American Literature CLEP Exam – Flashcards
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Refrain
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A line or group of lines repeated at the end of a poem or song. Refrains reinforce the main point and create musical effects.
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Colonial & Early National Period
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Beginnings - 1830
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Romantic Period
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1830 - 1870
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Naturalism & Realism
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1870 - 1910
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Modernist Period
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1910 - 1945
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Contemporary Period
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1945 - Present
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Colonial & Early Nationalist Authors
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William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Cotton Mather, John Smith, Jonathan Edwards
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William Bradford (1590 - 1657)
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Colonialist. The Mayflower Compact, History of Plymouth Plantation
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Anne Bradstreet (1612 - 1672)
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Colonialist. The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, To My Dear and Loving Husband, Verses Upon the Burning of Our House
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Edward Taylor (1645 - 1729)
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Colonialist. Huswifery. America's best Puritan poet.
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Cotton Mather (1663 - 1728)
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Colonialist. Magnalia Christi Americana. Puritan minister, Supporter of Salem Witch Trials
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John Smith (1580 - 1631)
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A Description of New England & The General History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles
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Jonathan Edwards (1703 - 1758)
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Colonialist. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
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J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur (1735 - 1813)
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Nationalist. Letters from an American Farmer
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Benjamin Franklin (1706 -1790)
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Nationalist. Autobiography, Poor Richards Almanac,
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Aphorisms
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Clever memorable sayings
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Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)
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Nationalist. Declaration of Independence
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Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809)
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Nationalist. The American Crisis
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Abigail Adams
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Nationalist. Campaigned for women's rights
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Washington Irving (1789 - 1851)
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Romantic. Father of American literature. Rip Van Winkle, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Devil and Tom Walker, A History of New York, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Influenced Longfellow and Hawthorne
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James Fenimore Cooper (1789 - 1851)
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Romantic. Father of the American Novel. The Leatherstocking Tales: The Pioneers The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer,(Natty Bumppo) The Spy
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Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)
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Dark Romantic. The Raven, The Cask of Amontilland, The Gold Bug, The Raven, Ullume, The Bells, The Black Cat, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Telltale Heart, Annabel Lee, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogctet, The Purloined Letter
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Tales of Ratiocination
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Poe called detective stories
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Transcendentalists
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Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
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Transcendentalist. Nature, Self Reliance
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Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
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Transcendentalist. Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
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Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864)
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Dark Romantic. Wrote of sin and guilt. The Scarlett Letter, Young Goodman Brown, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance
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Dark Romantics
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Poe, Hawthorne, Melville
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Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)
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Dark Romantic. Moby Dick, The Connfidence Man, Typee, Omoo,
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The War Between the States
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1855 - 1865
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Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896)
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Uncle Tom's Cabin,
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Frederick Douglass (1817 - 1895)
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Escaped slave. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
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Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
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One of the founders of American poetry. Father of free verse. Song of Myself, I Sing of the Body Electric, A Noiseless Patient Spider, O, Captain! My Captain!
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Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
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One of the founders of American poetry. Wore only white. Published only 7 anonymously, didn't title her poems
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Imagists
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Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Ezra Pound, William Carlos, Williams
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Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
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Realist. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Prince and the Pauper, Pudd'nhead Wilson, Letters from the Earth. Was a master of vernacular and tall tales
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Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900)
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Impressionist. Realism & Naturalism, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Red Badge of Courage, The Open Boat
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Naturalists
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Jack London, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser
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Atavism
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The reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some distant ancestor that have not been present in intervening generations, such as a hand like a hairy paw.
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Darwinism
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People who are best adapted to survive are chosen the the process of natural selection
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Determinism
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All events follow natural laws.
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Nativism
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The belief that the "true" Americans were those of earlier Anglo-Saxon decent.
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Nietzscheism
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will to power is the primary force of society and the individual
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Racialism
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False science that argued that different human races possessed distinguishing traits that determined their particular behavior and achievement in society
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Scientism
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science of religious, mythical, or spiritual interpretations of life.
