F Cards Flashcards
The Sound and the Fury
Faulkner
Faulkner’s fourth novel, his favorite, primarily, he says, because it is his “most splendid failure.” Depicting the decline of the once-aristocratic Compson family, the novel is divided into four parts, each told by a different narrator.
Benjy Compson: Idiot, youngest child. He narrates the first section, and he is the key to the novel’s title, which alludes to Macbeth: “It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” He was castrated after allegedly sexually assaulting a young girl.
Quentin: Quentin’s section has flashbacks to fewer moments in the past and is less disjointed than Benjy’s section, but because he is more intellectual and abstract, his section is much more fragmented. Nearly all of Quentin’s flashbacks, except minor memories (such as breaking his leg) and those depicting conversation with his father, concern Caddy’s sexuality and/or Quentin’s reaction to it. Commits suicide.
Compson, Candace (Caddy): Caddy is the veritable centerpiece of The Sound and the Fury and she played a different role in the eyes of her three brothers: a caring, maternal figure to Benjy, a virgin/whore who upset his sense of the propriety of Southern womanhood to Quentin, and an object of envy and detestation, who ruined his one chance at success, to Jason.’ Does not have her own section.
Compson, Jason: A confirmed sadist, Jason Compson reveled in his cruelty to others, including his mother, their black servant Dilsey. A childless bachelor, Jason thus represented the end of the Compson dynasty, since his older brother, Quentin, committed suicide in 1910 and his younger brother, Benjy, was castrated. In 1933, following the death of his mother, he committed Benjy to the state asylum and sold the Old Compson Place to a man wishing to open a boarding-house.
A Rose For Emily
Faulkner
The story of Emily Grierson, an aging spinster in Jefferson, whose death and funeral drew the attention of the entire town, “the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant - a combined gardener and cook - had seen in at least ten years.” The unnamed narrator, which some critics have identified as “the town” or at least a representative voice from it, in a seemingly haphazard manner relates key moments in Emily’s life, including the death of her father and a brief fling with a Yankee road paver, Homer Barron. Beyond the literal level of Emily’s narrative, the story is sometimes regarded as symbolic of the changes in the South during the representative period.
As I Lay Dying
Faulkner’s first novel published after The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, like the novel before it, is told in stream-of-conscious fashion by fifteen different speakers in some 59 chapters. In its depiction of the Bundren family’s quest to Jefferson to bury their dead matriarch, Addie, among her “people,” against the threats of flood and fire, the novel explores the nature of grieving, community, and family.
Cash Bundren: carpenter, broke his leg trying to get casket across the river, Anse (his dad) almost kills him by making a cast out of cement.
Darl Bundren: most prolific voice in AILD. Is clairvoyant. Committed at the end for burning down a barn. Goes crazy and talks about himself in 3rd person.
Dewey Dell Bundren: only daughter. Pregnant by Lafe and trying to get an abortion. Pissed at Darl because he figured out she was pregnant ‘ is the main one that tries to commit him.
Jewel Bundren: (think Scarlet Letter), illegitimate child from Addie and Rev. Whitfield. She likes him best. He only has one monologue. Only Darl knows he’s illegitimate.
Quote: “If it had just been me when Cash fell off of that church and if it had just been me when pa aid sick with that load of wood fell on him, it would not be happening with every bastard in the county coming in to stare at her because if there is a God what the hell is He for. It would just be me and her on a high hill and me rolling the rocks down the hill at their faces, picking them up and throwing them down the hill faces and teeth and all by God until she was quiet….”
Vardamann Bundren: youngest child. Catches a fish the day his mom dies and starts calling him mom the fish. (My mother is a fish) Thinks that Dr. Peabody killed his mom.
Madame Bovary
Gustav Flaubert
Charles Bovary is a country physician who, after an unhappy first marriage, marries the daughter of a patient. Emma is eager to leave her father’s dirty farm but finds marriage to be less romantic and satisfying than she expected. Charles is not a prince, but a bumbling, aging man. Even when at work he performs more like a veterinarian than a skilled surgeon. Indeed, when he and the local chemist attempt a new procedure on a clubfoot, the patient gets gangrene and loses his leg.
Disgusted, Emma develops a relationship with Leon Dupuis, a young lawyer. She refuses to sleep with him but regrets it after he leaves town. She then meets Rodolphe Boulanger, a wealthy landowner who seduces Emma to pass the time. They have a brief if passionate affair.
