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Major Literary Figures Flashcards

1
Q

Aesop

A

620-560 BCE

Ancient Greek fabulist who wrote allegorical fables.

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2
Q

Dante Alighieri

A

1265-1321 AD

Early Renaissance Italian writer - called the father of modern literature.

Ex. The Divine Comedy

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3
Q

Sherwood Anderson

A

1876-1941 AD

An American short story writer.

Ex. Winesburg, Ohio

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4
Q

Jane Austen

A

1775-1817 AD

19th century English author.

Ex. Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Pride and Prejudice

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5
Q

Honoré de Balzac

A

1799-1850 AD

Early 19th century French writer.

Ex. La Comédie Humaine

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6
Q

Samuel Beckett

A

1906-1989

An Irish-born French writer and play write of the Existentialist school.

Ex. Malloy; Waiting for Godot

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7
Q

Saul Bellow

A

1915-2005 AD

An American novelist awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.

Ex. Herzog; Humboldt’s Gift

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8
Q

William Blake

A

1757-1827 AD

A British poet, artist, and engraver.

Ex. Songs of Innocence and Experience

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9
Q

Charlotte Brontë

A

1816-1855 AD

English novelist who wrote under the pen name Currier Bell. Older sister of Emily Brontë.

Ex. Jane Eyre; Shirley

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10
Q

Emily Brontë

A

1818-1848 AD

An English writer who wrote under the pen name Ellis Bell. Younger sister of Charlotte Brontë.

Ex. Wuthering Heights

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11
Q

John Bunyan

A

1628-1688 AD

An English preacher and writer of allegorical stories.

Ex. The Pilgrim’s progress

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12
Q

Lord George Byron

A

1788-1824 AD

Prominent Romantic poet known for his adventurous life and writings.

Ex. Don Juan; Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

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13
Q

Albert Camus

A

1913-1960 AD

French writer and existentialist.

Ex. The Stranger; the Plague

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14
Q

Lewis Carroll

A

1832-1898 AD

The pen name of Charles Dodgson, an English writer, mathematician, and artist.

Ex. Through the Looking Glass; Alice in Wonderland

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15
Q

Miguel de Cervantes

A

1547-1616 AD

A Spanish writer.

Ex. Don Quixote

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16
Q

Geoffrey Chaucer

A

1340-1400 AD

Early English poet.

Ex. The Canterbury Tales

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17
Q

Anton Pavlovich Checkov

A

1869-1904 AD

Late 19th century Russian play wright and short story teller.

Ex. The Seagull; the Cherry Orchard

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18
Q

Aeschylus

A

525-456 BCE

Ancient Greek dramatist specializing in tragedies.

Ex. Prometheus Bound

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19
Q

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A

1772-1834 AD

One of the first English Romantics.

Ex: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Lyrical Ballads - with William Wordsworth

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20
Q

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

A

1873-1954 AD

French female author.

Ex: The Innocent Wife

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21
Q

Joseph Conrad

A

1857-1924 AD

Polish-born English writer.

Ex: Heart of Darkness; Under Western Eyes

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22
Q

Stephen Crane

A

1871-1900 AD

American author.

Ex: Red Badge of Courage

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23
Q

Charles Dickens

A

1812-1870 AD

English author of the Victorian era and a contemporary of Thomas Hardy.

Ex: A Tale of Two Cities; Great Expectations; a Christmas Carol

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24
Q

Emily Dickinson

A

1830-1886 AD

An American poet whose emotional poems whose poems were not published in her lifetime.

