Forgotten Characters
When the narrator in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man puts on sunglasses and a hat, he is suddenly mistaken for a man who is minister, numbers runner, and pimp. What is this man's name? Why?
Rinehart
The repetition of a word at the beginning of a phrase or sentence. As in "So long...So long" in Shakespeare's Sonnet 18?
anaphora
What is the symbolic significance of the first sentence of Jane Eyre OR What is the symbolic significance of the first book we see Jane reading?
"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day." The sentence focuses the reader on the idea of freedom/constraint.
Bewick's History of British Birds focuses the reader on Jane's status as a female prisoner.
"Though this be madness, yet there is method / in't" (2.2.203-4)
Wiliam Shakespeare's Hamlet
Polonius
What is the most common poetic meter in English?
iambic pentameter
Who is the king's jester whose skull the gravedigger pulls out of the ground and places in Hamlet's hands?
Yorick
The use of the same word but with a changed meaning as in Tommy Orange's "From the dancing came the dancing."
antistasis
What festive holiday decoration is in perfect order at the beginning of A Doll's House, but shabbily wilted by the end?
Christmas tree
"My mother is a fish."
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Verse that is organized neither by regular rhythm nor by rhyme.
Free verse
What is the name of Tony Loneman's therapist who is ALSO Edwin Black's mother?
Karen
The pairing of opposed or contrasting terms in conjunction for emphasis or "a paradox in two words" as in "sweet sorrow" from Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet.
oxymoron
What gift does Brother Tarp give the narrator as the narrator's position within the Brotherhood becomes increasingly tenuous?
A link of the chain he wore in prison
"What is was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing; and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face." (263)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
What is the word that describes the stop in middle of a line of verse and the absence of a stop at the end of a line of verse?
Enjambment
What is the name of Nora's childhood school friend and the man with whom what woman is in love?
Kristine Linde & Nils Krogstad
The substitution of one word for another with which it is closely associated. (And if it is a PART of a WHOLE?)
metonymy (SYNECDOCHE)
When Hamlet tests the ability of the players that he will hire to play his father's death in front of King Claudius, what lines does he request? Why?
The lines describing Pyrrhus's slaughter of King Priam. Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, has come to Troy to avenge his father's death by killing the king.
"I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding."
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
A Shakespearean sonnet is organized by three stanzas of four lines and one stanza of two lines while a Spenserian sonnet is organized by one stanza of eight lines followed by one stanza of six lines. Name each type of stanza in order of size.
couplet
quatrain
sestet
octave
Name either Nora Helmer's three children OR Hamlet's three friends from school.
Bob, Ivar, Emmy
Horatio, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern
Ironic understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary. "The sword wasn't useless to the warrior"--Seamus Heaney's Beowulf
litotes
How do colors identify the Oakland Powwow as a distinctly American Event?
Jackie RED Feather
The WHITE faces of the wounded and shocked including that of
BLUE
"The bullets have been coming from miles. Years. Their sound will break the water in our bodies, tear sound itself, rip our lives in half. The tragedy of it all will be unspeakable, the fact that we've been fighting for decades to be recognized as present-tense people, modern and relevant, alive, ony to die in the grass wearing feathers." (141)
Tommy Orange, There There
My best childhood friend's name was Jennifer Kennedy. If a poem were written in the meter of her name, what would the meter of that poem be called?
Dactylic dimeter