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diction
word choice; carefully selecting words based on their connotations
theme
central, unifying idea (abstract)
motif
recurring branch of concepts used to solidify the theme; does not clearly stand for something on its own but stands out through patterns of associations with characters or other elements
imagery
descriptions appealing to the senses
satire
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
dramatic irony
the full significance of a character's words or actions are clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character
situational irony
outcome of a situation is contrary to or different from what is expected
understatement
the presentation of something as being smaller, worse, or less important than it actually is
parody
an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect
paradox
a statement that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth
juxtaposition
placement of two elements close together to highlight the similarities/differences between them
archetype
a very typical example of a certain person or thing
allusion
indirect/implied references to outside works that the author assumes the reader will be familiar with
allegory
story that reveals moral/political significance
subtext
underlying meaning of the text (between the lines)
logos
appeal to logic/rationality
pathos
appeal to emotions
ethos
appeal to reliability/credibility
anecdote
storytelling within a work to support an argument
testimonial
using quotations from other people to support a point; includes expert, celebrity, and common
statistics
data that adds credibility and support to writing
bandwagon appeal
appeal to common belief or appeal to the masses
snob appeal
appeal to exclusivity, social or intellectual superiority
economic appeal
emphasizing economic benefit (low cost, better value, etc)
fear appeal
terrible consequences will result if the audience doesn’t do a certain thing
Puritanism
(~1620 to 1750) Centered on forces of good and evil, life and death and an unchangeable fate, that it is the work of God in every element of life. Society is filled with self-importance, doubt, and anxiety from the measure of God’s favor and where they will be at the end of time
forms of Puritanism
Jeremiad sermons, religious poetry, elegies
Jeremiad sermons
recollects the past, castigates the people for their sins and deviating from God’s will, pleas congregation to repent and pray for forgiveness, and assuring the protection of the Chosen people through His infinite generosity
elegy
poem of serious reflection, often for the dead
voices of Puritanism
Jonathan Edwards (minister), Anne Bradstreet (poet), Arthur Miller (playwright)
Rationalism
(~1750 to 1800) Age of Reason
Shift away from religion as the center of human life and source of answers and towards human rationale and abilities. By tests of logic and reason through observation and contemplation of the world before them, rationalists can make independent decisions. Freedom and independence are the new ideals.
forms of Rationalism
essays, speeches, articles, pamphlets, newspapers and almanacs
voices of Rationalism
Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, Phillis Wheatley
Romanticism
(~1800 to 1850) Emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary. Explored the unknowns of the world and the human body and mind to find the truth. A shift away from tedious logical arguments towards fantastical depictions to fascinate the senses.
forms of Romanticism
short stories, fantasy fiction, horror, gothic novels, meditative, metaphysical poetry
voices of Romanticism
Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce (the Dark Romantics)
Transcendentalism
(~1800 to 1850) Focus on freeing oneself from society. Escape to nature will best allow one to transcend from the grasp of the world to find the knowledge within them. Belief in intuition, the individual's relationship to nature and the divine, self-reliance, and nonconformity.
forms of Transcendentalism
essays of natural metaphors and unusual, memorable syntax
voices of Transcendentalism
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Realism
(~1850 to 1900) Mission to represent subject-matter truthfully, to lay it bare and straightforward, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements.
voices of Realism
Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards
Jeremiad sermon
“There is no fortress that is any defense from the power of God.”
“We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so it is for us to cut or singe a slender thread that anything hangs by.”
“The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over the hand of arbitrary mercy”
“the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow”
“The glittering sword is whetted, and held over them, and the pit hath opened u=its mouth under them".”
The Crisis by Thomas Paine
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”
“it matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all”
“The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice.”
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.”
“if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me…am I to suffer it?”
To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth by Phillis Wheatley
“Elate with hope her race no longer mourns / Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns / While in thine hand with pleasure we behold / The silken reins, and Freedom’s charms unfold.”
