Literary Genres
This genre of writing can be Horatian or Juvenalian. It involves some form of social critique through irony or exaggeration.
What is satire?
This 1666 disaster destroyed many key parts of London, including St. Paul's Cathedral.
What is the Great Fire (of London)?
This blind poet sought to write England's epic poem and did so by dictating it to his daughters.
Who is John Milton?
This term refers to the trade of slaves from Africa to the Americas, sugar from the Americas to New England, and rum and other goods from New England to Africa.
What is the Triangle Trade? (variations will do)
A pair of rhymed lines of iambic pentameter; hallmark of epic poetry.
What is a heroic couplet?
A form of satire that applies the traditionally serious style of epic poetry to trivial events/themes.
From 1642 to 1651, this conflict was fought between Parliamentarians (Cromwell's army) and Royalists over control of the throne.
What is the English Civil War?
Perhaps more famous for Gulliver's Travels, this Irish satirist suggested the English aristocracy should sell and eat babies.
Who is Jonathan Swift?
This literary device applies a word to two other words in different senses. Pope uses it when he writes "Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade" and "Or lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a Ball."
What is zeugma?
This term refers to the defense of the goodness of God in response to the problem of evil. Milton attempts to make this through Paradise Lost.
What is theodicy?
Similar to the pastoral, this genre of poem compliments a patron and their estate. Lanyer's "The Description of Cooke-ham" is arguably the first in this genre.
What is the country house poem?
This religious group opposed the theater and eventually succeeded as Parliament ordered London theaters to close in 1642. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare satirizes this group through the character Malvolio.
Who are the Puritans?
Though some people claim this playwright did not write his own plays, this theory usually stems from classism, as he came from a middle-class background.
Who is William Shakespeare?
This term refers to a sheet of paper folded once to form two leaves (four pages) of a book. It is contrasted with the quarto, which is a sheet of paper folded into four leaves (eight pages).
What is a folio?
What is cosmopolitanism?
This genre that arose largely in the 19th century often mirrors the structure of the religious conversion narrative. Rather than following the structure of sin, conversion, and spiritual rebirth, it typically takes us through slavery, escape, and freedom.
What is the slave narrative?
This period in English history, beginning in 1660, is marked by the resurgence of the Stuart dynasty and Charles II's return to the throne.
What is the Restoration?
A key figure of the Augustan Age, this satirist and essayist made frequent use of the heroic couplet.
Who is Alexander Pope?
This term refers to the doctrine that everything is "one" and spiritually interconnected. Milton's God applies this ideology to male and female, for example.
What is monism?
This term, coined by French theorist Michel Foucault, refers to the involvement of the state in the affairs of its people for power/profit. It marked a shift from earlier governance, which focused on the land and borders but not so much people's personal lives.
What is biopolitics?
Oroonoko, though fictional, is sometimes considered an example of this genre in which the writer shares their experiences from a journey or expedition.
What is travel writing / travel narrative?
These historical laws, in part, regulated how people of certain classes were allowed to dress in public. Shakespeare invokes these laws in Twelfth Night when Malvolio is tricked into wearing yellow stockings.
What are sumptuary laws?
This Restoration writer, a staunch Royalist, was probably the first Englishwoman to make a living from writing alone.
Who is Aphra Behn?
This term refers to the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects or nature. It is present in Aemelia Lanyer's "The Description of Cooke-ham" when nature responds to the situation as people would.
What is the pathetic fallacy?
This Latin phrase, meaning "transfer of rule," is a Medieval/Renaissance theory of history in which empires moved from one place to another (Greece to Rome to France to England).
What is translatio imperii?