in medias res:
- Used in epic poems, means in the midst of.
- Starts in the middle of the story and flashes back to the beginning and then goes back to the present to finish the story.
- The Odyssey: The story begins with Odysseus on Calypso's island we find out how he
� Dramatic irony:
- when something of greater significance than the characters know is happening. The audience/reader knows but the character does not.
- Odysseus's disguise when he meets the suitors. The audience knows that it is Odysseus, but not the suitors so his words
� Penelope
- Wife of Odysseus in the Odyssey
- Constantly wooed by suitors. Remained faithful to her husband and tricked the suitors (weaving promise).
- Was tested multiple times by Odysseus because of Agamemnon's story.
- Penelope also tested Odysseus by asking th
Prospero
- from the Tempest and was formally a Duke in Italy, but was usurped by his brother
- After trying to take back his throne he was sent to an island.
- he used magic books and Ariel, whom he rescued from a witch but was now holding captive, to create a sto
Satan
- was featured in Milton's Paradise lost.
- leader of the rebellious angels against God.
- was able to change forms throughout the story and work his way to Hell.
- His plan for revenge against God, was to corrupt God's newly formed human race. Satan does
� Argus
- Odysseus' faithful dog.
- Waits for twenty years for Odysseus to return home.
- After the dog recognizes Odysseus through his disguise, it rolls over and dies.
- The dog is old and worn, representing the state of Odysseus's kingdom.
- Example of a domes
� Creon
- Brother of the late queen of Thebes.
- Captain-General of the army and successor to the throne in Sophocles' Antigone.
- Main Character and his tragic flaw is his hubris - his pride.
- Passes law that doesn't let Antigone bury Polynices and therefore he
� Divine Comedy:
- title of the epic poem written by Dante.
- Allegorical vision of the afterlife.
- Contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
- Surface representation of Dante's quest, deeper meaning of soul's journey to God.
- Centered on the Trinity of Christ through
Tragic Flaw
- Defining sin that leads to a characters downfall.
- Antigone: Creon's tragic flaw was hubris, which lead to the death/suicide of his family and he was left with nothing.
- Aeneid: Dido's tragic flaw was her love for Aeneis which lead to her committing s
� Virgil:
- Ancient Roman poet - sometimes ranked as best.
- Known for his three major works of Latin Literature.
- Writes the Aeneid, the national epic of ancient Rome in 25 years.
- In Dante's Inferno, Virgil guides Dante on his quest.
- He represents Human Renow
� Soliloquy:
- One character on the stage speaking their mind.
- They share and describe their inner motivations to the audience.
- Only major characters have soliloquys.
� Blank Verse:
- normal metric, unrhymed writing.
- known as iambic pentameter.
- Much of Shakespeare, including the tempest, is written in blank verse.
- Paradise lost is also written in blank verse.
Contrapasso
- refers to the punishment of a defining sin that is comparable to the defining sin.
- Paolo and Francesca who constantly desire to be with each other but cannot.
- Bertran de Born was decapitated for his political sins and decapitation of the head of the
� Globe Theatre:
- Theatre in England built by Shakespeare's playing company: The lord Chamberlain's men.
- Was destroyed by fire and then rebuilt.
- Most of Shakespeare's plays were preformed here.
- Competed with the Bear Baiting Pits.
- Opened 1599.
� Beatrice:
- "Blessed One" - Dante's love that he bases his great Christian poem Inferno off of.
- Dante only see's Beatrice twice in his life but he runs away both times.
- She eventually marries a banker and dies.
- In the Inferno, Beatrice represents divine under
� Candide:
- Main character of Voltaire's Candide.
- name means "White" in latin and he exemplifies innocence by being na�ve, blindly faithful, and trusting in his actions.
- He is the son of the Baron's sister, and is banished for kissing his love Cunegonde.
- Has
� Modernism:
- Modern thought, character, or action.
- Takes a direct look at where we are culturally.
- Illustrated in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets in how Eliot takes what is in the natural world, fragments it, and then rebuilds it in a way such as to disorient the rea
� Burnt Norton:
- The First of Eliot's Four Quartets.
- Named for a ruined country house in Gloucestershire.
- Concerned with time as an abstract principle.
- Theme of regret and looking back.
- Represents element of air.
� East Coker:
- The second of Eliot's Four Quartets.
