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MAT Prep > Major Literary Figures > Flashcards

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
Q

John Donne

A

1572-1631 AD

English writer, essayist, and religious scholar who is considered the greatest metaphorical poet.

Ex: The Flea; Death Be Not Proud

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26
Q

Fyodor Dostoevsky

A

1821-1881 AD

A Russian novelist

Ex: Crime and Punishment; the Idiot

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27
Q

Theodore Dreiser

A

1871-1945 AD

An American writer of the naturalist school.

Ex: Sister Carrie; An American Tradegy

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28
Q

Mary Ann Evans

A

1819-1880 AD

The real name of George Eliot, a female Victorian realist author.

Ex: Middlemarch; Adam Bede

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29
Q

T.S. Eliot

A

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

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30
Q

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A

1803-1882 AD

An American Transcendentalist writer and philosophy. He was the mentor of Thoreau.

Ex: Nature

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31
Q

Euripides

A

480-406 BCE

A contemporary or Sophocles and Aeschylus.

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32
Q

William Faulkner

A

1897-1962 AD

American novelist who influenced on contemporary literature.

Ex: The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Absolom! Absolom!

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33
Q

F. Scott Fitzgerald

A

1896-1940 AD

A writer who chronicled the Jazz age.

Ex: The Great Gatsby

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34
Q

Gustave Flaubert

A

1821-1880 AD

French writer that coined the phrase “le mot juste” or “the perfect word”.

Ex: Madame Bovary

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35
Q

Robert Frost

A

1874-1963 AD

An American poet.

Ex: Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening; Mending Wall

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36
Q

Allen Ginsberg

A

1926-1997 AD

American Beat poet and political figure who became the face of his generation’s underground.

Ex: Howl

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37
Q

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A

1749-1832 AD

German writer, critic, and scientist.

Ex: Faust

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38
Q

Tennessee Williams

A

1914-1983 AD

American playwright.

Ex: A Streetcar Named Desire; The Glass Menagerie.

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39
Q

Virginia Woolf

A

1882-1941 AD

British novelist who wrote with an unconventional “stream of consciousness” style.

Ex: To the Lighthouse; Mrs. Dalloway

40
Q

William Wordsworth

A

1770-1850 AD

Poet of the English Romantic movement.

Ex: Lyrical Ballads

41
Q

William Butler Yeats

A

1865-1939 AD

Irish playwright and poet.

Ex: The Winding Stair

42
Q

Emile Zola

A

1840-1902 AD

French writer from the Naturalist school who decried the French government’s role in the Dreyfus Affair.

Ex: J’Accuse

43
Q

Dashiell Hammett

A

1894-1961 AD

American writer of noir fiction.

Ex: Maltese Falcon; The Thin Man

44
Q

Thomas Hardy

A

1840-1928 AD

English writer.

Ex: Far From the Madding Crowd; Tess of the D’Urbervilles

45
Q

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A

1804-1864 AD

An American author of novels and short-stories.

Ex: The Scarlet Letter; “The Minister’s Black Veil.”

46
Q

Ernest Hemingway

A

1899-1961 AD

A terse American author and journalist.

Ex: The Sun Also Rises; A Farewell to Arms

47
Q

Hermann Hesse

A

1877-1962 AD

Swiss-born German writer who wrote of the duality of Life.

Ex: Siddhartha; Steppenwolf

48
Q

Homer

A

Approx. 850 BCE

Ancient Greek writer called the Father of Literature.

Ex: The Illiad; the Odyssey

49
Q

Langston Hughes

A

1902-1967 AD

African American poet who helped shape the Harlem Renaissance.

Ex: Weary Blues; Selected Poems

50
Q

Victor Hugo

A

1802-1885 AD

Victorian French novelists.

Ex: Les Miserables

51
Q

Henry James

A

1843-1916 AD

Expatriate American writer.

Ex: The Turn of the Screw; Daisy Miller.

52
Q

Samuel Johnson

A

1709-1784 AD

An English writer who created the first modern dictionary.

53
Q

James Joyce

A

1882-1941 AD

Irish author.

Ex: Ulysses; Finnegans Wake

54
Q

Franz Kafka

A

1883-1924 AD

German existentialist.

Ex: The Metamorphosis.

55
Q

John Keats

A

1795-1821 AD

English Romantic poet.

Ex: “Ode to a Nightingale”; “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

56
Q

Jack Kerouac

A

1922-1969 AD

American Beat poet and voice of a counterculture.

Ex: On the Road

57
Q

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A

1807-1882 AD

American Romantic poet

Ex: Songs of Hiawatha.

58
Q

Christopher Marlowe

A

1564-1593 AD

English playwright and influencer of Shakespeare.

