Terms
The person created by the author to tell the story, affecting the way a story is told.
persona
Which poem that we read is organized by present, past, and future?
Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; / I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. / I love thee with the passion put to use / In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith."
Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Most famous for his use of dramatic monologue.
Robert Browning
We cannot know whether there is ultimate reality or prove/disprove that there is a God.
agnosticism
A recurring or emerging idea in a work of literature.
theme
In which literary work does a character change his name to something very ironic?
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
"The land's sharp features seemed to be / The Century's corpse outleant, / His crypt the cloudy canopy, / The wind his death-lament."
"The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy
Wrote one elegy mourning his good friend and one elegy looking toward his own death.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
This work spawned a whole genre of novels about social reform in England.
"The Condition of England" by Thomas Carlyle
Besting another's remark or turning it to one's own advantage in a contest of wits.
repartee
Which poem that we read has the clearest plot arc?
"Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning
"For though from out our bourn of time and place / The flood may bear me far, / I hope to see my Pilot face to face / When I have crossed the bar."
"Crossing the Bar" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Satirized the values and social conventions of upper-class Victorian society.
Oscar Wilde
Closely related to the decadence movement: Art needs no moral value or purpose beyond its own beauty.
aestheticism
a play that satirizes the social customs of a sophisticated society
comedy of manners
Which poem that we read directly mourns the loss of faith and ends with the resolve that people must cling to each other?
"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold
"And thus we sit together now. / And all night long we have not stirred, / And yet God has not said a word!
"Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning
Invented sprung rhythm, a form built on strong stresses.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
"Survival of the fittest". There is no God and human society thrives by eradicating the weak.
social Darwinism
a poem of solemn meditation, most often lamenting the loss of a particular person or meditating on the subject of death itself
elegy
Which poem is a curtal sonnet (curtailed sonnet)?
"Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Glory be to God for dappled things-- / For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow; / For rose moles all in stiple upon trout that swim / Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings;”
"Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Ended one of his works by comparing England to the doomed King Midas.
Thomas Carlyle
God, nature and society are indifferent to individuals; men are mere animals at the mercy of forces beyond their control.
naturalism