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Jack London (1876 - 1916)
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Naturalist. The Call of the Wild, The People of the Abyss, John Barleycorn, To Build a Fire
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Frank Norris (1870 - 1902)
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Naturalist. McTeague, a Story of San Francisco, Epic Trilogy of the Wheat
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Theodore Dreiser (1871 - 1945)
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Leader of Naturalism. Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, The Financier, The Titan, An American Tragedy
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Bret Harte
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Local Colorist. Wild West - The Outcasts of Poker Flat
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Mary Wilkins Freeman
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Local Colorist. Northeast - The New England Nun
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Sarah Orne Jewett
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Northeast - The White Heron
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Kate Chopin
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Louisiana bayous - The Awakening
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Womens' issues. The Yellow Wallpaper
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Willa Cather
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Midwest. My Antonia, Death Comes for the Arch Bishop
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Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
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Weathy society matron. Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth
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Henry James (1843 - 1916)
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1st phase - International themes, 2nd phase - experimental 3rd phase psychological insights. Transatlantic Sketches, Daisy Miller, Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw
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Earnest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)
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Modernist. The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea (Allegory), In Our Time, For Whom the Bell Tolls
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F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940)
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Modernist. The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned
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William Faulkner (1897 - 1962)
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Modernist. Stream of consciousness. The Sound and the Fury,
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Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)
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Modernist. Imagism. Traitor. Free verse. Cantos, Hugh Selwyn Mauberly: Life and Contacts
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T.S. Elliot (1888 - 1965)
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Modernist. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste-Land, Murder in the Cathedral, The Cocktail Party
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John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968)
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Modernist. The Grapes of Wrath
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Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
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Modernist Poet. Sonnet. Blank Verse. The Road Less Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
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e. e. cummings(1894 - 1962)
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Modernist Poet. Use of capitol letters
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Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 - 1935)
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Modernist. Richard Cory
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Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967)
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Modernist Poet - Chicago. Free verse
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Edgar Lee Masters (1868 - 1950)
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Modernist Poet - Chicago. Spoon River Anthology
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Richard Wright (1908 - 1960)
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Harlem Renaissance. Native Son
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Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967)
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Harlem Renaissance. Wrote poems against racism
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W.E.B. Du Bois (1868 - 1963)
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Harlem Renaissance. Founder of NAACP. Opposite Booker T. Washington. The Souls of Black Folk
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Booker T. Washington (1856 - 1915)
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Harelm Renaissance - Up From Slavery
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The Beat Writers
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William S. Burroughs, Jack Keroauc, Allen Ginsberg
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Confessional Poets
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Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar. Daddy. Anne Sexton: Live or Die Robert Lowell: For the Union Dead
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J.D. Salinger (b. 1919)
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The Catcher in the Rye
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Flannery O'Connor (1925 - 1964)
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Catholic. Southern Gothic. Mystery and Manners
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James Thurber (1984 - 1961)
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Modern Humorist. Battle between the sexes. Fables for Our Time, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,
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Saul Bellow (b. 1915)
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Contemporary Writer. The Adventures of Augie March
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Erica Jong (b. 1942)
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Contemporary Writer. Fear of Flying
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Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
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Contemporary Writer. The Naked and the Dead
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Contemporary African-American
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Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man May Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Toni Morrison - The Bluest Eye, Beloved Alice Walker - The Color Purple Gwendolyn Brooks - The Bean Eaters James Baldwin - Black homosexuals
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Blank Verse
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Unrhymed poetry, captures the natural rhythm of speech.
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Foot
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A group of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
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Free Verse
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Poetry that does not have a regular beat, rhyme, or line length. Walt Whitman wrote free verse.
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Meter
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The beat or rhythm of a poem, created by a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
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Rhyme
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The repeated use of identical or nearly identical sounds.
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Rhyme Scheme
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A regular pattern of words that end with the same sound.
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Rhythm
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A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that create a beat, as in music.
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Scan
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The process of reading a poem to figure out its meter.
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Stanza
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A group of lines in a poem. Lines of poems are grouped into stanzas, just as sentences of prose are grouped into paragraphs.
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Verse
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A stanza.
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Long days journey into night
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Eugene O'Neill
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Used dates instead of chapters
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Mary Rowlandson
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Young slave girl
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Phyllis Wheatley
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Invisible Man
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Ralph Ellison
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Spondee
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Two stressed syllables
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Mending Wall
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Henry David Thoreau
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Hemingway referred to
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Huckleberry Fin
