English Lit Midterm

Defamiliarization

The artistic process of making familiar things seem strange to renew perception. Romantic poets often used it to awaken readers to the beauty or strangeness of ordinary life.

Defamiliarization Example

Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” makes a field of daffodils extraordinary through vivid imagery.

Ekphrasis

A poetic description or meditation on a work of art. It explores how art can capture or freeze time and emotion.

Ekphrasis Example

Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” reflects on how art preserves eternal beauty.

Ballad Form

A narrative poem written in quatrains with alternating rhyme and meter, often telling folk stories or moral tales. It creates musical rhythm and accessibility.

Ballad Form Example

Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven” uses ballad form to convey a child’s perspective on death.

Epistolary Form

A narrative told through letters or written documents, showing multiple viewpoints. It can create bias because the author of the letters can frame the story in different ways. It highlights communication and subjectivity.

Epistolary Form Example

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein begins with letters from Walton to his sister.

Bildungsroman

A “coming-of-age” story tracing a character’s moral and psychological development. Romantic versions often focus on the formation of the artist or self.

Bildungsroman Example

Frankenstein can be read as a distorted bildungsroman of Victor’s quest for knowledge.

Enjambment

When a poetic line runs into the next without a pause, emphasizing flow and continuation. It mirrors natural speech and emotional overflow.

Enjambment Example

Keats’s “To Autumn” uses enjambment to create lush, continuous imagery.

Caesura

A deliberate pause within a line of poetry, often marked by punctuation. It creates rhythm, tension, or reflection.

Caesura Example

In Clare’s “I Am,” caesura is used when a single thought is cut into two stanzas.

Romanticism

A late 18th–early 19th century movement emphasizing emotion, imagination, nature, and the individual spirit over reason. It often reacts against industrialization and Enlightenment rationality.

Romanticism Example

Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” celebrates nature’s transformative power.

Frame Narrative

A story within a story that provides structure and multiple perspectives. It can blur the boundary between narrator and audience.

Frame Narrative Example

Frankenstein’s narrative is framed by Walton’s letters.

Gothic

A genre emphasizing mystery, horror, and the supernatural, often exploring human psychology and transgression.

Gothic Example

Frankenstein blends science and terror to question human limits.

Romance

Originally meaning an adventure tale; in Romanticism, it suggests idealized emotion, heroism, or imagination beyond realism.

Romance Example

Shelley’s lyricism in “Ode to the West Wind” turns nature into a romantic symbol of spiritual renewal.

Fin-de-siècle

The cultural mood of the late 19th century, marked by decadence, anxiety, and fascination with moral and psychological degeneration. Writers explored duality, repression, and the instability of modern identity.

Fin-de-siècle Example

Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde embodies fears about the divided self and the corruption hidden beneath Victorian respectability

Wordsworth - We Are Seven

Definition: Wordsworth explores how a child’s understanding of death resists adult rationality. The poem reimagines death not as loss but as spiritual continuity within nature.
S: The conversation between the adult speaker and the child about her dead siblings occurs throughout the poem, structured as a ballad.
E: The child’s insistence that “we are seven” challenges Enlightenment logic with Romantic intuition, showing how emotional truth can transcend empirical fact.
C: Connect to Clare’s “I Am”, which similarly explores isolation and the persistence of spiritual identity beyond societal understanding.

Wordsworth - A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

Definition: This short lyric reflects on the death of Lucy and the transformation of grief into timeless stillness. Wordsworth merges human mortality with natural permanence.
S: The poem’s two quatrains form a complete reflection after Lucy’s death.
E: The speaker moves from emotional numbness (“A slumber did my spirit seal”) to acceptance as Lucy becomes “rolled round in earth’s diurnal course.”
C: Compare with Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” where beauty and stillness also resist time’s decay.

Keats - Ode on a Grecian Urn

Definition: Keats examines art’s ability to preserve eternal beauty in contrast to fleeting human experience. The urn becomes both immortal and lifeless.
S: The speaker addresses an ancient urn, describing frozen lovers, music, and ritual scenes.
E: The “cold pastoral” of art embodies the Romantic paradox: art conquers time but cannot feel.
C: Compare to Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”, where poetry’s movement (not stasis) symbolizes immortality.