- Named after a village in Somerset, England where his grandfather immigrated from.
- Concerned with the place of man in the natural order and the idea of renewal.
- represents element of Earth.
� Dry Salvages:
- The Third of Eliot's Four Quartets.
- Named after a group of small, rocky islands with a lighthouse off the coast of Massachusetts.
- Concerned with humanity as a whole as an entity with a unified subconsciousness and memory.
- represents element of Wat
� Little Gidding:
- The Fourth of Eliot's Four Quartets.
- Named after a 17th century Anglican monastery.
- place where the problems of time and human fallibility are resolved.
- Idea of stopping and taking stock of things.
- represents element of Fire.
� Satire:
- use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule and the like to expose or denounce vice and folly.
- Used throughout Voltaire's Candide to make fun of the philosophy of optimism.
Pangloss
- In Voltaire's Candide, Pangloss is Candide's mentor and a philosopher.
- Responsible for the idea that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
- Parody of Enlightenment thinkers.
� Objective Correlative:
- Literary technique of representing or evoking a particular emotion by using symbols that objectify that emotion.
- Used by T.S. Eliot to express emotion in his poems.
� Victor Frankenstein:
- Discoverer of the secret of life and creator of the "Monster" in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.
- Spends most of the novel trying to destroy his creation.
- Shelly reveals through Victor how science is a morally destructive force.
� Robert Walton:
- Captain of a ship in the North Pole that gets trapped in ice. - In Shelly's Frankenstein, Robert Walton listens to Victor Frankenstein tell the story of his life.
- Walton's letters to his sister form a frame around the main narrative.
� Romanticism:
- Literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe.
- Was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms.
- Idea of capturing and representing the sublime.
- Illustrated in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein through Victor who is
� Invisibility:
- In Ellison's Invisible Man, the main character is invisible because that is how the people around him and the society sees him.
- not actually see-through, but rather a collection of stereotypes rather than an actual person.
- main character is also inv
� Grandfather:
- main character's grandfather in the Invisible Man.
- Calls the main character to his bedside as he is dying and tells him a flawed philosophy in terms of how to deal with white oppression.
- main character struggles with his grandfather's idea of "overc
� Louis Armstrong:
- Mentioned in Ellison's Invisible Man.
- main character is depicted listening to Louis Armstrong's jazz recordings at top volume in his secret home.
- Main character states that the power of the music is in its ability to change one's sense of time.
- Im
� Brotherhood:
- political organization in Ralf Ellison's Invisible Man that allegedly works to help the socially oppressed.
- really the Communist Party of America subliminally stated by Ellison.
- The narrator joins them and is betrayed by them in the end (Brother Jac
� Battle Royal:��
- Barbaric battle or "Smoker" that the narrator is forced to take part in in the Invisible Man.
- The colored men are blindfolded and placed in a ring to box each other.
- scene shows how the men watching view the African Americans not as humans, but anim
� Ras the Exhorter:
- Ras the Exhorter, Later called Ras the Destroyer in Ellison's Invisible Man, embodies the narrator's fears about the future of the civil rights battle in America.
- He is a passionate black nationalist and has immense charisma and god-like power in the
� Solzhenitsyn:
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
- was a Russian writer and activist.
- writings were aimed at raising global awareness of the gulag and the soviet union.
� Stalin:
- Joseph Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 to his death. - Although mentioned once in passing in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich as the "old man in the mustache," the novel is very clearly against Stalin and the society he contro
� Gulag:
- A type of prison that existed in the Soviet Union that dehumanized its prisoners.
- Millions of people were sent to Gulags and forced into labor for things like practicing a certain religion, speaking out against the government, ect.
- Solzhenitsyn writ
� Shukhov:
- Shukhov is the title prisoner of the novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
- He is poor, a peasant, and more than likely illiterate.
- His name, Ivan, is one of the most common in Russia, and as such he exemplifies the "common" Russian man.
- In
� Stream-Of-Consciousness:
- a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought process.
- used by Elison in Invisible Man.
- We enter into the mind of the narrator and hear his unfiltered thoughts in thi
Realism
- a literary and artistic movement created in response to the Romantic movement
- focused with portraying reality as it is, often with a bleak outlook.
- Dominated literature from the 1850s through the early 20th century.
- Ivan D and Invisible Man