Historical Context
Traits of Literature
Famous Authors
Poetry
Fiction
100
This is the time period before Romanticism.
What the Revolutionary Period OR Enlightenment OR Age of Reason
100
Romantics think that man should be here to learn more about himself and life.
What is Nature?
100
This author's incredibly tragic life influenced his most famous works, such as "The Raven."
Who is Edgar Allan Poe?
100
This poem is about a narrator who grieves his dead wife. A dark bird embodies his grief.
What is "The Raven"?
100
These are Washington Irving's characters who are the opposite of what you'd expect a hero to be.
What are antiheroes?
200
This was a social issue many Romantics were against.
What is slavery?
200
Romantics value this more highly than logic.
What are emotions?
200
This author uses heavy-handed symbolism and is obsessed with/confused by the Puritans.
Who is Nathaniel Hawthorne?
200
This poem is another poem about grieving a wife's death. In this poem, the snow in a mountain ravine symbolizes the grief in the narrator's heart.
What is "The Cross of Snow"?
200
In this story, we see Irving use an archetype of someone selling his soul in exchange for ill-bought treasure or fame. Like all the archetypes before it, it does not go well for him.
What is "The Devil and Tom Walker"?
300
This war signaled the end of the Romantic period.
What is the Civil War?
300
This is the group of Romantic poets that were read by families at night. Their poems were "family friendly" and well-loved.
Who are the Fireside Poets?
300
In this poem, the author Oliver Wendell Holmes meditates on a type of shell and decides that the human soul should, like the animal in the shell, always be growing until it is "freed" by death.
What is "The Chambered Nautilus"?
300
This entire story is an allegory meant to communicate that all will die, and it is folly to pretend otherwise or try to escape it.
What is "The Masque of the Red Death?"
400
Many Romantics did not like this change that had taken place in many cities. It has to do with the economy and business.
What is industrialization?
400
This is when one is overwhelmed by something that is the "highest" form of beauty-both wonderful and terrible at the same time.
What is the Sublime?
400
This is the most successful of the Romantic poets. Some of his works include "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls" and "Cross of Snow."
Who is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?
400
This poem communicates that man is a "traveller" and that nature "erases" his footsteps in the sand.
What is "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls"?
400
This is another allegory in which a man tries everything he can to save himself from a fiery, dark pit, but must be saved by a general with an outstretched arm, most likely symbolizing man's inability to save himself and his need for God's intervention.
What is "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
500
Romanticism attempted to give what to the American people?
What is a sense of unique literary or cultural heritage?
500
This is the name for that "special gut sense" one has about things. It sometimes defies logic.
What is Intuition?
500
This famous transcendentalist lived out in the woods by himself and composed his memoirs in a book called On Walden Pond.
Who is Henry David Thoreau?
500
The title of this poem literally means "A meditation on death." And it pretty much does just that.
What is "Thanatopsis"?
500
This is a literary trait Hawthorne uses in his fiction. It is a recurring idea, image, or trait that reinforces a particular theme. For example, the color red, or a mark of imperfection.
What is a motif?
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