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Romanticism & Transcendentalism Test Review Sheet

Directions:  🍆

  1. Characteristics of Romanticism and Transcendentalism (see ditto)

Romanticism:

  • It emphasizes individuality
  • Imagination is more valued than rationality
  • Writer tries to transcend reality
  • The unity of nature and human existence
  • The personal and subjective are at the heart of things???
  • Symbols are essential
  • Figures are more eccentric - the hero is usually not common

Transcendentalism:

  • Focuses mostly on connection with a higher power through nature
  • Everything else is basically the same
  • Hero is usually common (everyday man)
  1. Literary devices for unit/application of them

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - “Psalm of Life”

  1. Lyric Poem – A short, emotional, rhyming poem.
  2. Stanza – A group of lines that form a unit.
  3. Rhyme Scheme – The pattern of end rhyme (rhyming words at the end of lines) in a stanza or poem.
  4. Meter – A repeated sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables.   The repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry.  Each unit (a “foot”) has one stressed syllable (indicated by a ‘) and either one or two unstressed syllables.

Iambic Pentameter – unstressed --------stressed

Ralph Waldo Emerson - “Self Reliance”

  1. Aphorism - A brief statement, usually one sentence long, expressing a general truth about life.  Ex.  “Honesty is the best policy.”
  2. Imagery – The descriptive words/phrases a writer uses to re-create sensory experiences (the senses – put the reader in the moment).

Henry David Thoreau - “Civil Disobedience”

  1. Essay - A short work of nonfiction that deals with a single subject, usually presenting the personal views of the writer.

Henry David Thoreau (AGAIN) - “Walden”

  1. Nature Writing – A type of essay in which the writer uses first hand observations to explore relationships with the natural world.
  2. Connotation – The “feeling” or idea a word or phrase creates.
  3. Denotation - (hint “definition”) – The literal meaning of a word or phrase.
  4. Paradox – Statement that seems to contradict itself but is nevertheless true.  Ex.  “We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.”
  5. Simile – An analogy in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, using “like” or “as”. (Ex. “She is like a rose”).
  6. Metaphor – Same as simile (comparison), WITHOUT LIKE OR AS! (Ex. “She is a rose”).
  7. Personification – Giving human characteristics to something non-human.

Walt Whitman - “Song of Myself” / “I Sit and Look Out”

  1. Form (structure) – the way the words are arranged in lines, stanzas, etc.

  2. Conventional Form – structure that follows certain fixed rules – ex. Sonnet, epic, ballad, etc. (ex. Longfellow)

  3. Organic Form – (irregular form) – poems that take  its shape and pattern from the content of the poem itself.  (Dickinson).

  4. Free verse – poems lacking standard meter and rhyme. (Whitman).

  5. Catalog – frequent lists of people, things, attributes.

  6. Repetition – words/phrases repeated at the beginning of two or more lines.

  7. Parallelism – when related ideas are phrased in similar, repetitive ways.

  8. Anaphora – when the same word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines.

  9. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow + “Psalm of Life” (THE ONLY WRITER WHO IS STRICTLY ROMANTIC (on this list)

  • ABAB rhymes
  • Format remained unoriginal
  • Describes how one should handle the struggles in life.
  1. Ralph Waldo Emerson + “Self Reliance”
  • Trust what faith has planned for you
  • Only be concerned about what you think is right or wrong
  1. Henry David Thoreau - “Civil Disobedience” and “Walden”

  • Civil Disobedience describes the importance of peaceful protest and resistance against laws that you consider to be unjust

  • CD is a defiant and political text. (There is an example of not paying taxes in this text)

  • Gandhi made a reaction to CD

  • Walden is very centered on nature

  • Thoreau loves the pond near him, and lives in cabin

  • Walden describes when Thoreau lived on his friends (Ralph Waldo Emerson’s), property, in a cabin by a pond, where he lived for several years

  1. Walt Whitman - “Song of Myself”
  • About Whitman’s connection to nature, and immortality/resurrection through nature
  • A message of racial equality
  • H
  1. Be able to identify what major lines come from which work (use ideas and text to help you with this).

This one is busted (reread everything)