JV - Language Arts Flashcards
(American Literature): Name the American poet and educator known for his poems The Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” and was the first author to translate Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.
(Henry Wadsworth) Longfellow
(World Literature): Who is known as the father of English literature, is considered the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, created the rhyme royal, a rhyming stanza form, and wrote The Book of Duchess, The House of Fame, and The Canterbury Tales?
(Geoffrey) Chaucer
(Grammar/Spelling): The term “organized chaos” is an example of what figure of speech?
Oxymoron
(American Literature): Name the American novelist, short story writer, and journalist who wrote for The Kansas City Star, later was an ambulance driver in World War I, and is known for A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, and For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway
(World Literature): Name the Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during Queen Victoria’s reign, whose verse was based on classical mythological themes, such as “Ulysses,” and also wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” and Idylls of the King.
Lord Alfred Tennyson
(Grammar/Spelling): What word is the intensive pronoun in the following sentence: I, myself, made that sandwich!
Myself
(American Literature): Name the American poet who is a central figure of Romanticism, known for his mystery tales, and wrote works such as “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Raven.”
Edgar Allen Poe
(World Literature): Name the French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic Movement whose most famous works are The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Miserables.
Victor Hugo
(Grammar/Spelling): What is the direct object in this sentence: I hit the table with a bat.
Table
(American Literature): Name the American poet and social activist who is credited with starting the Harlem Renaissance, was raised in Lawrence, Kansas, and wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”
Langston Hughes
(World Literature): Name the Italian poet of the Late Middle Ages who, in his most famous work published in 1320, wrote about Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise in The Divine Comedy.
Dante Alighieri
(Grammar/Spelling): Name 4 of the 7 coordinating conjunctions.
For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So
(American Literature): Name the American novelist and playwright who won three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his book “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” and two for his plays The Skin of Our Teeth and Our Town.
Thornton Wilder
(World Literature): Name the German authors who together specialized in collecting and publishing folklore during the 19th century. Many of their stories are now used by Disney, such works include “Sleeping Beauty,” “Rapunzel,” “Snow White,” and “Cinderella.”
Brothers Grimm
(Grammar/Spelling): Identify the part of speech that expresses feeling or emotion and functions independently of a sentence.
Interjection
(American Literature): Name the American novelist who wrote mostly in the setting of Southern and Central California, and is commonly known for his epic East of Eden, his novella Of Mice and Men, and his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Grapes of Wrath.”
John Steinbeck
(World Literature): Name the ancient Greek tragedian whose plays are some of few to survive from his time. He wrote 120 plays, but only seven have survived in their entirety, including Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus.
Sophocles
(Grammar/Spelling): Name the literary term referring to how a person, situation, statement, or circumstance is not as it would actually seem.
Irony
(American Literature): Name the American poet who was elected by John F. Kennedy to write and present a speech at his inauguration, is one of the most popular writers of the 20th century, and is known for “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Fire and Ice,” and “The Road Not Taken.”
Robert Frost
(World Literature): Name the English writer and Baptist preacher who spent 12 years in prison for not conforming to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and is best known for his spiritual autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and his allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress.
John Bunyan
(Grammar/Spelling): Identify the gerund in the following sentence: Dunking a basketball is not as easy as it looks.
Dunking
(American Literature): Name the American novelist and journalist who was part of the Naturalism movement, wrote with a common setting of California and Alaska, and is known for his works Sea Wolf, White Fang, and The Call of the Wild.
Jack London
(World Literature): Name the 20th century English playwright, essayist, and poet, who moved to England from the United States in 1914. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his most famous poems include Ash Wednesday, “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and The Wasteland.
T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
(Grammar/Spelling): Identify the prepositional phrase in the following sentence: “The sweet potatoes in the vegetable bin are green with mold.”
In the vegetable bin
(American Literature): Which American poet, a Puritan housewife, is known as “The Tenth Muse,” her most famous poem being “To My Dear and Loving Husband”?
Anne Bradstreet
(World Literature): Name the India-born writer who moved to London, who coined the phrase “white man’s burden” and is known for books such as “The Jungle Book.”
(Rudyard) Kipling
(Grammar/Spelling): Identify the coordinating conjunction in the following sentence: Ronald the Ostrich hated Larry the Lemur, but he bided his time before hatching his evil plot.
“but”
(American Literature): Name the Nobel Prize winning American novelist who wrote about the problems of African American women in works such as Beloved and Song of Solomon.
