American Literature 2 – Flashcards
Unlock all answers in this set
Unlock answersquestion
avantgarde
answer
are people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art,culture, and politics.The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. The avant-garde also promotes radical social reforms. Writers, poets: Pound, W. C. Williams, Ginsberg, E. E. Cummings
question
beat poetry
answer
a style of writing from the mid-1950s and 1960s. It incorporates a free-form type of writing that promotes individualism and the idea of spiritual emptiness + protests the loss of faith. Some "beat poets" became known leaders of the Beat Generation. They were disillusioned with their views of the postwar culture of conformity and materialism. Beat poetry was often recited orally. Members of the Beat Generation typically would gather at Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco to read poetry, usually accompanied by jazz. Drugs and Zen Buddhism were sources of inspiration. Themes: liberation for black people, homosexuals, women, and Native Americans
question
Black Mountain poets
answer
or projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodernpoets centered on Black Mountain College which launched a remarkable number of the artists who spearheaded the avant-garde in the America of the 1960s. In 1950,Charles Olson published his essay, Projective Verse that became a kind of de facto manifesto for the Black Mountain poets. In addition to Olson, the poets most closely associated with Black Mountain include Robert Duncan, , Denise Levertov, and Robert Creeley.
question
bricolage
answer
In the practical and the fine arts, bricolage is the construction of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work created by such a process.The term bricolage has also been used in many other fields. In literature, it's affected by intertextuality, the shaping of a text's meanings by reference to other texts.
question
canon
answer
The term "literary canon" refers to a classification of literature. It is a term used widely to refer to a group of literary works that are considered the most important of a particular time period or place. A literary canon establishes a collection of similar or related literary works.
question
canonization
answer
the canon applies a certain validity or authority to a work of literature. When a work is entered into the canon, thus canonized, it gains status as an official inclusion into a group of literary works that are widely studied and respected. There are no rigid qualifications for canonization and over time, works may be added or subtracted from the canon.
question
collage
answer
artistic technique of applying manufactured, printed, or "found" materials, such as bits of newspaper, fabric, wallpaper, etc., to a panel or canvas, frequently in combination with painting. The word collage was first used to refer to works by Dada and Surrealist artists, especially Max Ernst. In the 1960s collage was employed as a major form of Pop art. In lit.: A work, such as a literary piece, composed of both borrowed and original material, combining unrelated styles.
question
confessional poetry
answer
emerged in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. It has been described as poetry "of the personal." The content of confessional poems is autobiographical and marked by its exploration of subject matter that was considered taboo at the time. This subject matter included topics like mental illness, sexuality, and suicide. The school of poetry that became known as "Confessional Poetry" was associated with several poets in the 1950s, including Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Anne Sexton,Allen Ginsberg.
question
cultural pluralism
answer
is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities, and their values and practices are accepted by the wider culture provided they are consistent with the laws and values of the wider society. It's often confused with Multiculturalism which lacks the requirement of a dominant culture.
question
defamiliarization
answer
(or ostranenie) is the artistic technique of presenting common things in an unfamiliar or strange way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar. A central concept in 20th century art and theory, ranging over movements including Dada, postmodernism, epic theatre, and science fiction, it is also used as a tactic by recent movements such as culture jamming. The term "defamiliarization" was first coined in 1917 by Viktor Shklovsky in his essay "Art as Device".
question
Des Imagistes
answer
edited by Ezra Pound and published in 1914, was the first anthology of the Imagism movement. It was published in The Glebe, and later that year as a book. The eleven authors featured were: Richard Aldington, Skipwith Cannell, John Cournos, H. D., F. S. Flint, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, Allen Upward, William Carlos Williams
question
detective fiction
answer
is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective investigates a crime, often murder. True detective fiction in the English-speaking world is considered to have begun in 1841 with the publication of Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". The period of the 1920s and 1930s is generally referred to as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction
question
dime novels
answer
a type of inexpensive, usually paperback, melodramatic novel of adventure popular in the United States roughly between 1860 and 1915; it often featured a western theme. One of the best-known authors of such works was E.Z.C. Judson, under the pseudonym Ned Buntline. The dime novels were eventually replaced by pulp magazines.
question
domestic realism
answer
the leading characters belong to the middle class, usually represented in tragic drama in which the action concerns family affairs rather than public matters of state. Can be found in the American tragedies of Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller. Domestic tragedy is sometimes known as 'bourgeois tragedy'.
