Literary Elements and Forms (including drama)

Question 1

Plot

Answer 1

action or sequence of events

- effective plots often use wide variety of active verbs

Question 2

Characterization

Answer 2

portrayed in descriptions of physical characteristics, dialogue that reflects their personality, interior monologue/thoughts of character, attitudes of characters towards each other, etc.
- effective characterization will elicit a level of emotional involvement of the reader in the character by providing a sensory experience with the character

Question 3

Setting

Answer 3

time and place of the story, but also psychological or social
- may be symbolic as in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”

Question 4

Mood

Answer 4

the atmosphere established by the language of the story

Question 5

Theme

Answer 5

the underlying main idea a story speaks to

Question 6

Allegory

Answer 6

a story in which characters and settings are symbolic, as in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

Question 7

Drama

Answer 7

Plays - comedies, modern, and tragedies - typically in five acts.
- Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, George Bernard Shaw, Moliere are all famous playwrights.

Question 8

Aside

Answer 8

a character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by the audience but not by other characters in the play

Question 9

Chorus

Answer 9

literary device of a play, represents the public opinion

Question 10

Epic

Answer 10

poem of book length that reflects the values of the society. often include an invocation of a muse for inspiration, characters with supernatural traits.

• Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey
• Virgil’s Aeneid
• John Milton’s Paradise Lost
• Dante’s Divine Comedy

Question 11

Epistle

Answer 11

a letter that becomes public domain, although not necessarily written for public distribution
- Paul’s Biblical writings

Question 12

Essay

Answer 12

limited length prose work focusing on a topic and presenting a point of view
- Thomas Carlyle, Charles Lamb, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Michel de Montaigne who is credited with defining the genre

Question 13

Legend

Answer 13

a traditional narrative popularly regarded as historical fact but actually a mixture of fact and fiction

Question 14

Myth

Answer 14

stories that are nearly universally shared within a specific culture that explain its traditions and history

Question 15

Novel

Answer 15

longest form of fictional prose, often with complex plots

- Jane Austin, Charlotte & Emily Bronte, Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy (War & Peace), Charles Dickens, etc.

Question 16

Poem

Answer 16

verse, whose only requirement is rhythm. Fixed forms specify meter and rhyme while unfixed forms dont

Question 17

Romance

Answer 17

imaginative tale set in a fantastical realm dealing with heroes, villians, monsters, etc.

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• “The Knight’s Tale” from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Question 18

Short Story

Answer 18

narrative, much shorter than a novel.

- Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Guy de Maupassant

Question 19

Tragedy

Answer 19

drama written in poetry or prose, telling the story of a hero whose tragic character flaw (hamartia) brings ruin on himself

Question 20

Comdey

Answer 20

a play meant to amuse, ends happily.

- Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Question 21

Melodrama

Answer 21

an extreme drama with a formulaic structure - hero saves the day from a villian and wins the heroine.

Question 22

Farce

Answer 22

extreme form of comedy marked by physical humor, stereotyped characters, unlikely situations. a low form of comedy
- Monty Python, Three Stooges

Question 23

Dramatic Monologue

Answer 23

speech given by an actor as if talking to himself, but intended for the audience

Question 24

Tempo

Answer 24

the pace of the action

Question 25

Dramatic Arc

Answer 25

an arc that represents the development of the conflict in the story - builds to a climax, then drops to a resolution

Question 26

Classical Mythology

Answer 26

Myths from Greek, Roman and some Norse traditions. Alluded to in much of literature as supposedly familiar to all audiences

Question 27

Fairy Tales

Answer 27

fictional stories involving children or animals that come into contact with magic. Happy solutions to human dilemmas. Populated by dwarfs, trolls, elves, etc.

Question 28

Fables

Answer 28

Animals that act like humans and represent specific groups or people indirectly. Teach a moral. - Aesop's Fables are the most famous

Question 29

Folktales

Answer 29

Includes tall tales (like Rip Van Winkle or Paul Bunyan) based on imaginary characters and legends (like Johnny Appleseed and Daniel Boone) based in fact and real people but often exaggerated

Question 30

Native American Works

Answer 30

- part of oral tradition - difficult to date - include reverence for/awe of nature, stress interconnectedness of all elements in the life cycle - common themes are remorse for destruction of their way of life, genocide of many tribes, hardiness of native body and soul

Question 31

Colonial Period Literature

Answer 31

- neo-classical, emphasizing order, balance, clarity and reason - decidedly British style of writing (though not of thinking) - reveals life of colonists and seekers of religious freedom

