Earlier American Literary Periods
This movement, nicknamed the "original hippies," believed that true reality involves ideas and intuition found "beneath the surface."
What is Transcendentalism?
This movement’s unofficial motto was: "It ain't pretty, but it’s honest."
What is Realism?
Rhetorical exaggeration or overstatement, such as Daisy saying she is "paralyzed with happiness"
What is hyperbole?
Identify the device: "I bought a dozen volumes... they stood on my shelf... like new money from the mint."
What is a simile?
This author is the primary example of the movement that focused on supernatural evil and the psychological effects of guilt.
Who is Edgar Allan Poe?
Dark Romanticism was a cynical reaction to the optimism of this specific literary group.
Who are the Transcendentalists?
Realism focused on real-life situations and placed a strong interest in these two social classes.
What are the middle and lower classes?
A compact paradox consisting of two contradictory words in close proximity, such as "ferocious delicacy"
What is an oxymoron?
Identify the device: "The lawn... ran toward the front door... jumping over sun-dials."
What is personification?
This Harlem Renaissance poet refused to make Black life look "happier or less painful than it actually was." He is arguably the most famous poet associated with this movement.
Who is Langston Hughes?
In Dark Romantic writing, this element is often as much a character as the actual humans in the story.
What is the setting?
This massive demographic shift involved over 1.5 million Black Americans moving to Northern cities like New York and Chicago.
What was the Great Migration?
Referring to a person or thing by using the word for something located in close proximity to it (e.g., using "New Haven" to mean Yale)
What is metonymy?
Identify the device: Tom Buchanan gives Nick a tour of his massive estate and says, "I’ve got a nice place here."
What is understatement?
This Harlem Renaissance author is famous for her work preserving the folklore of Black southern life in Their Eyes Were Watching God
Who is Zora Neale Hurston?
This movement explored the psychological effects of guilt, sin, and madness within the human mind.
What is Dark Romanticism?
Realists believed that:
A) Humans are at the mercy of fate.
B) Humans are responsible for taking action to improve their own lives.
C) Nature is a divine "Oversoul."
What is B?
B) Humans are responsible for taking action to improve their own lives.
Referring to a whole object or idea by using a word for a part of it, such as using "wheels" for a car.
What is synecdoche?
Identify the device: "[W]e’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way."
What is a paradox?
This famous American writer led a group of thinkers in Massachusetts known as "The Transcendental Club."
Who is Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Name two types of writing forms common to the Dark Romantics.
What are Poetry, Short Stories, and Gothic Fiction?
Realists believed that this element of a story was more important than plot development.
What is character development?
Identify the literary device Tennessee Williams uses in the phrase "Swilling and gnawing and hulking!" to emphasize the repetitive and heavy nature of Stanley’s actions through the use of multiple coordinating conjunctions in close succession.
What is polysyndeton?
The following quotations are examples of this literary device.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
“O brawling love! O loving hate!”
“A damned saint, an honorable villain!”
What is an oxymoron?
This Transcendentalist's essay on civil disobedience inspired Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent protests.
Who is Henry David Thoreau?