Toni Morrison
(World Literature): Who wrote the Holocaust account called Night?
Wiesel
(Grammar/Spelling): What type of statement is the following sentence? “Nobody goes to that restaurant because it is too crowded.”
Paradox
(American Literature): Name the Nobel Prize winning American writer who wrote novels, short stories, plays, poetry, essays, is one of the most celebrated authors in Southern literature, and wrote the novels The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner
(World Literature): Who is the narrator in the Markus Zusak novel, The Book Thief?
Death (The Grim Reaper)
(Grammar/Spelling): Identify the grammatical error that occurs when a comma separates two independent clauses without a coordinating conjunction.
Comma Splice
(American Literature): Name the 20th Century American playwright who potrayed violent passions in ordinary people—as found in his plays A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Tennessee Williams
(World Literature): Name the young Holocaust victim who died in 1944 and whose diary has been translated into more than 60 languages.
Anne Frank
(Grammar/Spelling): What is the antecedent for the word “he” in the following sentence: The badger was not very happy when he was viciously attacked by Ronald the Ostrich.
Badger
(American Literature): Name the American short story writer, who’s pseudonym was O. Henry, and is most known for his play “The Gift of the Magi.”
William Sydney Porter
(World Literature): In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, what type of barnyard animal was Napoleon?
Pig
(Grammar/Spelling): “In,” “around,” and “with” are examples of what part of speech that grammarians advise not using at the end of sentences?
Preposition
(American Literature): Name the transcendentalist American writer who wrote “Beat! Beat! Drums!” while caught up in pro-war excitement, and is also known for his poetry collection Leaves of Grass.
Walt Whitman
(World Literature): What Russian playwright wrote such notable works as Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard?
(Anton) Chekov
(Grammar/Spelling): Which word is the indirect object in the following sentence: Julie gave the dog a bone.
Dog
(American Literature): Name the American poet who lived her life as a recluse, often wore white, and wrote “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” and “Because I could not stop for Death”?
Emily Dickinson
(World Literature): Name the 20th Century Czechoslovakian author of Metamorphosis, in which a man wakes up to find out he has been turned into a large insect.
(Franz) Kafka
Grammar/Spelling): Locate and correct the grammatical error in the following sentence: If I was braver, I’d eat that koala.
Change “was” to “were”
(American Literature): What Chinese American author wrote The Joy Luck Club?
Amy Tan
(World Literature): Name the English novelist, short story writer, and essayist who was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, and the author of Frankenstein
Shelley, Mary
(Grammar/Spelling): What is the formal name for word order in a language?
Syntax
(American Literature): Which Kurt Vonnegut Junior novel has a main character who is a prisoner of war during the firebombing of Dresden, Germany by Allied planes in World War II?
Slaughterhouse Five
(Grammar/Spelling): What term differs from the denotation of a word because it implies personalized meaning to the word?
Connotation
(American Literature): Name the Nobel Prize winning American novelist who wrote about the problems of African-American women in such works as BELOVED and SONG OF SOLOMON.
Toni Morrison
(World Literature): What is the term used for a person who has wide interests and is expert in several areas, such as Leonardo da Vinci or Henry VIII?
Renaissance Man
(Grammar/Spelling): What writing device is exemplified in the following sentence: Teenagers enjoy sleeping, eating and dancing.
Parallelism
(American Literature): What sort of noun, which is singular in American usage and plural in English usage, represents groups composted of things, such as company, team, navy, and school?
Collective
(World Literature): In mythology, who was considered the noblest of the Trojan army and was slain by Achilles?
Hector
(Grammar/Spelling): Name the three types of dependent clauses.
Noun, adjective, and adverb
(American Literature): Who wrote “Self-Reliance” and is considered one of the fathers of Transcendentalism?
(Ralph Waldo) Emerson
(World Literature): Besides tragedies and histories, what 3rd type of play did Shakespeare write?
Comedies
(Grammar/Spelling): Name the three cases of personal pronouns.
Nominative, objective, possesive
(American Literature): What author wrote detective stories including “The Gold Bug,” but is most famous for his horror short stories, such as “The Raven”?
(Edgar Allen) Poe
(Grammar/Spelling): What is the term for two or more words that have the same sound but different meanings?
Homonyms
(American Literature): Name the reclusive American poetress who works include “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass’” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.”
(Emily) Dickinson
(World Literature): Name the down-to-earth peasant who accompanies an idealistic, deluded Don Quixote on his misadventures.