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25
John Donne
1572-1631 AD English writer, essayist, and religious scholar who is considered the greatest metaphorical poet. Ex: The Flea; Death Be Not Proud
26
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1821-1881 AD A Russian novelist Ex: Crime and Punishment; the Idiot
27
Theodore Dreiser
1871-1945 AD An American writer of the naturalist school. Ex: Sister Carrie; An American Tradegy
28
Mary Ann Evans
1819-1880 AD The real name of George Eliot, a female Victorian realist author. Ex: Middlemarch; Adam Bede
29
T.S. Eliot
1888-1965 AD An American born English Modernist poet who wrote obscure and referential poems. Ex: The Waste Land; The Love of J. Alfred Prufrock
30
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882 AD An American Transcendentalist writer and philosophy. He was the mentor of Thoreau. Ex: Nature
31
Euripides
480-406 BCE A contemporary or Sophocles and Aeschylus.
32
William Faulkner
1897-1962 AD American novelist who influenced on contemporary literature. Ex: The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Absolom! Absolom!
33
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1896-1940 AD A writer who chronicled the Jazz age. Ex: The Great Gatsby
34
Gustave Flaubert
1821-1880 AD French writer that coined the phrase "le mot juste" or "the perfect word". Ex: Madame Bovary
35
Robert Frost
1874-1963 AD An American poet. Ex: Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening; Mending Wall
36
Allen Ginsberg
1926-1997 AD American Beat poet and political figure who became the face of his generation's underground. Ex: Howl
37
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749-1832 AD German writer, critic, and scientist. Ex: Faust
38
Tennessee Williams
1914-1983 AD American playwright. Ex: A Streetcar Named Desire; The Glass Menagerie.
39
Virginia Woolf
1882-1941 AD British novelist who wrote with an unconventional "stream of consciousness" style. Ex: To the Lighthouse; Mrs. Dalloway
40
William Wordsworth
1770-1850 AD Poet of the English Romantic movement. Ex: Lyrical Ballads
41
William Butler Yeats
1865-1939 AD Irish playwright and poet. Ex: The Winding Stair
42
Emile Zola
1840-1902 AD French writer from the Naturalist school who decried the French government's role in the Dreyfus Affair. Ex: J'Accuse
43
Dashiell Hammett
1894-1961 AD American writer of noir fiction. Ex: Maltese Falcon; The Thin Man
44
Thomas Hardy
1840-1928 AD English writer. Ex: Far From the Madding Crowd; Tess of the D'Urbervilles
45
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1804-1864 AD An American author of novels and short-stories. Ex: The Scarlet Letter; "The Minister's Black Veil."
46
Ernest Hemingway
1899-1961 AD A terse American author and journalist. Ex: The Sun Also Rises; A Farewell to Arms
47
Hermann Hesse
1877-1962 AD Swiss-born German writer who wrote of the duality of Life. Ex: Siddhartha; Steppenwolf
48
Homer
Approx. 850 BCE Ancient Greek writer called the Father of Literature. Ex: The Illiad; the Odyssey
49
Langston Hughes
1902-1967 AD African American poet who helped shape the Harlem Renaissance. Ex: Weary Blues; Selected Poems
50
Victor Hugo
1802-1885 AD Victorian French novelists. Ex: Les Miserables
51
Henry James
1843-1916 AD Expatriate American writer. Ex: The Turn of the Screw; Daisy Miller.
52
Samuel Johnson
1709-1784 AD An English writer who created the first modern dictionary.
53
James Joyce
1882-1941 AD Irish author. Ex: Ulysses; Finnegans Wake
54
Franz Kafka
1883-1924 AD German existentialist. Ex: The Metamorphosis.
55
John Keats
1795-1821 AD English Romantic poet. Ex: "Ode to a Nightingale"; "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
56
Jack Kerouac
1922-1969 AD American Beat poet and voice of a counterculture. Ex: On the Road
57
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882 AD American Romantic poet Ex: Songs of Hiawatha.
58
Christopher Marlowe
1564-1593 AD English playwright and influencer of Shakespeare. Ex: Tamburlaine the Great; Dr. Faustus
59
Herman Melville
1819-1891 AD An American novelist. Ex: Moby Dick; "Bartleby the Scrivener".
60
Arthur Miller
1915-2005 AD American playwright. Ex: Death of a Salesman; the Crucible.
61
Henry Miller
1891-1980 AD American writer. Ex: Tropic of Cancer
62
John Milton
1608-1674 AD An English poet and essayist during the Reformation. Ex: Paradise Lost; Paradise Regained
63
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière
1622-1673 AD French playwright and actor who helped shape modern theatre. Ex: Tartuffe; The Misanthrope
64
Toni Morrison
1931- African American writer who won the Nobel Prize in 1993. Ex: Beloved; Song of Solomon
65
Vladimir Nabokov
1899-1977 AD Russian American writer. Ex: Lolita
66
Eugene O'Neill
1888-1953 AD An American dramatic playwright. Ex: Desire Under the Elms; The Hairy Ape; The Iceman Cometh.
67
Eric Blair (George Orwell)
1903-1950 AD English satire writer. Ex: Animal Farm; 1984.
68
Ovid
43 BCE - 17 AD Roman poet who inspired the Renaissance and Baroque writers. Ex: Metamorphoses
69
Petrarch
1304-1374 AD Renaissance Italian poet whose love poems influenced British writers.
70
Sylvia Plath
1932-1963 AD American poet of the confessional school whose life influenced her poems. Ex: Daddy; The Bell Jar
71
Plutarch
46-120 AD Greek essayist who influenced many, including Shakespeare. Ex: The Parallel Lives
72
Edgar Allen Poe
1809-1849 AD Father of Noir and Horror. Ex: The Raven
73
Ezra Pound
1885-1972 AD American poet and editor who typified the Modernist movement.
74
Marcel Proust
1871-1922 AD French novelist who wrote complex novels. Ex: remembrance of things past
75
Salman Rushdie
1947- British novelist sentenced to death by the Ayatollah. Ex: The Satanic Verses
76
Sappho
620 BCE Greek female poet.
77
Sir Walter Scott
1771-1832 AD Scottish novelist who wrote historical novels. Ex: Ivanhoe
78
William Shakespeare
1564-1616 AD English playwright and essayist. Ex: Macbeth, Othello.
79
George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950 AD Irish playwright and Nobel Prize winner. Ex: Pygmalion; Saint Joan
80
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822 AD English Romantic poet and social critic; husband of Mary Shelley. Ex: Prometheus Unbound
81
Sophocles
496-406 BCE Greek dramatist who wrote tragedies. Ex: Oedipus Rex
82
Edmund Spenser
1552-1599 AD English poet and writer. Ex: The Faerie Queen
83
Gertrude Stein
1874-1946 AD An American writer who lived in Paris in the 1920's who coined the term "Lost Generation" about her fellow expats.
84
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 AD American novelist whose stories center on workers and won a Nobel Prize in 1962. Ex: Grapes of Wrath; East of Eden
85
Robert Louis Stevenson
1850-1894 AD English writer. Ex: Treasure Island; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
86
Jonathan Swift
1667-1745 AD Irish born writer and satirist. Ex: Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
87
Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862 AD American thinker and Transcendentalist. Ex: Walden
88
Count Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910 AD Russian novelist. Ex: Anna Karenina; War and Peace
89
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
1835-1910 AD American humorist and writer. Ex: Huckleberry Finn; Tom Sawyer
90
John Updike
1932-2009 AD American novelist. Ex: Rabbit, Run; Bech at Bay
91
Virgil
70-19 BCE Roman poet Ex: Aeneid
92
Voltaire
1694-1778 AD French writer who helped to shape the Age of Enlightenment. Ex: Candide
93
Alice Walker
1944- African American novel. Ex: The Color Purple
94
Walt Whitman
1819-1892 AD American poet. Ex: Leaves of Grass
95
Oscar Wilde
1854-1900 AD Irish writer. Ex: The Importance of Being Earnest; Salomé

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