ENGL 235: Midterm: Terms

Canon

Rule/Authoritative list of “sacred” textx

Recovery

Recovering texts previously overlooked by the canon

Archive

Collection of historical texts

Anthology

Collection of works chosen by experts

Oral tradition

• Often repetition in word and structure

• Open to revision and adaptation

• Influenced by pacing, inflection, and rhythm

Creation story

• How the world began

• Life & death

Trickster tales

• Weak, amoral figures outsmarting stronger opponents

• Often part human/divine/animal

• Presented as transgressing cultural mores

Discovery

• Process (Contact, colonization, settlement)

• Perspective (Eurocentric)

• Narrative (a story)

Letter

• Greeting & closing

• 1st person

• Specific audience

• Intimate

Black legend

• Inspired by Las Casas’ account

• Spain as the “Worst Colonizers”

Contact

• Not ALWAYS violent

• Interaction of world views

Exploration Narrative/Relacion

• Often emphasis on faith

• Describe exploration

• Stories of contact w/ natives

Mestiza/o

• Blending of Native, European, and/or African heritage

• Common in Latin America

• Mixed cultural hybrid identity

Sermon

• One speaker

• 3 parts

  • Exposition (problem)

  • Exhortation (explain, urge action)

  • Application (apply message to community)

• Biblical references

City upon a hill

• Reference to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount

• Exceptional, God-ordained, model community

Plain style

• Artful simplicity

• Accessible

• Inversion of syntax

• Didactic

Classicism

• Greek + Roman principles of art

• Stressed imitation

• Epic & tragedy

Captivity narrative

• Native-settler tensions

• Abducted by “uncivilized” people

• Patterns

  • Innocence v. evil

  • Yearning for freedom

  • Assimilation v. cultural identity

  • Growth in moral & spiritual strength

  • Themselves as oppressed

American jeremiad

• Rhetorical

• Laments the sins of the present

• Present v. past generations

• Call for repentance/renewal

Paradox

Situation, person, or thing that includes contradictory features

Declaration

…

Republican yeoman farmer

• “Noble cultivator”

• “Gentleman farmer”

• In opposition to European aristocracy

Myth of the melting pot

Theory of multiculturalism

Individualism

…

Autobiography

• Recollection and personal beliefs

Self fashioning

Constructing identity & public persona based on public standards

Middle passage

• Part of the triangular slave trade

• 10-13 million people transported

Slave narrative

• Journey from slavery to freedom

• Direct address/appeal to audience

• Descriptions of violence

• Separation of families

• Desire for freedom and education

• Recall stories of purchase and/or escape

Neoclassicism

• Classical period (Greek + Roman)

• Order, accuracy

• Structure

• Restraint, balance

Epistolatory Novel

• Letters, journals, diaries

• Intimate

• Different POVs

• Types

  • Monologic

  • Dialogic

  • Polylogic

Republican Motherhood

• Attitudes toward women’s societal roles

• Separation of public (male) and private/domestic (female) spheres

• Women as domestic household & custodians of civic virtue