant families in San Fran.
-played mahjong for money.
-inability to translate concepts from one culture to another.
-language and cultural barriers.
-mothers communicate through story telling because bad at English.
-Chinese mothers strive to make daughters understand heritage.

Invisible Man

-Passage on living in a cellar or underground.
-Stealing electricity that was rightfully his.
-black who's socially invisible.
-Theme: racism as an obstacle to Individual Identity.
-got to underground from evading police who suspects he is part of a riot. Man backs up and falls into a whole.
by Ralph Ellison.

Ethan Frome

A novel by Edith Wharton. _is a farmer frustrated in his ambition to become an engineer and in his marriage to a nagging, sour, sickly wife. He falls in love with his wife's cousin. The novel depicts ______'s wasted talents and passions and describes the triumph of a conventional society over the ambitious, creative individual. It's tragic love story of simple people in a bleak New England environment.

Color Purple

by Alice Walker. Divides not into chapters but letters written to God. Explores adult themes such as rape, murder, homosexuality. Celie falls in love with a girl. _symbolizes pain and suffering at first, but then it becomes Celie's new god, its new symbolism. Story about moving on from past trauma and have a better life, embracing it. Theme: self discovery. "God", her only true friend.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Novel by Ernest Hemingway set in the Spanish Civil War. The title is taken from a line in sermon by English essayist and poet John Donne.

The Sound and the Fury

By William Faulkner. A Southern family on the decline crumbles completely when one of his members has a child out of wedlock. Family falls into financial ruin, loses its religious faith and the respect of the town of Jefferson, and many of them die tragically. Title taken from Macbeth. "tale told from [different points of views], full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Themes: honor and sin.

Lost Generation

Group of writers in 1920s who shared the belief that they were lost in a greedy, materialistic world that lacked moral values and often choose to flee to Europe. They were disillusioned after World War I. T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway.

The end of Fall of The House of Usher and mood of main character

Turns out the sister is alive. She attacks Roderick as the life drains from her, and he dies of fear. The narrator flees the house. As he escapes, the entire house cracks along the break in the frame and crumbles to the ground. Mood: Anxious but willing to help his friend.

The Beat Generation

Central elements of "Beat" culture include a rejection of mainstream American values, for experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality, and an interest in Eastern spirituality. Spontaneity in living. Attempt to convey pure emotion. Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac, Carl Sandburg.

James Baldwin

African American who explore racial tensions and homosexuality in America.
"Nobody Knows My Name", "Going to Meet the Man", "Sonny's Blues", "Go Tell it on the Mountain".

Richard Wright

"Native Son", "Black Boy", "The Man Who Was Almost a Man"
wrote on racial segregation in America. Realist and Naturalist author.

Flannery O'Conner

Catholic. Explores what it means to be Southern. "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "Revelation".

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

feminist who wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper."

The Yellow Wallpaper

About a mother decline into madness after childbirth and being placed on the "rest cure." During her stay, she becomes obsessed about the Wallpaper. Sees woman trying to escape from wallpaper only to find out that woman is herself. Satire against medical practices and conventions of marriage and gender roles. By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Paul Reveres' Rhyme

anapestic tetrameter

(by Longfellow)

The Open Boat

Stephen Crane - , __ is about four men at sea during a storm in the Commodore. Irony: the oiler drowned.

Norman Mailer

The Naked and the Dead (WW2 exp), The Executioner's Song (about Gary Gilmore).
Genre: New Journalism aka creative nonfiction

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot. "Talking of Michelangelo", Eliot- stream of consciousness, dramatic monologue, insecure man who decides not to ask the women because he thinks he will "disrupt the universe" if he asks it. Unable to overcome his emotional timidity to find love and meaning in life.

Allusions - Bible, Hamlet, Dante. Serve to reinforce Prufrock's frustration and futility.

Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck's novel about a struggling farm family during the Great Depression. Gave a face to the violence and exploitation that migrant farm workers faced in America. The Oklahoma farmers dispossessed of their land and forced to become immigrant farmers in California. The novel describes the family's (and the land's) exploitation by a ruthless system of agricultural economics. Book a plea for California land owners to be more tolerant of those who are less fortunate.

History of Plymouth Plantation

illustrates Bradford's unwavering Puritan beliefs. Includes story of first Thanksgiving. Recounts fate of a blasphemous sailor.

Cotton Manther

wrote Magnalia Christi Americana on the puritan life. He is famous for being the supporter of the Salem Witchcraft Trials.

John Smith

leader of Jamestown colony. "A Description of New England", "The General History of Virginia", "New England and the Summer Isles." Helped lay foundation of American Lit.

Abigail Adams

• Advised her husband not to forget women when she stated, "Women will not hold ourselves bound to any Laws in which we have no voice."
• Told Congress to "Remember the Ladies"

Ben Franklin

•wrote "Autobiography" (excerpt: bought bread too big for his pocket

looked ridiculous with bread)

•Poor Richards Almanac -
"A little neglect may breed mischief: for want of a nail the shoe was lost

for want of a shoe the horse was lost

for want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost."

Aphorism

A brief, clever statement that makes a wise observation about life.

Declaration of Independence

by Thomas Jefferson.
•Idea of Individual liberty from John Locke.
•Idea in Declaration - Rebellion to tyrants = Obedience to God.
•Includes parallel structure, rhythm, forceful and direct language, loaded words (strong, emotional words, ie. tyranny, justice)

The American Crisis

by Thomas Paine, helped propel us into war.
A model of propaganda.

Washington Irving

aka Geoffrey Crayon, Diedrich Knickerbocker, Oldstyle, Evergreen. Father of American Literature because he proved that memorable fiction could feature both American settings and American "types"

Wrote Rip Van Winkle, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Devil and Tom Walker. His "Sketchbook" influenced Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Dickens.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

•by Washington Irving. Icabod Crane = main character (tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulder, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels…some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield"

•The folks who inhabit _ believe their village is bewitched. The primary ghost is the Headless Horseman, rumored to be a Hessian soldier who had lost his noggin to a stray cannonball.

Rip Van Winkle

marks the beginning of the "local color" school of writing, in which authors use vivid details to re-create a specific place.