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American Literature > Midterm (Identification) > Flashcards

Midterm (Identification) Flashcards

1
Q

Letter of Discovery

A
  • Christopher Columbus
  • 1493
  • a letter (historical)
  • Written to the man who financed his initial journey
  • depicts the natural world of the “new” Americas and the first encounters with Indigenous peoples
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2
Q

Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage

A
  • Christopher Columbus
  • 1503
  • Letter (historical)
  • shift away from his letter of discovery
  • Shows spiritual troubles and mental anguish at seeing his discovery be carted around for consumption by the masses
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3
Q

The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles

A
  • John Smith
  • 1624
  • heroic tale meant that indicated a version of life where people of all stations could live equally
  • Written as a history of the colony’s early years, but is NOT really a history
  • validates their goal
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4
Q

The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca

A
  • Cabeza de Vaca
  • 1542
  • a story of a Spanish colonist being taken into captivity
  • ethnographic depiction of the tribe’s culture and rituals
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5
Q

Of Plymouth Plantation

A
  • William Bradford
  • 1630-1650
  • a history meant to mythologize the Puritans
  • of the Plymouth plantation which intended to (1) serve as model for theological government (2) provide accurate history of the colony (3) glorify God rather than inflate themselves
  • Puritan text of the sect that did NOT want to change the COE
  • emphasis on “covenant” and “providence”
  • typology is a focus
  • ends with the realization that the experiment failed when the colony ended up looking like it did in England
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6
Q

A Model of Christian Charity

A
  • John Winthrop
  • 1630
  • A sermon that creates a new myth for these peoples
  • Puritan text of the sect that wanted to change the COE
  • Represents a growing feeling of Protestant Nationalism
  • Primary idea: how to reconcile theological equity with inherent social inequity
  • The Puritan settlement to be a City upon a Hill
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7
Q

The Trial of Anne Hutchinson

A
  • a court transcript in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
  • 1637
  • John Winthrop (governor) presiding over the trial of Anne Hutchinson
  • Anne expressed discontent in the religious leaders, thinking that they were preaching a Covenant of Works rather than a Covenant of Grace
  • Her engagement with the Bible as a Puritan gave her ability to defy ministers
  • She is found guilty and excommunicated
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8
Q

The Bay Psalm Book

A
  • 1640
  • first printed psalm edition in the colonies
  • translated the bible into vernacular
  • forgoes poetic language in favor of purity and truth in the words of god
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9
Q

Poems (Prologue, Contemplations, On the Burning of Our House)

A
  • Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
  • spans many genres
  • linked to the woman’s world (childbirth)
  • theme of self-consciousness/being humble
  • struggled to reconcile hardships in her life with idea of divine providence/the divine plan
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10
Q

Poems (Huswifery)

A
  • Edward Taylor
  • 1642-1729 —> 1685 is “Huswifery”
  • metaphysical poems that combine naturalism with the spiritual
  • religious lyric poetry is larger genre
  • use of extended metaphor
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11
Q

The Sovereignty and Goodness of God/A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration

A
  • Mary Rowlandson
  • 1682
  • auto-biographical narrative about her captivity by the Native Americans
  • Takes place during King Phillip’s War
  • Theme of movement
  • ethnographic study of Indigenous cultures and rituals
  • Reading the Bible during captivity as an example of God’s grace –> typology
  • Themes of grief, family, faith
  • She is a spiritual heroine: the protagonist of a story where Providence is unfolding before her
  • She does NOT return to her normal self before the captivity
  • an example of the Puritan legacy: individuality through reading
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12
Q

Personal Narrative

A
  • Jonathan Edwards
  • 1739
  • describing his personal experience with God’s grace
  • emphasis on sensory words to describe things; he belives it’s not enough to know something, we must use ALL of our senses
  • wants to be as empircally close to describing the ineffable power of God
  • emphasis on the Natural world
  • a conversion story
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13
Q

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

A
  • Jonathan Edwards
  • 1741
  • Important piece in the bringing-about of the Great Awakening
  • A sermon using fear to push a message
  • speaking to the unconverted Puritans in the congregation
  • theme of God’s arbitrary will
  • seeks to AWAKEN them
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14
Q

The Autobiography

A
  • Benjamin Franklin
  • 1784
  • the beginning of a new, post-Englightenment era in America
  • the modern secular self is described
  • the text observes the faculties of psychology: how we have basic motor functions, knowledge of the right thing to do, and emotions which drive us
  • Living one’s life is like writing one’s life
  • the outcome of one’s life is seen materially/physically
  • appearance is most important
  • a tale of self-betterment
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15
Q