question
dramatic monologue
answer
A literary, usually verse composition in which a speaker reveals his or her character, often in relation to a critical situation or event, in a monologue addressed to the reader or to a presumed listener.
question
eclecticism
answer
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.
question
ellipsis
answer
The act of leaving out one or more words that are not necessary for a phrase to be understood.
question
epigraph
answer
In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional context.
question
epistemology
answer
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge and is also referred to as "theory of knowledge". It questions what knowledge is and how it can be acquired, and the extent to which knowledge pertinent to any given subject or entity can be acquired.
question
experimentalism
answer
Experimental literature refers to written work—usually fiction or poetry—that emphasizes innovation, most especially in technique.
question
expressionism
answer
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality.
question
flapper
answer
Flappers were a "new breed" of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.
question
formalist poetry
answer
New Formalism is a late-20th and early 21st century movement in American poetry that has promoted a return to metrical and rhymed verse.
question
free verse
answer
Free verse is an open form of poetry. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech.
question
Harlem Renaissance
answer
A blossoming of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history. Embracing literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualize "the Negro" apart from the white stereotypes that had influenced black peoples' relationship to their heritage and to each other. They also sought to break free of Victorian moral values and bourgeois shame about aspects of their lives that might, as seen by whites, reinforce racist beliefs.
question
high modernism
answer
High modernism (also known as "high modernity") is a form of modernity, characterized by an unfaltering confidence in science and technology as means to reorder the social and natural world. The high modernist movement was particularly prevalent during the Cold War, especially in the late-1950s and 1960s.
question
iceberg theory
answer
(Also known as the theory of omission.) Hemingway's main instrument is the ellipsis and omission of certain parts from his works. The reader can feel that there is more under the surface than what is actually written down. Hemingway believed the true meaning of a piece of writing should not be evident from the surface story, rather, the crux of the story lies below the surface and should be allowed to shine through.
question
imagism
answer
Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. As a poetic style it gave Modernism its start in the early 20th century, and is considered to be the first organized Modernist literary movement in the English language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness. Imagism called for a return to what were seen as more Classical values, such as directness of presentation and economy of language, as well as a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms. Imagists use free verse. Amy Lowell
question
interior monologue
answer
an interior monologue always presents a character's thoughts 'directly', without the apparent intervention of a summarizing and selecting narrator, it does not necessarily mingle them with impressions and perceptions. / while an interior monologue may mirror all the half thoughts, impressions, and associations that impinge upon the character's consciousness, it may also be restricted to an organized presentation of that character's rational thoughts
question
intertextuality
answer
On its most basic level, intertextuality is the concept of texts' borrowing of each others' words and concepts. This could mean as much as an entire ideological concept and as little as a word or phrase. As authors borrow pro-actively from previous texts, their work gains layers of meaning. Also, another feature of intertextuality reveals itself when a text is read in light of another text, in which case all of the assumptions and implications surrounding the other text shed light on and shape the way a text is interpreted. Ernest Hemingway draws language from metaphysical poet John Donne's "Meditation XVII" in naming his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls
question
Jazz age
answer
The Jazz Age was a feature of the 1920s (ending with The Great Depression) when jazz music and dance became popular. This occurred particularly in the United States, but also in Britain, France and elsewhere. Jazz played a significant part in wider cultural changes during the period, and its influence on pop culture continued long afterwards. Jazz music originated mainly in New Orleans, and is/was a fusion of African and European music. The Jazz Age is often referred to in conjunction with the phenomenon referred to as the Roaring Twenties. The term "Jazz Age" was coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
question
Little Theater
answer
Young dramatists, stage designers, and actors who were influenced by the vital European theatre of the late 19th century; they were especially impressed by the revolutionary theories of the German director Max Reinhardt, the designing concepts of Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig, and the staging experiments at such theatres as the Théâtre-Libre of Paris, the Freie Bühne in Berlin, and the Moscow Art Theatre. They initiated the Little Theater Movement.
question
Little Theater movement
answer
As the new medium of cinema was beginning to replace theatre as a source of large-scale spectacle, the Little Theatre Movement developed in the United States around 1912. In several large cities, beginning with Chicago, Boston, Seattle and Detroit, companies formed to produce more intimate, noncommercial, and reform-minded entertainments.
