P.R Practice Test Flashcards
Some explanations from Practice Test answers I found unfamiliar
The more important four muses
Erato: Lyric poetry
Calliope: Epic poetry
Thalia: Comedy
Melpomene: Tragedy
Person who suggested Alexander Pope(1688-1744) write [Rape of the Lock(1712)]
John Caryll
Vignette
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Heroic Couplet
Rhymes aabbcc.
Iambic pentameter.
Doesn’t have to be heroic in content.
Enjambed line
The meaning runs on to the next line.
Ex) “Say, what strange motive Goddess! could compel”
[tour de force]
Technical virtuosity in a work of art - Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” uses enjambment to give speaker voice a natural quality.
A meaning of “vouchsafe”
To grant - as with condescension - permit. Deign.
Symbolist Movement
late 19th cen. phenomenon of French origin. Yeats is a good example.
Usage of “sweetness and light” in Jonathan Swift’s [Battle of the Books]
Quality and beneficial values of classical literature (“Hellenism”)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s categories of imagination
Primary imagination: artistic inspiration
Secondary imagination: occurs only when one is conscious of the fact of imagining something
Author of [Prometheus Bound]
Aeschylus. His version of the myth is used in [Prometheus Bound] by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Two variations of Prometheus myth
Sometimes he is the one that created men from clay.
Pandora is sent to Prometheus’ brother to release evil into the world.
Poetic Inversion
inverting the customary order of words
Creator of Achilles’ armor
Hephaistos had to make it twice due to Patroclus wearing it then dying, leaving it to Hector.
Creator of Parthenon
Athenians
Cause of Trojan War
Primarily Zeus, because he ordered Thetis (who was prophesied to bear a son that would be greater than his father) to marry Peleus, an old human king. The marriage celebration (held by Zeus) involved Eris.
Reference to Daedalus
James Joyce’s narrator in [A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man] and also a character in [Ulysses]
Creator of the Trojan Horse
Epeius, a Greek craftsman
Reaction to J. M. Synge’s [The Playboy of the Western World(1907)]
Despite poetic richness, protest due to morally unflattering portrayal of Irish working class (even though he was Irish himself).
W. B. Yeat’s contribution to Irish theater
Helped found Irish National Theater Company. Was one of the directors of Abbey Theater in Dublin.
W. B. Yeats [The Countess Cathleen(1892)]: Content
Dramatization of an Irish fable about people who sell their souls to get food during a famine.
Seán O’Casey [The Plough and the Stars(1926)]: Content and Reaction
Irish nationalism and poverty was theme. Again caused outrage for unidealized vision of Irish “folk”.
Oscar Wilde(1854-1900) [Salomé(1891)]: Content
“bring me the head of John the Baptist”
“Dance of Seven Veils”
Humanist Critic concern
Relation of the work to the moral universe.
Matthew Arnold is 19th cen. example of classical humanist. Irving Babitt was more dogmatic (saw art as primarily a moral/educational function)
Mikhail Bakhtin(1895-1975): Intro
Little known in the West until mid 1970s.
Novel is characterized by play of the microlanguages within a language(language of farmer battle with language of the farmer, language of irony battle with language of sincerity).
“heteroglossia”
Heteroglossia
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Jonathan Harker
Character whose diaries^letters narrate Bram Stoker(1847-1912)’s [Dracula(1897)]. The line “children of the night” comes from the book.
Natty Bumppo
Main character of James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851)’s [Leather-Stocking Tales(1823-1841)].
Also called “Deerslayer” “Hawkeye” “Leather-stocking”. Nature lover and a crack shot who always does the righteous.
Charles Dickens(1812-1870) [David CopperField(1850)]: Synopsis
Partly autobiographical.
Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, Uriah Heep
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Saul Bellow(1915-2005) [The Adventures of Augie March(1953)]: Content
Coming-of-age novel set in depression-era Chicago
People that dramatized Mephistopheles
Christopher Marlowe(1564-1593), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe(1749-1832), Thomas Mann(1875-1955)
Narrator of [The Thousand and One Arabian Nights]
Scheherazade
First narrator of Emily Brontë(1818-1848) [Wuthering Heights(1847)]
Mr. Lockwood
Robert Browning(1812-1889) “Caliban upon Setebos” Characteristic:
Caliban monologues about Setebos, a deity Caliban and Sycorax worship.
Pen name of Charles Lamb
Elia
What work is Bigger Thomas of
Richard Wright(1908-1960)’s [Native Son(1940)]
Richard Wright(1908-1960)’s [Black Boy(1945)]: Content
autobiographic.
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Balanced Stanza
rhymes abcb.
Ottava Rima
rhymes abababcc. “eight rhyme” in Italian. Differentiate from “octave”.
Rhyme Royal
rhymes ababbcc. Seven lines.
Edith Wharton(1862-1937) [The House of Mirth(1905)]: Content and style
Lily Bart in New York City.
Elaborate, delicate, interior style.
Elizabeth Gaskell(1810-1865) [North and South(1854)]: Content
Portrayal and outcry against social conditions in 19th cen. industrialization
Details of James Joyce(1882-1941) [Dubliners(1914)] “The Dead”
Gabriel
Dublin at Christmas c. 1900
Joseph Conrad(1857-1924) “Youth(1898)”: Content
A seafaring youth encounters ordeal and loves it.
Carson McCullers(1917-1967) [The Ballad of the Sad Cafe(1951)]: Content
American southern gothic writer
Chaos wrought on a woman when her cousin Lymon Willis(dwarf, deformed, charismatic) enters her world
D. H. Lawrence(1885-1930) “The Odour of Chrysanthemums(1909)”: Content
A woman waits her husband to return from the mines but he has died in a cave-in. He was separated from her in life and it has hardly changed.
Henry James(1843-1916) [The Aspern Papers(1888): Content
The unsuccessful attempts of a biographer of a dead poet(Jeffrey Aspern, fictionalized Byron) to get some papers from the poet’s former mistress and her homely daughter. Set in Venice. The biographer at first inadvertently and then intentionally encourages the daughter’s infatuation with him to get the papers.
Dante’s Beatrice
A Florentine woman who in Alighieri Dante(1265-1321)’s [Paradiso] acts as his guide. A dramatization of their “love at first sight” is in Vita Nuova(1294)
Leda’s offspring
Clytemnestra (who kills Agamemnon)
Helen
Castor and Pollux (twins)
simile
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Prospopoeia
A personified object has human qualities and also speaks
Transitive/Intransitive Verbs
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Who killed Medusa?
Perseus
Imogen
Character from William Shakespeare(1564-1616)’s [Cymbeline(1623)] who is embodiment of goodness.
William Shakespeare(1564-1616) [Cymbeline(1623)]: Synopsis
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Aristophanes(446-386 BC): Works
Euripides [Medea]: Content
A woman is ungratefully abandoned by lover Jason. She kills his bride-to-be, the bride’s father Creon, and the children fathered by Jason… and gets away with it.
Eugene O’Neill(1888-1953) [Mourning Becomes Electra(1931)]
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Racine(1639-1699) [Phaedra(1677)]
Racine was master of French neoclassical theater
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August Strindberg(1849-1912)
Modern, doesn’t draw from classical sources
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George Chapman(1559-1634): Intro
An early translator of the Greeks
Hanuman
Hindu monkey god
Important People that effected Enlightenment
Voltaire
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Heroic Stanza (not Heroic Verse)
rhymes abab. Four line, usually iambic pentameter.
Ballad Stanza (not to be confused with Heroic Stanza)
abcb, but many exceptions.
Gwendolyn Brooks(1917-2000)
Poet
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Nikki Giovanni (1943-)
Poet
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Lorraine Hansberry(1930-1965)
Dramatist
[A Raisin in the Sun(1959)] title refers to Langston Hughes’ poem.
