Honors English 12 Midterm

Middle Ages

  • Defining historic details

    • intro and weakening of Roman Catholic Church

      • During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church became very powerful, guiding religion, education, and daily life

      • corruption and abuses weakened its influence and led people to question its authority

    • rise and fall of feudalism

      • Feudalism developed after the fall of Rome when people needed protection from invasions. Kings gave land to nobles for military service, and peasants worked the land in exchange for safety

      • Feudalism declined as trade grew, the Black Death increased the value of labor, and strong monarchs replaced feudal armies with national governments

    • Alfred the Great

      • Anglo-Saxon king who defended England against viking invasions and promoted learning and education

    • William the Conqueror

      • Norman leader who defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and became king of England, changing English culture and government

  • Old English tribal culture

    • comitatus bond - loyalty to king, family, and lord

    • generosity, loyalty, courageous, fortitude, war glory, wisdom

    • vague christianity

  • High MA refined courtly values

    • chivalric code, courtly love, loyalty to king, lady, and god, mercy>war glory, piety

    • roman catholic church heavily influences these values

  • Old English literary characteristics

    • oral

    • sad mood

    • cryptic situations

    • fusion of christian and pagan beliefs

    • epithets, kennings, alliteration, variation

  • Folk epic

    • heroes, fights, didactics, hero has companions, supernatural, elevated language

    • example:

      • Beowulf

        • author - unknown, translated by Burton Raffel

        • Beowulf tells the story of a warrior who travels to Denmark to help King Hrothgar by defeating a monster named Grendel, who has been terrorizing the king’s hall. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands and later defeats Grendel’s mother underwater. Years later, as king, Beowulf fights a dragon to protect his people but is killed in the battle, showing the cost of heroism.

      • The Nun’s Priest’s Tale (Chanticleer)   

        • author - Geoffrey Chaucer

        • The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is a beast fable about a rooster named Chanticleer who ignores warnings and believes a flattering fox. The fox captures him, but Chanticleer tricks the fox into speaking, allowing him to escape. The tale teaches lessons about pride, listening to advice, and the dangers of flattery.

  • Romance

    • focused on courtly love and knightly code of chivalry rather than heroism

    • usually involves knightly quest

    • incorporated fantastical elements of magic

    • example: Le Morte d’Arthur

      • author - Thomas Malory

      • Le Morte d’Arthur is a medieval romance that tells the story of King Arthur and his knights, focusing on chivalry, heroic quests, and courtly love. The love between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere plays a major role, showing the conflict between love and loyalty. The story ends tragically as betrayal and broken vows lead to the fall of Camelot.

    • example: The Faerie Queene

      • author - Edmund Spenser

      • RCK travels with a dwarf and Una for a quest to defeat a creature to serve the Faerie Queene. As they travel, Una constantly warns RCK to be careful since the quest he is on is very dangerous but RCK does not back down and continues. He overcomes the serpent lady in the end and is praised by Una, showing loyalty and chivalry.

  • Frame tale

    • a group of tales unified by a central situation (story within a story)

    • example: The Canterbury Tales

      • author - Geoffrey Chaucer

      • The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is a beast fable about a rooster named Chanticleer who ignores warnings and believes a flattering fox. The fox captures him, but Chanticleer tricks the fox into speaking, allowing him to escape. The tale teaches lessons about pride, listening to advice, and the dangers of flattery.

Renaissance

  • Defining historic details

    • Henry VIII split from Rome

      • Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church to form the Church of England so he could divorce and control religious authority

    • Catholics vs. Anglicans

      • Catholics followed the pope and traditional church practices

      • Anglicans followed the English monarch as head of the church and adopted some Protestant beliefs

    • Classic Humanism & Expanded Education Opportunities

      • Renaissance humanism emphasized studying classical Greek and Roman texts, leading to broader education and greater access to learning

    • Protestant Reformation & Bible Translation

      • The Protestant Reformation challenged Church authority and encouraged translating the Bible into common languages so people could read it themselves

  • Key cultural values

    • man’s place in society : people believed individuals had value and responsibility within their community, not just obedience to authority.

