American literature

American literature Fill in the blanks

1. The iambic foot is the most commonly used foot in English poetry, in which an unstressed syllable comes first, followed by a stressed syllable. 2. The two-line stanza form is called the couplet, the best known being the heroic couplet which is written in iambic pentameter with an end rhyme.

3. An anapestic foot is made up of two unstressed and one stressed syllables, with the two unstressed syllables in front. 4. American achievements in the short story have demanded international respect and admiration for more than a century and a half. The first successful American short stories came from Washing Irving in the early 19th century.

5. Edgar Allan Poe is generally thought of as the true beginner of the short stories because he was the first writer who formulated a poetics of short stories.

6. In the 20th century, they have been many who have won fame abroad as well as in the US for their stories: Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter and dozens of others.

7. Modern literature fiction has been dominated by two forms: the novel and the short story. 8. Washing Irving, the Father of American Literature, developed the short story as a genre in American literature.

9. A dactylic foot is made up of one stressed and two unstressed syllables, with the stressed in front.

10. Among the members of small band of Jamestown settlers was Captain John Smith, an English soldier of fortune, whose reports of exploration, published in the early 1600s, have been described as the first distinct American literature written in English.

11. The term “Puritan” was applied to those settlers who originally were devout members of the Church of England. 12. Harvard College was established in 1636, with a printing press set up nearly in 1639. 13. The first permanent English settlement in North American was established at Jamestown, Virginia. 14. John Smith published 8 books in all. 15. The American poets who emerged in the seventeenth century adapted the style of established European poets to the subject matter confronted in strange, new environment; Anne Bradstreet was one such poet.

16. “The History of New England” is a priceless gift John Winthrop left us.

17. Many Puritan wrote verse, but the work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry.

18. Before his death, Jonathan Edwards had gained a position as American first systematic philosopher.

19. At the initial period the spread of ideas of American Enlightenment largely due to journalism. 20. Franklin’s best writing is found in his masterpiece “Autobiography”.

21. Thomas Paine, with his natural gift for pamphleteering and rebellion, was appropriately born into an age of revolution.

22 Philip Freneau has been called the “Father of American Poetry”.

23. In American literature, the eighteenth century was an Age of Reason and Revolution. 24. In the early 19th century Rip Van Winkle had established Washington Irving’s reputation at home and abroad, and designated the beginning of American Romanticism. 25. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first book in 1836 “Nature” brought American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England Transcendentalism. 26. In 1828, Noah Webster published his “An American Dictionary of the English Language”. 27. Edgar Allan Poe’s poems have the musical quality and romantic beauty “The Raven” is his best-known poem.

28. The Civil War of 1861-1865 ended in the defeat of the southerners and the abolition of slavery. 29. “ Leaves of Grass”, either in content or form, is an epoch-making work in American literature; its democratic content marked the shift from Romanticism to Realism and its free verse from broke old poetic conventions to open a new road for American poetry.

30. Washington Irving was regarded as the first great prose stylist of American romanticism. 31. In Washing Irving’s work “The sketch Book” appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature. 32. In 1823 Cooper James Fenimore wrote “The Pioneers”, the first of the five novels that make up “The Leather-Stocking Tales”. The remaining four books: “The Last of Mohicans”(1826), “The Prairie” (1827), “The Pathfinder” (1840), and “The Deerslayer” (1841), continue the story of Natty Bumppo, one of the most famous characters in American fiction.

33. Washington Irving was the first American to achieve an international literary reputation after the Revolutionary War.

34. Herman Melvile is famous for writing stories about the sea and the islands of the Southern Pacific. In his master piece “Moby Dick”, he tells a story of whaling voyage which is set a symbolic account of the conflict between man and his fate.

35. The first important American novelist was James Fenimore Cooper. 36. James Fenimore Cooper’s novel “The Spy” was a rousing tale about espionage against the British during the Revolution War.

37. “To A Wonderful” is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant called by an eminent English critic “the most perfect brief poem in the language”.

38. Among William Cullen Bryant’s most important later works are his translations of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” into English blank verse.

39. Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells” is perhaps the best example of onomatopoeia in the English language.

40. Ralph Waldo Emerson was responsible for bringing Transcendentalism to New England. 41. Hester Prynne is the heroine in Hawthorne’s novel “The Scarlet Letter”.

42. In “I Hear American Singing”, Walt Whitman depicts the beauty of labor and laborers.

43. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Amy Lowell are only two American poets commemorated in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

44. The American Romantic Period stretches from the end of 18th century through the outburst of the Civil War. 45. Herman Melville’s world classic novel “Moby Dick” was dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, a novelist.

46. By 1875, American writers were moving toward realism in literature. We can see this in the true-to-life descriptions Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, Hamlin Garland.