The Interesting Narrative

A
  • Olaudah Equiano
  • 1789
  • autobiography about a once-enslaved man
  • a type of conversion story
  • depicts the change into a “model European man” as achievable by all
  • demonstrates a plurality of culture: comparing social systems through his journey
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16
Q

Poems (On Being Brought from Africa to America)

A
  • Phyllis Wheatley
  • 1773
  • first Black, enslaved, female poet to be published in the colonies
  • Reflects on European 18th century sensibilities (Augustan, neo-classical, proportion, order, and harmony)
  • On Being Brought accuses Christians of inequality in religion, and asks that they let Black people into the organization
17
Q

Letters from an American Farmer

A
  • Hector Crèvecoeur
  • 1782
  • trying to define “American” identity
  • a travel narrative in letter form
  • pluralistic thinking: finding differences between cultures, and using those differences to uncover universal principles
  • a near-Utopian landscape
  • a narrative defined by work/labor
  • transplantation
18
Q

Common Sense

A
  • Thomas Paine
  • 1776
  • pamphlet at the start of the American Revolution
  • seeks to convince readers that this war will affect the entire world
  • uses moral sentiment to say that even if you are far away, you must be spurred to action by your emotional response to the suffering of others
  • people have REASON/COMMON SENSE
  • believes we CANNOT go back from this point in American history
  • an emotional, impassioned text
19
Q

The Declaration of Independence

A
  • Thomas Jefferson (and others)
  • 1776
  • declamation of a new American identity
  • a nation grown purely from REASON rather than the emotions and passions of early war texts like “Common Sense”
20
Q

Rip Van Winkle

A
  • Washington Irving
  • 1819
  • a response to the claims that American culture is too infantile to have anything of its own
  • a story about sleeping through the Revolution; what would happen if you lost your sense of identity
  • early Romanticism
21
Q

The Author’s Account of Himself

A
  • Washington Irving
  • 1819
  • emphasis on travel and the significance of the natural world to the American identity
  • meditating on the so-called superiority of Europe’s deep, long past/history versus America’s newness
  • the discovery of America as an aesthetic education
  • invocation of the sublime/the beautiful
22
Q

Poems (Thanatopsis)

A
  • William Cullen Bryant
  • 1821
  • Romanticisim
  • communion and intimacy with nature
  • mortality of the human conjoined with the immortality of the natural world
23
Q

Nature

A
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • 1836
  • Romanticism and Trancendentalism
  • a treatise (non-fiction) or examination of the natural world
  • looking for the universal through the particular
  • Wants to have an original relationship with the divine/the universe (rather than relying so much on the past) –> nature as the text which can elucidate this for us
  • Emphasis on SIGHT
  • Rejecting a history of empiricism and rationalism
24
Q

The American Scholar

A
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • 1837
  • arguing against the institutionalization of education in America
  • language of fragmentation and alienation
  • Emphasis the dignity of the ordinary experience in shaping our view of the world, rather than that of so-called “higher education”
  • Focusing on the self, the internal, the local, allows us to notice the smaller things and gain an education from them instead
25
Q

Self-Reliance

A
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • 1841
  • idea that the social contracts and institutions we enter into when we mature remove our youthful ability to speak our minds and make us self-conscious
  • youth has pure genius by the reliance we place on our own thoughts
  • must find solitude in order to regain that self-reliance
  • true freedom comes from the capacity to change
  • all individuals have the potential to “become,” or the turning inward and discovery of the self
26
Q

Walden, or Life in the Woods

A
  • Henry David Thoreau
  • 1854
  • Transcendentalism (?)
  • mixes genres (autobiography, natural history, conduct book, essays) to physically represent that form inhibits individual progress
  • Addressed to “poor students”
  • describes the many forces which impoverish the human, and the student knows them most intimately
  • Capitalism force us to sacrifice individuality for the gaining of fixed property, but we must be individuals who can change because that is where freedom resides
  • DELIBERATE LIVING, WAKING UP
27
Q

The Fall of the House of Usher

A
  • Edgar Allan Poe
  • 1839
  • Gothic romanticism
  • unsettling and depressing diction; emphasizes apprehension
  • In a remote and static place
  • looking to the past/a culture that has become trapped in the past
28
Q

Young Goodman Brown

A
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • 1835
  • language of apprehension and depression like Poe
  • a look back at Puritanism
  • relates to Hawthorne’s own family history and involvement in the Salem Witch Trials
  • the stranger akin to the devil; Faith akin to religious faith/devotion/piety –> an allegory
  • nature depicted as a place of paganism and heathenism; purely negative

American Literature (2 decks)

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