British and American Literature and Culture Practice Flashcards

Fundamental vocabulary terms and concepts covering British and American literature and culture from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Postwar era.

Witan

The council that elected the Anglo-Saxon king, who was chosen based on his fighting skills and successes rather than an inherited title.

Lof

A concept in Anglo-Saxon culture representing the glory and fame attained by a brave warrior through courage and will-power.

Wyrd

The Anglo-Saxon belief in fate, which influenced their pessimistic worldview and sense of duty.

Kenning

A special compound noun of metaphorical quality used in Old English poetry, such as "sky candle" for the sun or "whale-road" for the sea.

Scop

A tribal poet who functioned as the living memory of the Anglo-Saxon people, singing about past battles and historical events.

Exeter Book

A 10th-century manuscript containing one of the largest and most important collections of Anglo-Saxon poetry, including elegies like "The Wanderer."

Matter of Britain

A group of Middle English romances centering on King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the ideals of chivalry and magic.

Heroic Couplet

The poetic form used by Geoffrey Chaucer in "The Canterbury Tales," consisting of rhyming pairs of lines.

Humanism

A Renaissance intellectual movement focusing on human potential, education, classical culture, and the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman texts.

Sprezzatura

A quality of the ideal Renaissance courtier described as careless and elegant nonchalance or effortless grace.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter, first published in English by Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, in his translation of Virgil’s "Aeneid."

Conceit

A characteristic of Baroque and Metaphysical poetry involving a complex and surprising chain of metaphors that connects two highly different things.

Enjambement

A poetic technique frequently used by John Milton where sentences flow over the ends of lines without punctuation.

Neoclassicism

An 18th-century artistic movement valuing reason, order, stability, and the imitation of nature according to classical rules.

Graveyard School

A subgenre of sentimental poetry focused on death, human mortality, and the transience of life, exemplified by Thomas Gray.

Novel of Manners

A genre of fiction that demonstrates the social and cultural behaviors, interaction, and tension between community norms and individual desires.

Escapism

A primary feature of Romantic art where creators sought to flee reality through interests in the Middle Ages, nature, or intense emotionalism.

Mask Lyrics

A genre associated with Victorian poets like Alfred Tennyson where the poet speaks in the voice of an imagined or historical person.

Dramatic Monologue

A poetic form perfected by Robert Browning used to explore a speaker's psychological and intellectual depth.

Stream of Consciousness

A modernist narrative technique attempting to capture the continuous flow of thoughts and feelings in a character's mind.

Irish Revival

Also known as the Celtic Renaissance, this movement aimed to build a distinctive national culture and literature in Ireland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Movement

A 1950s literary group, including Philip Larkin, that reacted against Modernism by using simple, clear, and accessible language.

Kitchen Sink Drama

A subgenre of social realism in post-WWII British drama that focused on working-class domestic struggles and disillusionment.

Deism

A philosophical belief dominant during the American Enlightenment that posits a deity based on reason and nature rather than religious faith.

Egalitarianism

The belief in equality for all citizens, described by Crevecoeur as a primary factor in the idealistic 18th-century American society.

Transcendentalism

A 19th-century New England philosophical movement emphasizing individual intuition, self-reliance, and nature as a reflection of the divine.

Dark Romanticism

A subgenre of Romanticism, associated with Nathaniel Hawthorne, focusing on the inherent evil, sin, and psychological complexity of humanity.

Iceberg Theory

Ernest Hemingway’s minimalistic writing style where the deeper meaning of a story is not visible on the surface but is implied underneath.

The Gilded Age

A period between the US Civil War and the Reconstruction era characterized by rapid industrial growth and extreme wealth for tycoons at the expense of the working class.

Determinism

A belief common in Naturalist literature that the fate of characters is decided by nature and social forces beyond human control.

Harlem Renaissance

An intellectual and cultural revival of African-American art, music, and literature centered in Manhattan during the early 20th century.

Womanism

A term created by Alice Walker to describe a specific brand of feminism that advocates for the rights and experiences of women of color.

The Alger Hero

A cultural archetype of a young boy from humble origins who achieves financial success and social standing through hard work and determination.

Boothlegger

An iconic image from the 1920s Prohibition era referring to individuals who illegally smuggled and traded alcohol.