question
lost generation
answer
The "Lost Generation" was the generation that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron.
question
mass culture
answer
Mass culture is the set of ideas and values that develop from a common exposure to the same media, news sources, music, and art. Mass culture is broadcast or otherwise distributed to individuals instead of arising from their day-to-day interactions with each other. Thus, mass culture generally lacks the unique content of local communities and regional cultures. It developed in the 1990s in the United States due to the proliferation of newspapers and mass transit with the finish of the transcontinental railroad.
question
melodrama
answer
A melodrama is a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions, often with strongly stereotyped characters. Melodrama is a style of drama that has been applied on the stage, in movies and television, and radio formats, from the 18th century to the present.
question
memory play
answer
The term coined by Tennessee Williams to describe non-realistic dramas, such as The Glass Menagerie, in which the audience experiences the past as remembered by a narrator, complete with music from the period remembered, and images representing the characters' thoughts, fears, emotions, and recollections projected on a scrim in the background.
question
metafiction
answer
Novels and stories that examine, experiment with, or poke fun at the conventions and genres of fiction itself can all be classified as metafiction. The term "meta-fiction" means "beyond fiction" or "over fiction," indicating that the author or narrator stands "beyond" or "over" the fictional text and judges it in a highly self-conscious way
question
metatextual
answer
Metatextuality is the explicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another text
question
metatheatrical devices
answer
Techniques that may be found in metatheatre: ceremony within a play, role-playing within a role, reference to reality, self-reference of the drama, and play within a play.
question
mimesis
answer
It is an imitation or representation of something else by embodying its essence rather than an attempt to literally duplicate the original.
question
moveable feast
answer
A Moveable Feast is a memoir by Ernest Hemingway about his years in Paris as part of the expatriate writers in the 1920s. The book describes Hemingway's apprenticeship as a young writer in Europe (especially in Paris) while married to his first wife, Hadley.
question
multiculturalism
answer
Multiculturalism is the cultural diversity of communities and the policies that promote this diversity. Multiculturalism is often contrasted with the concepts of assimilationism and has been described as a "salad bowl" or "cultural mosaic" rather than a "melting pot".
question
NAACP
answer
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination"
question
objectism
answer
"Objectism" is the attitude, or the role of poet as mere object among other objects in nature, required for writing such poetry. Olson rejected humanism's tendencies to privilege the human observer and to demote surrounding nature as resources and implements. Objectism was Olson's term for Ishmael's selfless scrutiny of life, which he now found in Aztec and Mayan art, where human subjects are cast among the flowers and animals of everyday life. Charles Olson- Projective Verse
question
objective correlative
answer
An objective correlative is a literary term referring to a symbolic article used to provide explicit, rather than implicit, access to such traditionally inexplicable concepts as emotion or color. It was popularized by T. S. Eliot in his essay "Hamlet and His Problems"
question
ontology
answer
A philosophical term which denotes the study of being. As a literary term it has a special meaning, thinks to John Crowe Ransom. According to him the texture (q.v.) and structure (q.v.) oI a poem, which, combined, provide the meaning, combine also to give it 'ontolory' - that qualiry or property peculiar to itself which distinguishes it from anything that is not poetry.
question
pastiche
answer
A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, or music that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche celebrates, rather than mocks, the work it imitates
question
Petrarchan sonnet
answer
The Petrarchan sonnet was not developed by Petrarch himself, but rather by a string of Renaissance poets. The original Italian sonnet form divides the poem's 14 lines into two parts, the first part being an octave and the second being a sestet. The rhyme scheme for the octave is typically a b b a a b b a. The sestet is more flexible. Petrarch typically used c d e c d e or c d c d c d for the sestet.
question
Poet's Club
answer
a group devoted to the discussion of poetry. It met in London in the early years of the twentieth up the group in 1908, and was its first secretary. Hulme wrote a charter document: "Rules 1908". The group comprised mainly amateurs and met once a month, excluding the summer months of July, August, and September, for dinner, the reading of poems, and the presentation of short (20 minute) papers on various topics relating to poetry. Around the end of 1908 Hulme read the Club his A Lecture on Modern Poetry. The Club produced several anthologies; the first two being — For Christmas MDCCCCVIII (January 1909) and The Book of the Poets' Club (December 1909). Two of Hulme's poems were included in the first, "Autumn" and "A City Sunset," and another two in the second. These are regarded as the first examples of Imagism. In 1909, Hulme began a side-project with F.S. Flint, both a critic and friend of the Poets' Club, called "The School of Images," introducing Ezra Pound to the group in April 1909. This group lasted less than a year but anticipated and motivated the Imagist movement.
