Colonial and Puritan Authors
Puritan Beliefs and Themes
Rhetorical Appeals (Ethos, Pathos, and Logos)
Native American and Foundational Concepts
Literary and Rhetorical Devices
100

This author wrote poetry in the Plain Style that addressed her personal faith and domestic life, including a poem about her house burning down.

Who is Anne Bradstreet?

100

The primary goal of most Puritan literature (like sermons and histories) was to record God's work and offer this type of instruction to the public.

What is Spiritual Instruction or Moral Guidance?

100

The rhetorical appeal that targets the audience's emotions, often by creating feelings of fear, pity, or urgency.

What is Pathos?

100

The primary method used to pass down Native American creation myths, history, and laws across generations.

What is Oral Tradition?

100

A direct comparison between two unlike things using "like" or "as."

What is Simile?

200

This author delivered the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God during the Great Awakening.

Who is Jonathan Edwards?

200

The Puritan belief in God's total, unstoppable control over all events and people.

What is Divine Sovereignty?

200

The appeal that relies on the speaker's personal character, expertise, or moral authority to build trust.

What is Ethos?

200

According to the Iroquois creation story "The World on the Turtle's Back," the earth we live on was originally formed on the back of this slow, massive creature.

What is the Great Turtle?

200

A comparison between two unlike things not using "like" or "as," such as comparing God's wrath to a dammed river.

What is Metaphor?

300

This orator used scorching irony and rhetorical questions to condemn America's hypocrisy in his speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"

Who is Frederick Douglass?

300

The term for the intense, emotional religious movement that led to Edwards's sermon and called for immediate conversion.

What is the Great Awakening?

300

The appeal that uses facts, statistics, historical evidence, or logical sequencing to persuade the audience.

What is Logos?

300

This core American principle, established in the Declaration, means that the government's power comes directly from the people it governs.

What is Popular Sovereignty?

300

A literary device where the outcome is the opposite of what is expected, such as a fire station burning down.

What is Irony (Situational Irony)?

400

This writer used the rhetoric of the American Revolution to argue for the rights of women in a letter to her husband in 1776.

Who is Abigail Adams?

400

Bradstreet expresses this core religious idea when she accepts the loss of her material goods as a necessary step toward heavenly reward.

What is the Paradox of spiritual gain through material loss?

400

Edwards uses this appeal when he describes sinners dangling over the pit of hell like a "loathsome insect" to induce panic and disgust.

What is Pathos?

400

This is the specific device Abigail Adams uses when she says men are "naturally Tyrannical," directly referencing King George III.

What is Allusion?

400

A figure of speech in the form of a question asked in order to make a point rather than to elicit an answer, such as "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?"

What is a Rhetorical Question?

500

This writer is most famous for building a powerful Logos argument by listing a long, detailed list of grievances against the British King.

Who is Thomas Jefferson?

500

The belief that God has already decided who is saved and who is damned, which led Puritans to constantly look for signs of grace in their lives.

What is Predestination?

500

When Thomas Jefferson claims that all men have "unalienable Rights," he appeals to this, arguing the rights are inherent and granted by a higher moral authority.

What is Ethos?

500

Both Native American spiritual beliefs and Enlightenment philosophy (used by Jefferson) share a common emphasis on living in harmony with this universal concept.

What is Nature or Natural Law?

500

Extreme exaggeration used for emphasis or effect, often seen in Edwards's vivid descriptions of eternal suffering.

What is Hyperbole?

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