Neoclassical Literary Terms

Question 1

Neoclassical

Answer 1

The time period between the restoration (1660) and 1800. The style of poetry, prose, satire, written during this period.

Question 2

Satire

Answer 2

The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

Question 3

Juvenalian Satire

Answer 3

In literature, any bitter and ironic criticism of contemporary persons and institutions that is filled with personal invective, angry moral indignation, and pessimism.

Question 4

Horatian Satire

Answer 4

Satire in which the voice is indulgent, tolerant, amused, and witty. The speaker holds up to gentle ridicule, the absurdities and follies of human beings.

Question 5

Abolitionist Tract

Answer 5

Writing that discuss the conditions of slavery as a means of speaking out against the practice.

Question 6

Travel Narrative

Answer 6

Story that features discussion of travel–often to exotic locales–in this period often inspired travel to the New World or other non-European locales featuring discussions of flora fauna and other elements.

Question 7

Captivity Narrative

Answer 7

Usually stories of people captured by enemies whom they consider uncivilized, or whose beliefs and customs they oppose.

Question 8

Mock Epic

Answer 8

Uses irony, exaggeration, and sarcasm to mock its original subject, usually in an undignified and grandiose manner. Elevates its subject to epic status for the purpose of humor.

Question 9

Heroic Couplet

Answer 9

A pair of rhyming iambic pantameter lines of poetry, popularized by the poets of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Alexander Pope.

Question 10

Personified Nouns

Answer 10

Especially Samuel Johnson (“The Vanity of Human Wishes”) uses these as a means of compressed meaning by assigning active dramatic verbs to general nouns.

Question 11

Scatological Humor

Answer 11

A type of off-color humor dealing with defecation, urination, and flatulence–and to a lesser extent, vomiting and other body functions.

Question 12

ProtoRomantic Poets

Answer 12

Late 1700 and early 1800 poets who feature sentimental writing with strong use of nature.

Question 13

Discordia Concors

Answer 13

A rhetorical device in which opposites are juxtaposed so that the contrast between them is striking. Samuel Johnson defined discordia concors as “a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of resemblances in things apparently unlike.”