Online Flash-Cards!

Flashcardexchange.com has flash cards for pretty much any subject you could imagine, but its cards for 'AP lit terms' have especially high ratings.

Here is the link for a set of digital flash cards that I liked:
http://www.flashcardexchange.com/flashcards/view/466521
When you get the this web-page, click the link that says 'Study', to access the cards. Very neat little site.

It's a very extensive set (102 card), with very basic terms (like irony, novella, narrator) as well as more challenging terms (like 'in medias res', euphony, frame story, cacophony, hubris)

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Poetry Term Quiz!

Famous-Poems.org has created an awesome little quiz to test our knowledge of poetry terms- such as Anaphora, Hyperbole, Idyll, Assonance, Alliteration, Epizuexis...and a kazillion other poetical terms that we either NEED to know, or would be IMPRESSIVE to use on the AP exam.

You should give it a try: http://www.famous-poems.org/quiz

I took the Poetry Terminology Quiz at Famous Poems.org

My results: Super Poetry Expert! My Score Average The average quiz taker scored 63%, while I scored a whopping 98%! How's that for a poetry expert?

Think you can do better? Head to the Famous Poems Library and Take the Quiz!

Renaissance: A Rebirth

During the Middle Ages, books were expensive and few people were even able to read. Those who were educated and literate, generally clergy men, ignored 'pagan' works by the romans and greeks and focused primarily on biblical texts.

The renaissance represented a break from the medieval pattern of thought. Economic prosperity and relative peace inspired a growth in literature and a rediscovering of ancient 'classical' texts. The idea that the church should only be conerned with people's spirituality and not their civic lives rose in popularity, and art flourished. Literature appearing this age of science and creation is considered to be part of the 'Renaissance Literary Movement'.

Major Influences:
* classic Greek and Roman literature * art and ideology of Italy * quattrocento architecture and symmetry * protestantism *

Reoccuring themes:
* the value of Chivalry * humanism vs. church * struggle for moral purity * freewill of men * search for 'truth' *

Common Literary Devices:
* symmetrical verse and metre * harmonic alliteration and rhyming * 'poems within poems', short, concise sections * Imagery and depictions of art *

Other Stylistic Devices:
* philosophy and ideology that reflected developing science of the period * love stories, or romantic dramas * tragic stories of struggling heroes *

Representative Poets and Authors:
* Shakespear * Christopher Marlowe * Edmund Spencer * Aemilia Lanyer * Mary Herbert * Sir Walter Ralegh *

Sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt

Some fowls there be that have so perfect sight

Again the sun their eyes for to defend;

And some because the light doth them offend

Do never 'pear but in the dark or night.

Other rejoice that see the fire bright

And ween to play in it, as they do pretend,

And find the contrary of it that they intend.

Alas, of that sort I may be by right,

For to withstand her look I am not able

And yet can I not hide me in no dark place,

Remembrance so followeth me of that face.

So that with teary eyen, swollen and unstable,

My destiny to behold her doth me lead,

Yet do I know I run into the gleed.

Augustan Literature

This movement draws its title from the Roman Emperor Augustus who ruled during the time of Virgil and Horace- two poets who heavily influenced writers in the eighteenth century. Augustan poets both held Virgil and Horace in high esteem, and said of the writing:

"Those rules of old discovered, not devised, Are nature still, but nature methodized."

Meaning, that roman epic poetry was the purest, natural, form of writing. However, at the same time they mocked that style and used exagerated versions of 'epic poetry' to create comedic satire and comment of current events and human nature. These parodies often mocked the achievements of men and the idea of ambition.

Major themes:

• Human Frailty
• Order in the universe
• The providential design of God
• Standards of human potential

Common Literary Devices:

• Satire, irony, and brevity
• Parody
• Allusions to Epic roman poetry
• Political commentary and Allegory
• Heroic couplets

Other Stylistic Devices and Characteristics:

• Mundane, or painfully ordinary, non-eventful, plots
• Mock Epic
• Criticism of the 'ambiguity' of Metaphysical poets
• Harmony and precision in diction and syntax

Well-known authors from the period:

• Alexander Pope
• John Dryden
• Johnathan Swift
• Joseph Addison