Literary Elements and Forms (including drama) Flashcards
Plot
action or sequence of events
- effective plots often use wide variety of active verbs
Characterization
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
Setting
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”
Mood
the atmosphere established by the language of the story
Theme
the underlying main idea a story speaks to
Allegory
a story in which characters and settings are symbolic, as in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress
Drama
Plays - comedies, modern, and tragedies - typically in five acts.
- Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, George Bernard Shaw, Moliere are all famous playwrights.
Aside
a character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by the audience but not by other characters in the play
Chorus
literary device of a play, represents the public opinion
Epic
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
Epistle
a letter that becomes public domain, although not necessarily written for public distribution
- Paul’s Biblical writings
Essay
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
Legend
a traditional narrative popularly regarded as historical fact but actually a mixture of fact and fiction
Myth
stories that are nearly universally shared within a specific culture that explain its traditions and history
Novel
longest form of fictional prose, often with complex plots
- Jane Austin, Charlotte & Emily Bronte, Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy (War & Peace), Charles Dickens, etc.
Poem
verse, whose only requirement is rhythm. Fixed forms specify meter and rhyme while unfixed forms dont
Romance
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
Short Story
narrative, much shorter than a novel.
- Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Guy de Maupassant
Tragedy
drama written in poetry or prose, telling the story of a hero whose tragic character flaw (hamartia) brings ruin on himself
Comdey
a play meant to amuse, ends happily.
- Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Melodrama
an extreme drama with a formulaic structure - hero saves the day from a villian and wins the heroine.
Farce
extreme form of comedy marked by physical humor, stereotyped characters, unlikely situations. a low form of comedy
- Monty Python, Three Stooges
Dramatic Monologue
speech given by an actor as if talking to himself, but intended for the audience
Tempo
the pace of the action
Dramatic Arc
an arc that represents the development of the conflict in the story - builds to a climax, then drops to a resolution
Classical Mythology
Myths from Greek, Roman and some Norse traditions. Alluded to in much of literature as supposedly familiar to all audiences
Fairy Tales
fictional stories involving children or animals that come into contact with magic. Happy solutions to human dilemmas. Populated by dwarfs, trolls, elves, etc.
Fables
Animals that act like humans and represent specific groups or people indirectly. Teach a moral.
- Aesop’s Fables are the most famous
Folktales
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
Native American Works
- 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
Colonial Period Literature
- 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
Colonial Period Authors
Anne Bradstreet - poet - everyday life in colonial New England
William Bradford - The Mayflower Compact - hardships of crossing Atlantic through establishment of Bay Colony
Revolutionary Period Literature
- many non fiction genres, like essays, speeches, pamphlets, epistles
Revolutionary Period Authors
- 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
Romantic Period Literature (American)
valued intense emotion and nature. early American folktales and the emergence of a distinctly American writing.
- first half of 1800’s (in America)
Romantic Period Authors (American)
- 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
Fireside Poets
- 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”)
Trancendentalism
- 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
Transitional Period
- between romanticism and realism (mid 1800s)
- emily dickinson
- mark twain
- walt whitman, leaves of grass
Realistic Period
- 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
Realistic Period Authors
- 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
Contemporary American Authors
- 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
Anglo-Saxon
- spans 6 centuries but very little literature
- Beowulf - triumph of Beowulf over monster Grendal
Medieval
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
Renaissance & Elizabethan Periods
-1500s
William Shakespeare
Sir Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen
Seventeenth Century
- 1600s
- end of the english renaissance
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
- John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
- John Donne & metaphysical poetry
Eighteenth Century
- 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
Romantic Period
- 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
Victorian Period
- 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
Twentieth Century British Authors
George Bernard Shaw’s dramas
Novelists including Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, George Orwell
Poets include T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath
Russian Authors
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