Question 32

Colonial Period Authors

Answer 32

Anne Bradstreet - poet - everyday life in colonial New England William Bradford - The Mayflower Compact - hardships of crossing Atlantic through establishment of Bay Colony

Question 33

Revolutionary Period Literature

Answer 33

- many non fiction genres, like essays, speeches, pamphlets, epistles

Question 34

Revolutionary Period Authors

Answer 34

- Thomas Paine, pamphet Common Sense - Benjamin Franklin's essays in Poor Richard's Almanac and satires like "How to Reduce a Great Empire to a Small One" - Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death" - Speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses - Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin) - John and Abigail Adams' letters to each other

Question 35

Romantic Period Literature (American)

Answer 35

valued intense emotion and nature. early American folktales and the emergence of a distinctly American writing. - first half of 1800's (in America)

Question 36

Romantic Period Authors (American)

Answer 36

- Washington Irving's folktales, Rip Van Winkle - Nathaniel Hawthorne - novel, The Scarlet Letter - Herman Melville's novels, Moby Dick & Billy Budd - Edgar Allen Poe, poem "The Raven" short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" - Fireside poets

Question 37

Fireside Poets

Answer 37

- wrote in the romantic period of american literature - largely conformed to conventional poetic forms - wrote for common people, and were first largely popular American poets, hence the name - included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Paul Revere's Ride), John Greenleaf Whittier (Snow-Bound), James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes ("Old Ironsides")

Question 38

Trancendentalism

Answer 38

- Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau - offshoot of romanticism that believed in the essential goodness of people and nature and that society tended to corrupt. people were thus at their best when self reliant - early 1800's

Question 39

Transitional Period

Answer 39

- between romanticism and realism (mid 1800s) - emily dickinson - mark twain - walt whitman, leaves of grass

Question 40

Realistic Period

Answer 40

- late 1800's - reaction to the romantic writers' tendency to look at the world through rose-colored glasses - many writers focus on the poor working class and harsh realities of life - some writers were also classified as naturalists, believing man was subject to uncontrollable fate

Question 41

Realistic Period Authors

Answer 41

- Jack London "To Build a Fire" - unfortunate man whose luck has run out in Alaska - Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage - sufferings of Civil War soldier - Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, decried working conditions in slaughterhouses and wheat mills

Question 42

Contemporary American Authors

Answer 42

``` - 1900's Tennessee Williams' dramas, The Glass Menagerie & Streetcar Named Desire F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Ernest Hemingway William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury Edna St Vincent Millay Langston Hughes Maya Angelou Robert Frost ```

Question 43

Anglo-Saxon

Answer 43

- spans 6 centuries but very little literature | - Beowulf - triumph of Beowulf over monster Grendal

Question 44

Medieval

Answer 44

Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales - written in vernacular, so called the first work of British lit Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur - legends of King Arthur

Question 45

Renaissance & Elizabethan Periods

Answer 45

-1500s William Shakespeare Sir Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen

Question 46

Seventeenth Century

Answer 46

- 1600s - end of the english renaissance - John Milton, Paradise Lost - John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress - John Donne & metaphysical poetry

Question 47

Eighteenth Century

Answer 47

- 1700's - Robert Herrick & Richard Lovelace (Seduction poems) - restoration and enlightenment periods - Neoclassicism, emphasizing order, balance, clarity and reason - essays of ADdison and Steele - Alexander Pope's mock epic, Rape of the Lock - Samuel Johnson's dictionary of the English language

Question 48

Romantic Period

Answer 48

- 1770's to 1850 ish - emphasized intense feelings and nature - William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron (Don Juan) - Jane Austin - Bronte sisters (Jane Eyre & Wuthering Heights) - George Eliot, Middlemarch

Question 49

Victorian Period

Answer 49

- 1800s - Lord Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning (dramatic monologues like My Last Duchess), Elizabeth Browning (feminist epic Aurora Leigh) - Gerard Manley Hopkins - Robert Louis Stevenson, scottish novelist - Charles Dickens - Oscar Wilde, Importance of Being Earnest

Question 50

Twentieth Century British Authors

Answer 50

George Bernard Shaw's dramas Novelists including Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, George Orwell Poets include T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath

Question 51

Russian Authors

Answer 51

Fyodor Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov LEo Tolstoy's War and Peace - account of invasion of Russia by Napoleon - and Anna Karenina Anton Chekhov - playwright