47. Edward Bellamy wrote the most famous American “Utopian” novel, Looking Backward,

2002-1887. In this novel, a man goes to sleep and wakes up in the year 2000 and finds an entirely new society which is better than his own.

48. As one of American’s first and foremost realists and humorists, Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, usually wrote about his own personal experiences and things he knew about firsthand experiences.

49. At the heart of Mark Twain’s achievement is his creation of two characters: “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn”. 50. Stephen Crane, the first American naturalist, was not much influenced by the scientific approach. He was a genius with amazing sympathy and imagination.

51. In “The Red Badge of Courage”, Stephen Crane’s greatest novel, the accident of war makes a young man seem to be a hero. War changes men into animals. In the view of author, good and bad, hero and coward are merely matters of chance, of fate.

52. Hamlin Garland developed a writing method which he called “veritism” (meaning truth). He described people, places and events in a careful and factual manner.

53. Henry James’s most mature, and perhaps his best, novels are considered to be his last three: “The Golden Bowl”, “The Ambassadors”, and “The Wings of the Dove”. 54. Dresier’s great novel, “An American Tragedy”, reveals a last stage in his thinking; social consciousness.

55. Imagism is poetic movement of England and The United States, which flourished from 1908 to 1917. 56. Ezra Pound is generally considered the leader of the imagist movement.

57. “The Waste Land” by T.S.Eliot is regarded as a central text of modernism. It is said to catch precisely the state of culture and society after World War I and graphically illustrate the spiritual poverty of the West of that time.

58. The author of “The Far Field”, and “The North American Sequence” is Theodore Rothke. 59 The author of “Howl” is Allen Ginsberg. 60.The author of “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law”, “Storm Warnings”, “Orion” is Adrienne Rich. 61. The term “the lost generation” stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, “You are all a lost generation.”

62. Antagonist is a character in a story or poem who deceives, frustrates, or works again the main character.

63. Allusion is a reference in a literary work to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature.

64. Foreshadowing refers to hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story. 65. “The Hamlet”, “The Town” and “The Mansion” by William Faulkner compose “The Snopes Triilogy” about the rising bourgeoisies.

66. Of all the plays that O’ Neill Wrote, most of them are tragedies, dealing with the basic issues of human existence and predicament such as life and death.

67. Eugene O’ Neil is the American playwright who won the Nobel Prize in 1936. 68. A kind of drama representing some action in which serious and comic scenes are blended is called tragicomedy. 69. The Harlem Renaissance took form and the focal fate for the movement would be 1925 when the black scholar Alain Locke published an anthology of current work entitled “The New Negro”:

An Interpretation.

70. African American literature attained to a higher degree of maturity in 1952 when Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” appeared in print, which tells an archetypal existential story of nameless protagonist-narrator of modern times.

71. Toni Morrison is the second American woman writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. She is no doubt the best and most representative of the contemporary African American writers. 72. The “Joy Luck Club” by Chinese American woman writer Amy Tan examines the relationships between four Chinese-born women and their American–born daughters.

73. “Snow White” by Donald Barthelme is a parody of Walt Disney’s film version of the fairy tale by Jacob Grimm. In the novel the innocent Snow White becomes a vulgar housewife who keeps promiscuous relations with seven dwarfs.

74. The American postmodern writer who wrote in both Russian and English is Vladimir Nabokov.

Decide whether they are True or False.

F Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin are two sources of American literature spirit. (Walt Whitman and Benjamin Franklin)

F Walt Whitman introduced great innovations to American literature, and he devised a poetic style, free verse. (one of the innovators)

F Emily Dickinson’s poems are usually lone, exploring the inner life of the individual. (short) F Stephen Crane is famous for his writings about American living in Europe.

F As a Jewish writer, Saul Bellow focused on Jewish characters and social problems. (but also bring a distinctively Jewish sense of humor to their novels.)

T Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” is representative work of the beat Generation”.

T Alice Walker was passionate about the civil rights movement and the women’s movement, and “The Color Purple” is her masterpiece.

F America’s most renowned playwright is Tennessee Williams, and his plays are highly experimental in form and style. (Eugene O’ Neil)

Multiple Choices

1 Edgar Allan Poe wrote which are marvels of beauty and craftsmanship such as___B___. A. I Hear America Singing B. The Raven

C. To a Waterfowl D. The Fall of the House of Usher

2 The common thread throughout American literature has been the emphasis on the__C___. A. Revolutionism B. Reason

C. Individualism D. Rationalism

3 Thomas Jefferson’s attitude, that is, a firm belief in progress, and the pursuit of happiness, is typical of the period we now call___B___

A. Age of Evolution B. Age of Reason C. Age of Romanticism D. Age of Regionlism

4 Mark Twain created, in___A___, a masterpiece of American realism that is also one of the great books of world literature.

A. Huckleburry Finn B. Tom Sawyer C. The man That Corrupted Hadleybury D. The Gulded Age