This writer, born Samuel Clemens, used dialect to show the social and economic realities of his characters.
Who is Mark Twain?
100
This international event is often used to mark the beginning of literary modernism.
What is the Great War (or WWI)?
100
The "sivilized" woman who has taken Huck Finn in at the beginning of his eponymous novel.
Who is the Widow Douglas?
100
The term for everyday plain speech.
What is vernacular?
100
The writer who won the Nobel Prize in 1950.
Who is William Faulkner?
200
This genre, realism's literary predecessor, emphasized the extraordinary individual rather than the average citizen.
What is romanticism?
200
A recurring theme in modernism: the feeling of not understanding each other or one's self.
What is alienation?
200
The three characters named Mary in My Antonia hail from this place.
What is Bohemia?
200
This literary technique, which was explored in many modernist texts, attempts to represent an individual's thought patterns in words, messy as they may be.
What is stream of consciousness?
200
This influential intellectual described Claude McKay's book as leaving him feeling like he needed a bath.
Who is W.E.B. DuBois?
300
This event is often used to mark the beginning of American literary realism.
What is the Civil War?
300
Faulkner's very long sentences are not an example of thematic experimentation, but an example of this type of experimentation.
What is form?
(or formal experimentation)
300
J. Alfred Prufrock is concerned about whether he should eat this fruit.
What is a peach?
300
A coming of age story; translated literally from German, it means education novel.
What is a bildungsroman?
300
"Fern" is a short part of this longer Jean Toomer work.
What is Cane?
400
Realists often emphasized characters and setting, even at the expensive of this aspect of literature.
What is plot?
400
In addition to modernism and realism, Willa Cather is sometimes considered to write in this genre.
What is sentimentalism?
400
Many of Kate Chopin's characters hail from this ethnic background, and are lower on the social ladder than the privileged Creoles.
What are Acadians (or Cajuns)?
400
This genre counted Darwinism as one of its strong influences.
What is naturalism?
400
An essay that examines a particular text closely in order to argue for a particular interpretation.
What is literary analysis?
500
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a an example of this variant of realism, which tries to de-romanticize the psyche and represent it authentically.
What is psychological realism?
500
The term for the overarching, meaningful structures that seemed to crumble or be otherwise insufficient during modernity.
What are grand narratives?
500
Desiree's mixed race husband in "Desiree's Baby."
Who is Armand?
500
The term for referring to something by a closely related concept, often a smaller part of the thing itself. For example:
"The suits on Wall Street walked off with most of our savings."
What is metonymy?
500
The novel you are all going to read (or re-read) over spring break.