Key Terms for English Final
Terms
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- How many poems did Emily Dickinson write?
- 1775
- What was the narrator's problematic notion of charity in Bartleby?
- The problem was that the narrator befriended Bartleby to boost his self confidence.
- Constitution
- A written or unwritten system of principles & laws governing society.
- Oral Tradition
- The process of passing down sayings, songs, tales, and myths from one generation to the next by word of mouth.
- Journals
- An individual's day-by-day account of events and personal reactions.
- History
- A factual account of events in the life or development of a people, nation, institution, or culture. Usually subjective; an individual's perspective.
- Narrative
- A story told in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama. Writing that tells a story. Is told by a storyteller (called a narrator).
- Lyric Poetry
- Brief poems that express the writer's personal feelings and thoughts.
- Meaning of Bartleby
- Cultural/social critique on materialsim of the time period.
- Emily Dickinson's Style
- Unconventional use of punctuation, brevity in poetry; use of figurative language.
- Over-Soul
- Transcendentalist belief that all forms of being are spiritually united through a shared soul.
- Charity in Bartleby
- The narrator viewed charity in terms of self-benefit; thought he was purchasing himself a place in heaven.
- Transcendentalism
- An American literary and philisophical movement in the 19th century.
- Transcendentalist Values
- Based in New England, believed human senses know only physical reality; fundamental truths of being lie outside of reach of senses, only can be found by intuition; believed human spirit reflected in nature.
- Personification
- A figure of speech in which a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics.
- Apostrophe
- A figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses an absent person, obeject or idea.
- Allegory
- A work of literature in which events, characters, detail of setting have symbolic meaning; example: character represents a principle.
- Poems by Dickenson
- Often struggled with questions of existence and death; sometimes poems had a deeper meaning, sometimes not.
- Walden Pond
- Thoreau lived here for two years alone to experience nature; used experiences to write Walden.
- Ambuguity
- Multiple meanings, often unclear.
- Anti-Transcendentalism
- A literary movement consisted of two writers; Melville and Hawthorne; focused on human limitations and potential for destructiveness.
- Anti-Transcendentalist (views of human nature)
- Humans have a great potential for evil and can be very destructive.
- Scrivener
- A copiest.
- Metaphor
- A figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of as though it were something else. Often a comparison between two things.
- Persuasion
- Is writing or speech that attempts to convince a reader to think or act in a particular way. Used in speeches by Patrick Henry, Thomas Pain, and Thomas Jefferson.
- Repetition
- The repeated use of any element of language--a sound, a word, a phrase, a clause, a sentence, a grammatical pattern, or a rhythmical pattern.
- Oratory
- Public speaking that is formal, persuasive, and emotionally appealing. (ex: Patrick Henry)
- Aphorisms
- A general truth or observation about life, usually stated conciselyand pointedly. Often wittyand wise statements.
- Autobiography
- Is a form of notification in which a person tells his or her own life story.
- Audience
- Very important to a text; greatly influences the style.
- Social Commentary/Cultural Critique
- When an author is critiquing society. (ex: Bartleby)
- Symbolism
- Was a literary movement during the 19th Century that influenced many poets of that time. Symbolism tried to express emotions by using a pattern of symbols.
- Tone
- The writer's attitude toward his or her subject, characters, or audience. Tone can be formal or informal, friendly or distant, personal or pompus.
- Empathy
- Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives.
- Figuative Language
- Is writing or speech not meant to be taken literally. It is used to express ideas in vivid and imaginative ways.
- Slave Narrative
- An autobiographical account of life as a slave. Often written to expose the horrors of human bondage, it documents a slave's experiences from his or her own point of view.
- Puritans
- English Protestants in colonial America; believed in simplification and strictness of religion.