question
popular culture
answer
Popular Culture is the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images, and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century. Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society.
question
Provincetown Players
answer
The Provincetown Players was a nonprofit theatre company started in Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. The first modern theater devoted to producing original works by American playwrights, the company's founding has been called "the most important innovative moment in American theatre." Famed for staging the first productions of plays by several important playwrights, including Eugene O'Neill and Susan Glaspell, the group employed many other notable writers, artists, and actors.
question
Quest narrative
answer
A quest narrative is a story that revolves around an adventure, and more specifically, a journey (traveling expedition). They usually revolve around an epic scope (a lot is at stake for the characters and/or world, the world itself is large and wide-sweeping, etc). It's characterized by the protagonist stumbling onto several obstacles/challenges that must be completed in order to progress in the journey (and story). Another characteristic is that the protagonist typically meets other characters that divulge necessary knowledge that will enable the protagonist to complete his quest/adventure/journey. (Example: wise wizard, rangers, prophets, etc).
question
roman-á-clef
answer
French for novel with a key, is a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction. This "key" may be produced separately by the author, or implied through the use of epigraphs or other literary techniques.
question
satire
answer
a mode of writing that exposes the failings of individuals, intitutions, or societies to ridicule and scorn. Satire is often an incidental element in literary works that may not be wholly satirical, especially in comedy. Its tone may vary from tolerant amusement, as in the verse satires of the Roman poet Horace, to bitter indignation, a sin the verse of Juvenal and the prose of Jonathan Swift.
question
science fiction
answer
a popular modern branch of prose friction that explores the probable consequences of some improbable or impossible transformation of the basic conditions of human (or intelligent non-human existence). This transformation need not be brought about by a technological invention, but may involve some mutation of known biological of physical reality, e.c.: time travel, ecological catastrophe etc.
question
simulacrum
answer
The word simulacrum (plural: simulacra), from Latin: simulacrum, which means "likeness, similarity", was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god. By the late 19th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original. Philosopher Fredric Jameson offers photorealism as an example of artistic simulacrum, where a painting is sometimes created by copying a photograph that is itself a copy of the real.
question
Southern gothic
answer
Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place exclusively in the American South. Common themes in Southern Gothic literature include deeply flawed, disturbing or eccentric characters who may or may not dabble in hoodoo, ambivalent gender roles and decayed or derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to or coming from poverty, alienation, crime and violence. While the tales in literature can be set among various classes, the decay of the southern aristocracy and the setting of the plantation are the usual settings for southern gothic tales in the popular mind.
question
synesthesia
answer
a blending or confusion of different kinds of sense-impression, in which one type of sensation is referred to in terms more appropriate to another. Common synaesthetic expressions include the descriptions of colours as 'loud' or 'warm', and of souns as 'smooth'.
question
unreliable narrator
answer
a *NARRATOR whose account of events appears to be faulty, misleadingly biased, or otherwise distorted, so that it departs from the 'true' understanding of events shared between the reader and the *IMPLIED AUTHOR. The discrepancy between the unreliable narrator's view of events and the view that readers suspect to be more accurate creates a sense of *IRONY. The term does not necessarily mean that such a narrator is morally untrustworthy or a habitual liar (although this may be true in some cases), since the category also includes harmlessly naive, 'fallible', or ill-informed narrators.
question
Vorticism
answer
a short-lived artistic movement that announced itself in London in 1914. It was led by the painter and writer Wyndham Lewis, and attracted the support of the sculptors Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Its literary significance is negligible except in that Ezra Pound regarded it as an advance upon his previous phase of *IMAGISM. Vorticism called for an end to all sentimentality, and for a new abstraction that would, paradoxically, be both dynamic and static.
question
western
answer
is a genre of various arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling telling stories set primarily int he plater half of the 19th century in the American Old West. This genre sometimes portrays the conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature int he name of civilization or the confiscation of the territorial rights of the original (Native American) inhabitants of the frontier.
