AMERICAN STUDIES Your Exam Will Take Place in Room:______

AMERICAN STUDIES Your Exam Will Take Place in Room:______

AMERICAN STUDIES Your exam will take place in room:______.

MIDYEAR EXAM REVIEW

The Midyear Exam will take place Tuesday, January 21 from _____ to ______. The exam consists of multiple choice questions and a multi-paragraph response. You should familiarize yourself with the following terms:

Literary Movements:

Puritanism

Romanticism

Dark Romanticism

Transcendentalism

Regionalism/Realism

Naturalism

Literary Devices:

allusion

tone

irony

foreshadow

alliteration

theme

mood

metaphor

simile

imagery

personification

parts of an essay: MI, DIs, DDs, Analysis, RFS

connotation

apostrophe

paradox

blank verse

free verse

sonnet

conflict

symbol

narrative

PLEASE NOTE:

Your reading packet is an important part of your preparation for the exam. You MAY highlight, underline, and take notes on this packet. You MAY NOT define any of the above literary eras, literary terms, or rules of grammar anywhere within the packet. All packets will be collected at the end of the exam and reviewed. If any definitions or rules are found within your packet, you will receive a ZERO on the midyear exam, as this constitutes cheating (see p. 19 in the Student Handbook).

Your reading packet is available for you to print from Edmodo or the class website. As you may use this packet on the exam, it is STRONGLY recommended you bring it to the exam. If you do not bring your reading packet to the exam, you must take the exam without it.If you use an exam packet during the test, the exam packet MUST be returned with the rest of the testing materials at the end of the exam on Tuesday, January 21st or you will receive a ZERO on the midyear exam.

How do I prepare?

  • Please read and annotate the selections in your reading packet.
  • Review Class Notes
  • Please review the following notes:

A Review of the Story of American Literature

Puritanism:

  • Sought refuge from persecution in England
  • Strict
  • Hard-working
  • Unified to protect themselves against a hostile environment
  • Believed in predestination and the lowliness of the human condition
  • Had no process for forgiveness of sins

Romanticism (1800-1860):

5 I’s of Romanticism: intuition, imagination, innocence, inspiration from nature, inner experience

an emphasis on imagination as a key to revealing the innermost depths of the human spirit

a great interest in the picturesque and exotic aspects of the past

an enthusiasm for portraying national life and character

the celebration of the beauty and mystery of nature

a focus on the individual

a fascination with the supernatural and the gothic

a sense of idealism and innocence

Romantic heroes are young, innocent, close to nature, and fighting for justice and goodness

Characteristics of the Dark Romantics:

  • exploration of the conflict between good and evil
  • interest in the psychological effects of guilt and sin
  • emphasis on madness and derangement of the human psyche
  • preoccupation with death, dying, illness, darkness, horror, and sorrow

Transcendentalism (1840-1860):

  • a refinement of Romanticism
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
  • people are basically good
  • people can go to nature to commune with the Over Soul

Realism (1860-1915):

  • influenced by Civil War
  • Americans sought truth in observations about real life as real people lived it.
  • reaction to Romanticism (no longer believed in the unrealistic Romantic Hero)

Naturalism (1860-1915):

  • Grim outlook on life
  • Man is alone in a hostile universe
  • Man is a victim of heredity, society, and nature

Regionalism (1860-1915):

  • Civil War had brought people together from the far reaches of the Union, and it whetted the appetites of American readers for more literature about their countrymen.
  • Sought to capture the customs, speech, dress, mannerisms, and values of different regions of the country.

A Review of Story Convention from Your Study of American Literature

Conflict:

a struggle between two forces.

  • Internal conflict- struggle between 2 forces within a character’s mind
  • External conflict- struggle between 2 people (man vs. man), struggle between a person and a society, struggle between a person and nature, struggle between a person and a machine or between a person and the supernatural. \

Symbolism:

something that represent itself and represents something meaningful in the story.

  • symbols can be universal- they have meaning which transcends the text; meanings exist prior to the author’s use of them in the text.

Example: the earth suggests maternity, fertility, nourishment, eternity.

  • symbols can be contextual- gain meaning from the way that they are used in the work.

Things to look for when you read:

  • a person can be a symbol
  • a place can be a symbol
  • an object can be a symbol
  • an action or experience can be a symbol
  • Be observant- if the subject is seemingly insignificant, but it is repeated, then it might be symbolic!
  • Avoid over indulgence in interpreting symbol. Remember: sometimes a river is just a river. To help you avoid this, try to state your interpretation in a single sentence.
  • Finally, because symbols can guide us to the theme of a work, recognizing and analyzing them can lead us to an insightful interpretation of the novel.

Tone:

attitude a writer takes towards the subject of a work, the characters in it, or the audience.

To find tone, please complete the following steps:summarizethe details and images in a passage, think about the connotations of words: is a certain emotion repeated?, think about if the syntax, sentence structure and length, confirms your guess about the emotion of the passage (short sentences are happy, angry, or excited; long sentences are sad or mellow). If the syntax supports your guess, then you have identified the tone. Tone is connected to theme, and identifying tone will enrich your understanding of the themes of a work.

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