“No more, America, in mournful strain / Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain / No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain / Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand / Had made, and with it meant t’enslave the land.”
“Such, such my case. And can I then but pray / Others may never feel tyrannic sway?”
Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe
“Blood was its Avator and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood.”
“With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself.”
“The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries…The panes here were scarlet—a deep blood color” / “But in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme” / "there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was…of so peculiar a ntoe and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour…there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company”
“There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.”
“But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.”
“And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
Characterized by personal reflection, deep terror for his fate and of his torturers
“And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.”
“To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors.”
“The entire surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms…overspread and disfigured the walls.”
“I prayed—I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upwar against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at some rare bauble.”
“At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul foun vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink—I averted my eyes—”
The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe
Characterized by extreme hatred, inhumanity and insanity.
“But my disease grew upon me—for what disease is like Alcohol!”
“The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.”
“I had walled the monster up inside the tomb.”
Prophetic Pictures by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Nothing, in the whole circle of human vanities, takes stronger hold of the imagination, than this affair of having a portrait painted…all other reflecting surfaces, continually present us with portraits, or rather ghosts, of ourselves, which we glance at, and straightway forget them. But we forget them, only because they vanish. It is the idea of duration—of earthly immortality—that gives such a mysterious interest to our own portraits.”
“O potent Art! as thou bringest the faintly revealed Past to stand in that narrow strip of sunlight, which we call Now, canst thou summon the shrouded Future to meet her there? Have I not achieved it? Am I not thy Prophet?”
“He had advanced from the door, and interposed himself between the wrretched beings, with the same sense of power to regulate their destiny, as to alter a scene upon the canvas. He stood like a magician, controlling the phantoms which he had evoked.”
“Could the result of one, or all our deeds, be shadowed forth and set before us, somme would call it Fate, and hurry onward, others be swept along by their passionate desires and none be turned aside by the Prophetic Pictures.”
A Watcher by the Dead by Ambrose Bierce
“The superstitious awe with which the living regard the dead is hereditary and incurable. One needs no more be ashamed of it than of the fact that he inherits, for example, an incapacity for mathematics, or a tendency to lie.”
“if a man were locked up all night with a corpse—alone—in a dark room—of a vacant house—with no bed covers to pull over his head—and lived through it without going altogether mad, he might justly boast himself not of woman born”
“when you have killed a man by coming to life, it is best to change clothes with him, and at the first opportunity make a break for liberty.”
Moxon’s Master by Ambrose Bierce
“is not a man a machine? And you will admit that he thinks—or thinks he thinks.”
“there is no such thing as dead, inert matter: it is all alive; all instinct with force, actual and potential”
“Life is a definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences.”
“Guided by the infernal hubbub, I sprang to the rescue of my friend, but had hardly taken a stride in the darkness when the whole room blazed with a blinding white light that burned into my brain and heart and memory a vivid picture of the combatants on the floor”
Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad by M.R. James
“I freely own that I do not like careless talk about what you call ghosts. A man in my position . . . cannot, I find, be too careful about appearing to sanction the current beliefs on such subjects.”
“Who is this who is coming? Well, the best way to find out is evidently to whistle for him."
“He blew tentatively and stopped suddenly, startled and yet pleased at the note he had elicited. It had a quality of infinite distance in it, and soft as it was, he somehow fel it must be audible for miles round. It was a sound, too, that seemed to have the power of forming pictures in the brain. He saw quite clearly for a moment a vision of a wide, dark expanse at night, with a fresh wind blowing, and in the midst a lonely figure”
Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion”
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string”
“These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.”
“The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion.”
“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
“For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face.”
Resistance to Civil Government by Henry David Thoreau
“‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”
“[The government] has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves; and, if ever they should use it in earnest as a real one against each other, it will surely split.”
“The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men would fain3 succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it.”
“the practical reason why…a majority are permitted…[is] because they are physically the strongest”
“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.”
“For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: What is once well done is done forever….”
“To be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.”
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