World Literature 2 Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas – Flashcards

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question
The Enlightenment 's emphasis on individual reason as a ruling principle led to increasing belief in the divine rights of Kings
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True or False? Answer: False. Through the 17th century, the growing belief in a reason as the best guide to governance, ethics, and morality led to great social change, not least in regards to a faltering belief in the divine right of kings to rule absolutely over the social body-and thus also led to the spirit of rebellion in places like England and France, not to mention America.
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As part of the Enlightenment belief in the constancy, or universality, of natural laws, God was often imagined as a?
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Watchmaker: The notion of God as a watchmaker-associate with Deism- suggests the degree to which some thinkers believed the world to be governed by a collection of mechanical laws. God "wound the watch" and the world proceeded to unfold as a result of those governing laws, not by virtue of ongoing divine intervention.
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What was "the Great Chain of Being" as Enlightenment thinkers understood it?
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Answer:A hierarchy that put everything in its place. The "Great Chain of Being" was the vast hierarchy that explained every creature's relationship-above or below on the great chain-to all others. God was at the very top, while devils and demons occupied the very bottom. Everything had its place.
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The topic of children is largely absent from Enlightenment writing because?
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Answer: Childern were not understood to possess reason The topic of children is curiously absent from much Enlightenment writing. Largely because the age believed so strongly in the capacity of reason to guide behavior and judgement, and children were seen as lacking in reasoning power.
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Enlightenment philosophers and writers, regardless of their belief in tradition or progress, tended to value which of the following?
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Answer: Reason Despite this tension between "ancients" and "moderns," both groups believed in the primacy of reason. The Romantic movement, which followed the Enlightenment, out much greater emphasis on imagination, partly as a reaction against what they perceived to be the limits of "reason."
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Literacy in the Enlightenment was concentrated in which of the following social strata?
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Answer: Upper Class Despite growing wealth in a "middle class," and despite very modest gains in literacy generally, reading and writing were activities confined almost solely to the upper class.
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The Enlightenment was a time of great tension between the ideals of?
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Answer: Tradition and Progress The late 17th and early 18th centuries in England and France in particular were a time of great tension between tradition and progress; i.e. between those who believed in ancient (or classical) ideals and those who believed in progress and modernity, This tension can also be understood in terms of an allegiance to either permanence (tradition) or change (modernity).
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Which Enlightenment work tells of an African prince who is tricked into slavery and taken to the New World?
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Answer: Oroonoko Aphra Behn, a female author, confronted the issue of slavery in her 1688 work, Oroonoko, which tells the tale of an African Prince (Oroonoko the "Royal Slave") who is tricked into slavery and then taken to the New World (specifically, the South American colony of Surinam).
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In what work did author Dr. Samuel Johnson define reason as "the power by which man deduces one proposition from another, or proceeds from premises to consequences?
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Answer: A Dictionary of the English Language Dr. Samuel Johnson made this declaration about man's reasoning capacity, and its ultimate importance, in his famous Dictionary, which was published in 1755
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Enlightenment authors put great emphasis on "realism" in their work.
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Answer: True or False. False. Enlightenment authors were rarely concerned to have their art be a direct, unaffected mirror of reality. On the contrary, they understood that art was to take real experience and represent it into a way that conformed to literary convention. As such, Enlightenment writing can often strike modern reader as overly artificial.
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The Enlightenment ideal of decorum suggested that?
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Answer: literary subjects must be fitted to their appropriate The 18th century was a time of great emphasis on decorum- proper behavior at the proper time. The idea of decorum extended into the literary world as well. Writers understood that there proper genres and styles that were suitable for certain subjects. It would have been deemed "indecorous- for example, to write about common, domestic subjects in a grand, poetic style. In short, literary decorum means that subjects must be fitted to their appropriate genre.
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