American Lit Final Exam 2025

Billy Collins - -1941- Present -NYC -Imagines poet and reader sitting together -Funny poems yet sad -No metaphysical structure -Taking off Emily Dickinsons clothes Billy Collins- Marginalia - -"Pardon the egg salad stains, I'm in love" -Having an active relationship with text Robert Frost - - -Born in California but identified with New England -Modernism -Clarity of his diction, colloquial rhythm -Simplicity of images and folksy speaking -Rejected modernist internationalism -Restored tradition of New England regionalism -Nature lyric (outer scene and psyche) -Played rhythms of ordinary speech against formal patterns of line and verse -Contained rhythms within traditional poetic forms Dramatic narratives. -Ideological descendant of 19th century (Am. Trans.) -Most tattooed American Poet Robert Frost- The Road Not Taken - --Many perceive the poem as having a certain "can do" individualism, self- reliance, self- assertion, sense of making a certain choice, "American" ideals -Poems complexity plays on the dialectic of the deeply embedded personal and national desire for individualism, control, and the rationale -Irony of the sigh Robert Frost- Mending Wall - --Placement of invitation with wall -Speaker is opponent of wall and neighbor "good fences make good neighbors" -Mocking devotion to tradition ("elves and spells:" inverted syntax) -Speaker identifies his anti tradition -Mending: narrators playful assertion that barriers are needed for freedom -To welcome but remind us of many view: signals multiplicity (invitation and reservation) -Political critique with literature dynamic (text's meaning changing over time) Robert Frost- Nothing Gold Can Stay - --Opens with two paradoxes ("Green is gold" and "Leaf's flower") Lit Lit -Ubiquitous, tradition on what nature can offer us -Series of Diminishment: nature experienced by spectacular to less spectacular -Fundament logic of transaction ("but only so an hour": emphasis on so) -Inevitability to fall, perfection is impossible -Direct, hard, end stop rhymes -Lack of enjambment: force of aphorism -Economical, taught, straight forward Robert Frost- Design - --Mentions a moth, spider, and flower - Rhyme scheme -Similes -Personification -Grotesque description of spider -Associating white with purity Gwendolyn Brooks - - -Kansas -Spent childhood residence on Chicago's segregated and poor South Side -Harlem Renaissance -African American poet -Passionate sense of language -Daring use of formal structure -Poetry belongs to African American community -White audience -Black experience and black rage -Started when seven (writing poetry) -Traditional lyric form -Strongly rhymed lines -Leader of black feminists Gwendolyn Brooks- Kitchenette Building - --Published in 1945 near the end of WWII and popular ideology and discourse of The American Dream -Enjambment, oxymoron, connotations with use of "giddy" -Associations of colors white and violet -Speaker describes life for residents of the kitchenette building as dreary and devoted to basic necessities rather than frills like dreaming -Dreaming described with bright colors and beautiful music creating different environment -Personification of a dream and creating extra line Thomas Payne - - -England -Rationalism -Supporter of Revolution (most persuasive rhetorician of the cause for independence) -Quaker father, Anglican mother -Journalist Lit Lit -Spokesman against slavery -Anonymous author of Common sense -Spokesman in French Revolution -Protested Prosecution of Henry XVI -Plainness in writings, no ceremonious expressions, clear conclusions Thomas Paine- Common Sense - --Filled with figurative language -Rhetoric appeal: art of using language effectively so as to persuade or influence others -Persuade readers to take action after reading the text, convince that everything is at stake -Sense of urgency, force of the rhetoric -Written as anonymous author -First published in 1776 -One of best selling pamphlets of all time -Extended Metaphor: "wound a young oak tree, it grows, becomes central to the tree, so posterity can read it in full lettering" -No transcendent extent in context Thomas Jefferson - - -Virginia -Rationalism -Passionate about liberating the human mind from tyranny imposed by state, church, and ignorance -Mastered Latin and Greek -President of Us. 1st secretary of state, minister to France, governor of Virginia, congressmen -Agrarian aristocrat Declaration of Independence - --Congress: talking to and about elite white men in the colonies. -Leaders thought they had been made second class citizens, and they should have power to control their own politics, economy and not be subordinate to king and Parliament. -Main causes for separation stated in Declaration: England had endangered prosperity of the colonies. Most causes are economic and political. -Opening clause: assumes all are "one people" -Choice of word "bands", more impersonal than "bonds" -"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Almost quoting John Locke, using his ideas from Enlightenment. -Changes the word "property" to "pursuit of happiness" by trying to rally support of the colonies -Human mind can determine for itself what is true Thomas Jefferson-The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson - --Life liberty and property -Abolitionist Movement -Rhetoric for the public Lit Lit -Determined to prove himself and reputation -Genre of text: political philosophy, provocation (rhetorical force, war tactic) Philip Freneau - - -New York -Wealth, social position -Imprisoned in British ship -Supporter of French revolution and American Revolution -Collective hope of humankind -Obsession with the beautiful, transient, things of nature -Focus on the conflict between the sensuous and the didactic Philip Freneau-The Indian Burying Ground - - Philip Freneau- On the Religion of Nature - --"Nature is my church. Love is my religion" Benjamin Franklin - - -Boston -Rationalism -Taught himself French, Spanish, Italian, Latin -Independent by nature, instinct for success, proud and clever -Believed people were naturally innocent -Governor of New Jersey -Loyalist during revolution -Worked in printing -Representative to 2nd continental congress -1776 minister to France -Signed treaty of paris that ended the revolution war Benjamin Franklin-The Autobiography - --Incredibly messy text, written over 20 years in 4 parts -Important in American Literature as one of the first major autobiographies -Immediate influence and favor with readers (text people refer to when writing own autobiographies) -Privatizes intro of autobiography won't go public, but total bullshit -Skeptical rhetoric -Shapes ad fashions to American self -Imitate Jesus and Socrates with humility -Identify seams in his life: errata Phillis Wheatley - - -Rationalism -Black slave brought to Boston 1761 by John Wheatley -Was taught reading and writing -Bold and canny spokesperson of personal faith and politics -Black American/ black woman's literary tradition Lit Lit -Moved to London 1772 because of health issues and support of book -Became very Christian Phillis Wheatley- On Being Brought from Africa to America - --Pagan at first (didn't know anything about Christianity) but after line 4 becomes a Christian and speaking now to other Christians (not only speaking as a African American slave) -Use of to the terms that convey darkness, blackness, race (doesn't hide them but puts emphasis) -Fundamental contradiction between slavery & Christianity: literal & symbolic meanings of blackness/ literally= racial identity, black pigmentation/ symb