Shelley - Ode to the West Wind

Definition: The west wind symbolizes destruction and rebirth—natural, political, and poetic. Shelley seeks inspiration from nature’s power.
S: Five cantos move from nature’s turbulence to Shelley’s plea: “Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is.”
E: The wind embodies revolutionary energy and creative transformation, aligning nature with the poet’s voice.
C: Compare to Frankenstein, where creative ambition also channels elemental power, but with catastrophic results.

Clare - I Am

Definition: Clare’s poem reveals a fractured self who finds peace only in nature and divine presence. It dramatizes Romantic isolation and endurance.
S: Written from asylum confinement, the poem’s refrain “I am” asserts existence despite neglect.
E: The speaker’s yearning for “the place where God has my soul kept” reconciles inner pain with transcendent hope.
C: Connect to Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven”—both see spiritual continuity as resistance to social alienation.

Shelley - Frankenstein (women)

Definition: Women in Frankenstein are silenced observers—idealized yet powerless within patriarchal structures.
S: Elizabeth, Justine, and Safie appear primarily through male narration.
E: Their marginalization mirrors the consequences of excluding empathy and domestic virtue from the male pursuit of power.
C: Connect to Seacole’s narrative, where a woman asserts her voice and agency within male-dominated spheres

Shelley - Frankenstein (rationality)

Definition: Victor’s obsession with scientific discovery reflects Enlightenment ambition and Romantic critique of reason without feeling.
S: Victor recounts his studies at Ingolstadt and his “thirst for knowledge.”
E: His rational quest becomes self-destructive, warning against the dehumanizing effects of unrestrained intellect.
C: Compare to Holmes in A Scandal in Bohemia, who learns that reason alone cannot master human complexity.

Shelley - Frankenstein (God-Like Science)

Definition: Language in Frankenstein enables both creation and alienation; it grants the Creature self-consciousness and suffering.
S: The Creature describes learning language from the De Laceys and reading Paradise Lost.
E: His mastery of speech mirrors divine creation but also heightens his isolation—language both empowers and condemns.
C: Connect to Seacole’s use of narrative voice as self-creation; both claim humanity through language.

Shelley - Frankenstein (Revolution)

Definition: The Creature embodies repressed social and political forces—class struggle, rebellion, and moral outcast status.
S: The Creature’s narrative traces his rejection and turn toward vengeance.
E: His revolt mirrors revolutionary impulses of the early 19th century, turning idealism into violent upheaval.
C: Compare to Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”—both figure transformation and destruction as forces of renewal.

Seacole - The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (addresses to reader)

Definition: Seacole establishes authority and credibility by addressing her “sympathizing reader,” blending humility with confidence. Her narrative resists racial prejudice through compassion and professionalism.
S: In the opening chapters, Seacole recounts her upbringing in Jamaica, her mother’s healing practice, and her early travels.
E: Directly addressing readers allows Seacole to claim agency, inviting sympathy while asserting dignity as a Black woman in the British Empire.
C: Compare to Frankenstein’s framed narration—both shape readers’ empathy through storytelling. Also links to Stevenson’s “radically both” (emotional care + professionalism).

Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes (reason, emotion)

Definition: Holmes’s encounter with Irene Adler explores the balance between intellect and feeling in the modern professional man.
S: Holmes investigates a scandal involving a photograph but is outsmarted by Adler, who earns his respect.
E: The story reveals limits of pure rationalism—Holmes must acknowledge emotional intelligence and moral complexity.
C: Connect to Frankenstein (reason vs emotion) and Seacole (professional competence coupled with empathy).

Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (professionalism, being radically both)

Definition: Stevenson’s novella explores the moral and psychological split within Victorian identity—respectable professionalism versus repressed desire.
S: Dr. Jekyll narrates his scientific experiment that separates his virtuous and immoral selves into two beings.
E: The story reveals that suppressing emotion and instinct in favor of social respectability breeds monstrosity; to be “radically both” is human.
C: Connect to A Scandal in Bohemia (balancing reason and feeling) and Frankenstein (the scientist divided by his own creation).