Ex: Tamburlaine the Great; Dr. Faustus

59
Q

Herman Melville

A

1819-1891 AD

An American novelist.

Ex: Moby Dick; “Bartleby the Scrivener”.

60
Q

Arthur Miller

A

1915-2005 AD

American playwright.

Ex: Death of a Salesman; the Crucible.

61
Q

Henry Miller

A

1891-1980 AD

American writer.

Ex: Tropic of Cancer

62
Q

John Milton

A

1608-1674 AD

An English poet and essayist during the Reformation.

Ex: Paradise Lost; Paradise Regained

63
Q

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière

A

1622-1673 AD

French playwright and actor who helped shape modern theatre.

Ex: Tartuffe; The Misanthrope

64
Q

Toni Morrison

A

1931-

African American writer who won the Nobel Prize in 1993.

Ex: Beloved; Song of Solomon

65
Q

Vladimir Nabokov

A

1899-1977 AD

Russian American writer.

Ex: Lolita

66
Q

Eugene O’Neill

A

1888-1953 AD

An American dramatic playwright.

Ex: Desire Under the Elms; The Hairy Ape; The Iceman Cometh.

67
Q

Eric Blair (George Orwell)

A

1903-1950 AD

English satire writer.

Ex: Animal Farm; 1984.

68
Q

Ovid

A

43 BCE - 17 AD

Roman poet who inspired the Renaissance and Baroque writers.

Ex: Metamorphoses

69
Q

Petrarch

A

1304-1374 AD

Renaissance Italian poet whose love poems influenced British writers.

70
Q

Sylvia Plath

A

1932-1963 AD

American poet of the confessional school whose life influenced her poems.

Ex: Daddy; The Bell Jar

71
Q

Plutarch

A

46-120 AD

Greek essayist who influenced many, including Shakespeare.

Ex: The Parallel Lives

72
Q

Edgar Allen Poe

A

1809-1849 AD

Father of Noir and Horror.

Ex: The Raven

73
Q

Ezra Pound

A

1885-1972 AD

American poet and editor who typified the Modernist movement.

74
Q

Marcel Proust

A

1871-1922 AD

French novelist who wrote complex novels.

Ex: remembrance of things past

75
Q

Salman Rushdie

A

1947-

British novelist sentenced to death by the Ayatollah.

Ex: The Satanic Verses

76
Q

Sappho

A

620 BCE

Greek female poet.

77
Q

Sir Walter Scott

A

1771-1832 AD

Scottish novelist who wrote historical novels.

Ex: Ivanhoe

78
Q

William Shakespeare

A

1564-1616 AD

English playwright and essayist.

Ex: Macbeth, Othello.

79
Q

George Bernard Shaw

A

1856-1950 AD

Irish playwright and Nobel Prize winner.

Ex: Pygmalion; Saint Joan

80
Q

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A

1792-1822 AD

English Romantic poet and social critic; husband of Mary Shelley.

Ex: Prometheus Unbound

81
Q

Sophocles

A

496-406 BCE

Greek dramatist who wrote tragedies.

Ex: Oedipus Rex

82
Q

Edmund Spenser

A

1552-1599 AD

English poet and writer.

Ex: The Faerie Queen

83
Q

Gertrude Stein

A

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
Q

John Steinbeck

A

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
Q

Robert Louis Stevenson

A

1850-1894 AD

English writer.

Ex: Treasure Island; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

86
Q

Jonathan Swift

A

1667-1745 AD

Irish born writer and satirist.

Ex: Gulliver’s Travels; A Modest Proposal

87
Q

Henry David Thoreau

A

1817-1862 AD

American thinker and Transcendentalist.

Ex: Walden

88
Q

Count Leo Tolstoy

A

1828-1910 AD

Russian novelist.

Ex: Anna Karenina; War and Peace

89
Q

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

A

1835-1910 AD

American humorist and writer.

Ex: Huckleberry Finn; Tom Sawyer

90
Q

John Updike

A

1932-2009 AD

American novelist.

Ex: Rabbit, Run; Bech at Bay

91
Q

Virgil

A

70-19 BCE

Roman poet

Ex: Aeneid

92
Q

Voltaire

A

1694-1778 AD

French writer who helped to shape the Age of Enlightenment.

Ex: Candide

93
Q

Alice Walker

A

1944-

African American novel.

Ex: The Color Purple

94
Q

Walt Whitman

A

1819-1892 AD

American poet.

Ex: Leaves of Grass

95
Q

Oscar Wilde

A

1854-1900 AD

Irish writer.

Ex: The Importance of Being Earnest; Salomé

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