British Literature - Romanticism and Related Terms

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts from British Literature with a focus on Romanticism.

Romanticism

An international artistic and philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western cultures thought about themselves and about their world.

Gothic novels

Novels that typically feature picturesque yet haunted medieval castles and ruins, supernatural elements, death, madness, and terror.

Mysticism

The belief that the physical world of nature is a revelation of a spiritual or transcendental presence in the universe.

Preface

An introductory explanation.

Lyric

A brief poem, expressing emotion, imagination, and meditative thought, usually stanzaic in form.

Ode

A lyric poem longer than usual lyrics, often on a more serious topic, usually meditative and philosophic in tone and subject.

Ballad

A narrative poem or song, usually simple & regular in rhythm & rhyme. The typical ballad stanza is 4 lines rhyming abab.

Copses

Areas densely covered with shrubs and small trees.

Corporeal

Bodily.

Sylvan

Associated with the forest or woodlands.

Genial

Creative.

Sedge

Reedy plants.

Sinews

Tendon or ligament.