Review for Exam

Your exam will cover the following topics:

• Parts of Speech
• Usage and Agreement
• Capitalization and Punctuation
• The Paragraph
• The Essay
• American Literary Movements
• The American Literature Poems
• Ms. Found in a Bottle

Survey of American Literature II

Major Literary Movements

1. Colonial Period: 1607-1776
   • Between the founding of the first settlement at Jamestown to the beginning of the Revolution
   • Writings centered on religious, practical, or historical themes
   • Anne Bradstreet, William Bradford, Benjamin Franklin


2. Revolutionary Age: 1765-1790
   • Great documents of American history such as The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States
   • Writings centered on political themes
   • Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and James Madison


3. Early National Period: 1775-1828
   • Beginnings of truly "American" writing - poetry, themes, settings, and characters uniquely American
   • Phyllis Wheatley, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper


4. Romantic Period: 1825-1865
   • American Renaissance or the Age of Transcendentalism
   • Major form of literature was poetry although the novel was becoming increasingly popular
   • Romanticism - a world-wide movement - focused on ideals such as chivalry, love, and beauty
   • Focused on the supernatural
   • Transcendentalism - specifically American - focused our oneness with God and nature and relying on our natural instincts while responding negatively to established religion
   • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman


5. Realistic Period: 1865-1900
   • Following the Civil War
   • Realistic fiction was the major form of literature
   • Goal is to represent life as it really is so the characters and instances in the story are believable
   • Focused on the common and ordinary life
   • A reaction against Romanticism
   • Mark Twain


6. Naturalistic Period: 1900-1914
   • As a result of Darwinism, writers believed that their characters were only animals whose behaviors were based upon heredity and environment.
   • They tried to be scientifically objective and believed their writings were even more realistic than the writing of those during the Realistic Period
   • Stephen Crane and Jack London


7. American Modernist Period: 1914-1939
   • Experimented with subject matter, form, and style such as stream of consciousness
   • Subclasses include the jazz Age, The Harlem Renaissance, and The Lost Generation
   • Ends with The Great Depressions
   
   
   • F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck


8. Contemporary Period: 1939 to the present
   • Hard to define
   • Includes the following:
     • Beat Movement which focuses on anti-establishment and anti-traditional writing
     • Counterculture Writing which is an even more intense form of the Beat Movement
     • Postmodernism which is a reaction against modernistic thinking with an emphasis on relativism
   • Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Sylvia Plath, Arthur Miller, Zora Neal Hurston, Maya Angelou, John Irving

Sources:
Outline of American Literature - Chp 2
New England Transcendentalism
Literary Periods

Capitalization and Punctuation

Review of Capitalization

• Capitalize proper nouns (names of particular persons, places, and things). Some examples include the following:
  • Words referring to deity
  • Specific places such as continents or cities
  • Calendar Items
  • Brand names


• Capitalize words derived from proper nouns such as abbreviations or proper adjectives


• Capitalize titles when used before a name or when used as direct address
• Capitalize the pronoun I and the interjection O.
• Capitalize the first word of each line of poetry
• Capitalize the first word of a sentence or a direct quote

Review of Punctuation

• Commas
  • Between two independent clause when joined by a conjunction
  • When words have been omitted such as in a list or when two or more like adjectives are describing a noun
  • To separate nonessential elements from the rest of the sentence
  • To set off a modifying phrase at the beginning of the sentence or when it interrupts the sentence
  • After the day, the date, and year
  • After the street, the city, and the zip code of an address
  • The greeting and salutation of a business letter
• Quotes
  • Around a direct quote
  • Around the title of a small work such as a short story or poem
• Apostrophes
  • Form possessives
    • With an 's if singular
    • With an ' if plural and ending in s
    • With an 's if plural and not ending in s
  • Form contractions
  • Make letters and numbers plural
• Hyphens
  • Numbers between twenty and a hundred
  • When dividing a word at the end of the line
  • Compound adjectives before a noun
  • Fractions used as adjectives
  • Prefixes before a proper noun or adjective
  • With prefixes all-, ex-, self-, and with suffix -elect
• Italics or Underlining
  • Titles of larger works, ships, etc.
  • Words, letters, and numbers referred to as such
  • foreign words and phrases that are not accepted as English
• Dashes
  • Lists at the beginning or interrupting the sentence
  • Interrupted or faltering speech
• Parentheses
  • Confidential or confirmatory information
  • Information that is important but takes away from the meaning of the sentences so it is minimized with parentheses

When you're finished reviewing take your quiz.