When Boulanger abandons her, Emma returns to Leon, this time giving in to their mutual passion. Her affair has an air of desperation. She soon exhausts her limited funds on trips to visit her lover and love gifts. Knowing that her husband will discover her affair when their financial situation is revealed, Emma overdoses on arsenic and dies miserably.
Howard’s End
EM Forester
Margaret Schlegel - Helen and Tibby Schlegel’s older sister.’ Main character.’ Middle Class.’ Marries Henry Wilcox.
Helen Schlegel- Margaret’s beautiful sister. Pregnant by Leonard Bast.
Tibby Schlegel- younger brother to Margaret and Helen
Mrs. Munt- Margaret, Helen, and Tibby’s aunt
Henry Wilcox- the patriarch of the Wilcox family and British businessman
Ruth Wilcox- Henry’s first wife and owner of Howards End. Dies.’ Wants Mar. to have HE.’ Her family ignores her.
Charles, Paul, Evie- Henry’s children.’ Charles causes Leonard’s death.
Leonard and Jacky Bast- poor young clerk and his wife
Anne Finch
“Adam Pos’d”
Cou’d our First Father, at his toilsome Plough,
Thorns in his Path, and Labour on his Brow,
Cloath’d only in a rude, unpolish’d Skin,
Cou’d he a vain Fantastick Nymph have seen,
In all her Airs, in all her antick Graces,
Her various Fashions, and more various Faces;
How had it pos’d that Skill, which late assign’d
Just Appellations to Each several Kind!
A right Idea of the Sight to frame;
T’have guest from what New Element she came;
T’have hit the wav’ring Form, or giv’n this Thing a Name.
E. M. Forster
Forster has a lot of books that could appear on the test. Pay close attention to the names associated with each and you should do fine. Also take note of the idea of “flat” and “round characters” that Forster propounds in Aspects of the Novel.
Forster’s views as a secular humanist are at the heart of his work, which often features characters attempting to understand each other (‘only connect…’, in the words of Forster’s famous epigraph to Howards End) across social barriers. His humanist views are expressed in the non-fictional essay “What I believe.” Sexuality is another key theme in Forster’s works and it has been argued that Forster’s writing can be characterized as progressing from heterosexual love to homosexual love. All of his major work was published by 1924.
A Room with a View
Names: ~Charlotte Bartlett ~Lucy Honeychurch ~Mr. Emerson ~George Emerson ~Mr. Beebe ~Eleanor Lavish ~Cecil Vyse
A Room with a View tells the story of a young Englishwoman whose encounter with a handsome young man in Florence may interfere with her marriage plans.
Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)
Names to know:
~Caroline Abbott
~Lilia Herriton
On a journey to Tuscany with her young friend and travelling companion Caroline Abbott, widowed Lilia Herriton falls in love with both Italy and a handsome Italian much younger than herself, and decides to stay. Furious, her dead husband’s family send Lilia’s brother-in-law and his sister to Italy to prevent a misalliance, but they arrive too late. Lilia marries the Italian and in due course becomes pregnant again. When she dies giving birth to her child, the Herritons consider it both their right and their duty to travel to Monteriano to obtain custody of the infant so that he can be raised as an Englishman.
John Fowles
John Fowles was an English novelist of international stature, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work reflects the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others.
After leaving Oxford University, Fowles taught English at a school on the Greek island of Spetses, a sojourn that inspired The Magus, an instant best-seller that was directly in tune with 1960s “hippie” anarchism and experimental philosophy. This was followed by The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), a Victorian-era romance with a postmodern twist that was set in Lyme Regis, Dorset, where Fowles lived for much of his life. Later fictional works include The Ebony Tower, Daniel Martin, Mantissa, and A Maggot.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.[1] His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.
Major Poems,
“Mowing”, “Spring Pools”, “Meeting and passing”, “Design”, “Mending Wall’
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940)
Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. In his own age, Fitzgerald was the self-styled spokesman of the “Lost Generation”, or the Americans born in the 1890s who came of age during World War I. He crafted five novels and dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth, despair, and age. Many admire what they consider his remarkable emotional honesty. His heroes — handsome, confident, and doomed — blaze brilliantly before exploding, and his heroines are typically beautiful, intricate, and alluring.
The Sentimental Education
The Sentimental Education describes the life of a young man (Frederic Moreau) living through the revolution of 1848 and the founding of the Second French Empire, and his love for an older woman. Flaubert based many of the protagonist’s experiences (including the romantic passion) on his own life.