    • improvement : emphasized self-betterment through education, discipline, and the development of one’s talents

    • pursuit of truth : truth was sought through reason, observation, and learning, rather than accepting ideas blindly

    • genuine religion : faith was meant to be sincere and personal, focusing on true belief and moral living instead of empty rituals

  • Sonnets

    • Italian Sonnet

      • Iambic Pentameter

      • Two parts:

        • octave (8) - abba abba, presents a problem, question, or possibility

        • sestet (6) - c,d & possible e rhyme pattern, presents answer

      • Key person - Wyatt

    • English Sonnet

      • 3 quatrains (abab cdcd efef)

        • presents and develops a problem, question, or possibility

      • couplet (2) gg

      • Key person - Howard

    • Spencerian Sonnet

      • 3 quatrains (abab bcbc cdcd (ee))

      • riff off of the english sonnet

      • Key person - Edmund Spenser

  • Literary epic

    • characteristics:

      • written in imitation of oral folk epics

      • 12 books

      • catalogs

      • blank verse (unrhymed, iambic pentameter)

      • extended similes

    • example:

      • Paradise Lost

      • author - John Milton

      • Paradise Lost is an epic poem by John Milton about the fall of humanity. It tells how Satan rebels against God and is cast out of Heaven, then tempts Adam and Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. Their disobedience brings sin and suffering into the world, but the poem also emphasizes free will, responsibility, and the hope of redemption.

  • Allegory

    • a story with a literal and an implied level of meaning

    • the implied level of meaning may suggest actual persons, places, events, and situations (historic allegories) or a set of ideas (conceptual allegories)

    • a parable, a brief story told to illustrate or clarify a truth, is a form of allegory

    • example:

      • The Faerie Queene

      • author - Edmund Spenser

      • RCK travels with a dwarf and Una for a quest to defeat a creature to serve the Faerie Queene. As they travel, Una constantly warns RCK to be careful since the quest he is on is very dangerous but RCK does not back down and continues. He overcomes the serpent lady in the end and is praised by Una, showing loyalty and chivalry.

Literary concepts

  • apostrophe: an address to an absent person, abstraction, or inanimate object as if it were able to reply

  • metaphor: imaginative comparison of the stated or implied equivalence of two dissimilar things

    • tenor - subject

    • vehicle - image to which the subject is compared

  • personification: giving human characteristics to something, such as an inanimate object or abstract concept, that is not human

  • satire: corrective ridicule in literature, or a work that is designed to correct an evil by means of ridicule

  • irony: the use of language to convey meaning other than what is stated or a contradiction in what is expected to happen and what actually happens

  • theme vs. motif:    

    • motif - an element — object, image, description, or theme — that repeats throughout a specific work or a group of works

    • theme - a recurring or emerging idea in a work of literature

  • antithesis: the use of syntactical parallelism in two adjacent phrases or clauses to emphasize their contrasting meanings

  • allusion: a reference within a work of literature to something outside it, usually history or another artistic work

  • anaphora: the repetition of words or phrases at the beginnings of lines or grammatical units

  • stanza: division of a poem based on thought, meter, or rhyme, usually recognized by the number of lines it contains and distinguished in print by spacing

  • rhyme; meter

    • rhyme - two or more words having identical sounds in the last stressed vowel and all the sounds following that vowel

    • meter - the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. labeled based on the number of poetic feet a line contains

  • iambic pentameter: ten-syllable poetic lines consisting of five iambic feet (unstressed, stressed). one of the most common meters in english poetry

  • heroic couplet: a pair of rhyming lines (couplet) written in iambic pentameter

  • connotative language: language that conveys the meaning of a word with its implications and emotional associations

  • sensory imagery: descriptive language that appeals to the reader’s five senses