Survey of American Literature

Today you are going to create a time line of major authors in American literature. Here is a well-laid out example of a timeline for you to look at. Do not use theirs, make your own. I am supplying you with a list of significant American authors in random order. For each author, you must write out their full name, their dates, and one major work. This is a project and will be counted for a grade, so be neat. Use colorful pictures or headings to make this look nice. These are the required authors:

1. John Steinbeck
2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
3. Emily Dickinson
4. John Irving
5. Herman Melville
6. Henry James
7. James Russel Lowell
8. Ernest Hemmingway
9. Henry David Thoreau
10. Ralph Waldo Emerson
11. Edgar Allen Poe
12. Tenessee Williams
13. Nathaniel Hawthorne
14. Mark Twain
15. James Fenimore Cooper
16. Arthur Miller
17. Phyllis Wheatley
18. Washington Irving
19. Zora Neale Hurston
20. Thomas Paine
21. Anne Bradstreet
22. Louisa May Alcott
23. Isaac Asimov
24. Sarah Orne Jewett
25. O. Henry
26. Edith Wharton
27. William Faulkner
28. Maya Angelou
29. Laura Ingalls Wilder
30. Jack London
31. F. Scott Fitzgerald
32. Flannery O'Connor

Feel free to add any other authors you think should be included. Place a star by the names of any authors you add. American Authors on the Web is a great source to use. It also provides you with many links to help you find out more about each author.

When you have finished your timeline, you will pick an author who has works posted on line and read one. Tell me what you read and what it was about by the time you leave.

Parts of Speech

This next quiz covers all eight parts of speech. Review your notes and the handouts you completed on Friday. Be extremely familiar with all eight parts of speech and be able to label them in sentences. When you are ready, click on Parts of Speech Quiz.

Adverbs

1. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
2. They answer the questions where, when, why, how, how often, to what extent, under what condition.
3. To find adverbs, first find your verb then ask your questions.
a. Phrases and clauses used as adverbs will usually be located near the word it modifies unless it's at the beginning of the sentence.
b. Not, never, n't are adverbs.
c. A common ending for adverbs is -ly.
4. The following phrases can be used as adverbs: infinitive and prepositional.
5. Adverb clauses will be introduced by subordinating conjunctions.
6. Elliptical clauses are clauses whose subjects and/or verbs have been omitted. Elliptical clauses often describe comparison words such as better or more.
7. The three degrees of comparison are positive, comparative, and superlative just like they were for adjectives.
8. After looking over these points, take your adverb quiz.

Adjectives

Review
1. Adjectives modify a noun or pronoun.
2. They answer the questions which one, what kind, how many, how much, whose.
3. Predicate adjectives are a complement that follows linking verbs and describe the subject.
4. Adjective phrases include prepositional, participial, and infinitive phrases.
5. Adjective clauses are introduced by relatives.
6. Three degrees of comparision: positive, comparative, superlative.
Click this link Adjective Quiz when you are ready.

Pronoun Quiz

Please visit the following link: Pronoun and Antecedent Quiz

Pronouns and Antecedents

We've been talking about pronouns for the past couple of days. Here are the highlights.
1. Pronouns take the place of a noun
2. Antecedents are the nouns the pronouns refer to
3. Pronouns and their antecedents must agree in gender and number
4. Verbs must agree in number with their pronoun subjects
5. Avoid vague or faulty pronoun reference
a. Ambiguous - pronoun can refer to one or more antecedent
b. Implied - the antecedent must be inferred from the text
c. Indefinite use of it, you, they
d. Broad - using this, that, which, it to refer to an idea or a clause rather than a definite antecedent