Sancho Panza
(Grammar/Spelling): What term refers to the listing of the forms of a verb by mood, number, person, tense, and voice?
Conjugation
(American Literature): Give the author and title of the novel based on the murder of four members of a Southwestern Kansas family.
In Cold Blood by (Truman) Capote
(World Literature): What Greek Island served as Odysseus’ home before his journey to Troy?
Ithaca
(Grammar/Spelling): Name the three types of irony.
Verbal, dramatic, and situational
(American Literature): What futuristic, cautionary novel was set in the mythical country of Oceania and was written by George Orwell?
1984
(World Literature): Who wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel showing a man’s moral deterioration through changes in his portrait’s appearance?
(Oscar) Wilde
(Grammar/Spelling): What is the word for the history of origins?
Etymology
(Grammar/Spelling): What punctuation mark must be used whenever a coordinating conjunction has been omitted between independent clauses?
Semicolon
(World Literature): Name the character who steals a loaf of bread and is imprisoned for 19 years in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.
Jean Valjean
(Grammar/Spelling): Name the figure of speech used in the following sentence; Casey’s new pickup weighs a million tons.
Hyperbole
(American Literature): Identify the term that is both the title of a l960s war novel by Joseph Heller and a figurative term for an absurd arrangement that puts a person in a double bind.
Catch 22
(Sort of Grammar/Spelling but not really): What is the term used for a poem written to mourn a death or other great loss?
Elegy
(Grammar/Spelling): What is a word or word group that receives the action of the verb
The direct object
(American Literature): Name the novel by William Golding about a group of boys stranded on an island after a plane crash.
The Lord of the Flies
(World Literature): What English novel begins, “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own…”?
War of the Worlds
(Grammar/Spelling): What term is defined as a poetic foot with one stressed then two unstressed syllables”?
Dactyl
(American Literature): Name the title of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel in which Daisy Buchanan kills Myrtle Wilson in a hit-and-run accident.
The Great Gatsby
(World Literature): In Greek mythology, which first rulers of the world were a race of giants?
Titans
(Grammar/Spelling): What is the term for a metaphor made of compound nouns, commonly found in Anglo-Saxon poetry?
Kenning (not “epithet”)
(American Literature): What is the term for an agreeable word or expression that is substituted for another that is potentially offensive, such as “the little ladies’ room” for “the toilet.”
Euphemism
(World Literature): What statesman wrote the 16th Century book entitled Sir Thomas More about an imaginary land with an ideal government
Utopia
(Grammar/Spelling): Give the term for an extended metaphor in which the characters and events represent truths about human life
Allegory
Name the subject in the following sentence: From the far-off hills came the lonely cry of the whippoorwill.
Cry
Name the literary selection that ends with the final appeal, “Therefore let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come”?
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
Name the European city that served as the setting for THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
Amsterdam
What literary term derived from the Greek for “before the word”, describes an opening to a story that establishes the setting and provides background details before the story begins?
Prologue
What essay by Henry David Thoreau ends with this famous line: “If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man”?
Civil Disobedience
Ian Fleming wrote a children’s story about a flying car in CHITTY-CHITTY BANG BANG. However, he is much better known for what character who also drives nifty cars?
James Bond
What two-word term describes a pair of rhyming lines written in iambic pentameter?
Heroic Couplet
The American writer Maya Angelou wrote and recited what poem at whose presidential inauguration?
On the Pulse of Morning, (Bill) Clinton
In what novel do the characters Fantine, Cosette, and Javert (Jah-vare) appear?
Les Miserables
The Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Beowulf are all classified as what type of poem?
Epic
Give the author and title of the book where you would find this first paragraph. “There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month; the day my mother cuts my hair.”
Veronica Roth, “Divergent”
Name both of the characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies who received kisses from their killers just before they were killed
(Julius) Caesar and Desdemona
What poetic meter can be simply described as “unrhymed iambic pentameter”?
Blank Verse
Name the poem John Greenleaf Whittier that includes the following stanza: “I stood and watched by the window/The noiseless work of sky,/And the sudden flurries of snowbirds,/like brown leaves whirling by.”
Snowbound
Name the Greek playwright whose most famous tragedies (generally known as the Thebian plays) are “Oedipus” and “Antigone”
Sophocles
Name the author of the book “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”
Jules Verne
What was the name of Captain Nemo’s ship in the book “20,000 League Under the Sea”?
(The) Nautilus