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Mary Queen of Scots
Catholic
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Queen Isabella (of Ferdinand and Isabella)
Catholic
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Margery Kempe(1373-1438)
After a long marriage in which she bore several children, devoted life to Christ, wandered through Europe proselytizing for Church.
[The Book of Margery Kempe(1501)]
Mary Rowlandson(1637-1711)
[The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson(1682)]
Sarah Orne Jewett(1849-1909)
[The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896)] Quiet and lyrical.
Transition period for Late Old English and Middle English
13th cen.
[The Gilgamesh Epic]
At least 1500 years older than [The Iliad]. Like Beowulf(hero must battle supernatural monsters)
[The Niebelungenlied(13th cen.)]
Main character is Siegfried. Romances, marriages, wars, betrayals, murders that happen with treasure Niebelung. William Morris(1834-1896) [Sigurd the Volsung(1876)] uses an earlier version of the legend
Eudora Welty(1969-2001)
Southern gothic writer, often comments on religious preoccupation. Not as extreme as O’Connor.
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Willa Cather(1873-1947)
Associated with West and Midwest.
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Nadine Gordimer(1923-2014)
South African novelist
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May Sarton(1912-1995)
New England poet, novelist, diarist.
Ben Jonson(1572-1637) [Volpone: The Fox(1606)]
In Venice. Volpone(fox) and his confederate Mosca(fly) attempt to cheat everyone, especially Volpone’s heirs. Mosca tries to blackmail Volpone and Volpone reveals their scheming ways to the authorities.
What did Henry Fielding satirize about Samuel Richardson?
Telling people how to live
Ptolemaic model
Stars and other heavenly bodies are fixed upon nested spheres that rotate about the earth
(eventually replaced by heliocentric model of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo)
Jamesian
baroque sentence structure
hesitation, consideration. possibilities envisioned and discarded
Countee Cullen(1903-1946)
Traditional, academic verse. Part of Harlem Renaissance.
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Paul Laurence Dunbar(1872-1906)
Used idioms of black speech in his verse.
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Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)
Born LeRoi Jones.
Poet, playwright, novelist, belles-lettrist.
[Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note(1961)]: Poetry collection
[The Dutchman(1964)]: Play
[Blues People(1963)]: Study of jazz
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
“no ideas but in things”
[Paterson(1946)]: hometown Paterson, New Jersey. WCW practiced medicine here.
Ted Hughes(1930-1998): Intro
Was married to Sylvia Plath(1932-1963)
Poet laureate of Britain.
Unflinching investigation of darker human nature (people portrayed as beasts.), contemporary style
“Crow(1970)”
Jack London(1876-1916)
U.S. novelist, activist, journalist.
William Dean Howells(1837-1920): Intro
Saw literature as potentially injurious.
Edited at [Harper’s] [Atlantic Monthly] magazines.
Realist technique in fiction, socialist politics, crusty moralizing.
Djuna Barnes (1892-1982)
Modernist writer
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F. Scott Fizgerald(1896-1940): Works
[This Side of Paradise(1920)]
[The Great Gatsby(1925)]
[Tender is the Night(1934)]
John Bunyan(1628-1688): Work other than [Pilgrim’s Progress(1678)]
[Grace Abounding for the Chief of Sinners(1666)]
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Walter Pater(1839-1894)
A serious writer
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky(1821-1881) [Notes from the Underground(1864)]: Content
Bitter, sensitive, hypochondriacal, anonymous narrator is alienated from society
Rainer Maria Rilke(1876-1925) [The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge(1910)]: Notes
Series of nearly autobiographical spiritual musings.
“object poems” - describing physical objects in a way that eliminates distance between observer and observed.
Albert Camus(1913-1960) [The Stranger(1942)]: Content
Seemingly disaffected, matter-of-fact narrator. Starts with death of narrator’s mother. Center event is seemingly motiveless killing of a stranger on a beach and the trial.
