avantgarde: beginning of the 20th century, (advance guard) are people or works that are experimental or

innovative, particularly with respect to art,culture, and politics.The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is
accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The avant-garde is considered by some to be
a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. The avant-garde also promotes radical social reforms. Art
movements: imagism, impressionism, symbolism, surrealism, cubism, dadaism Writers, poets: Ezra Pound, W.
C. Williams, Ginsberg, E. E. Cummings
beat poetry: mid-1950s and 1960s. It incorporates a free-form type of writing that promotes individualism and the
idea of spiritual emptiness, rejection of received standards, innovations in style, experimentation with drugs,
alternative sexualities, an interest in religion. They were disillusioned with their views of the postwar culture of
conformity and materialism. Beat poetry was often recited orally. Members of the Beat Generation typically would
gather at Ferlinghettis City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco to read poetry, usually accompanied by jazz. Drugs
and Zen Buddhism were sources of inspiration. Themes: liberation for black people, homosexuals, women, and Native
Americans. Major influences of Thoreau, Blake, Emmerson, Pound, W. C. Williams, H.D. Beat Generation &
Significant figures: Allen Ginsberg (Howl), William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
Black Mountain poets: or projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or
postmodernpoets centered on Black Mountain College which launched a remarkable number of the artists who
spearheaded the avant-garde in the America of the 1960s. In 1950, Charles Olson published his essay, Projective
Verse that became a kind of de facto manifesto for the Black Mountain poets. Poets: Robert Duncan, Charles
Olson, Denise Levertov and Robert Creeley.
bricolage: tinkering, in the practical and the fine arts it is the construction of a work from a diverse range of things
that happen to be available, or a work created by such a process. The term bricolage has also been used in many
other fields. In literature, it's affected by intertextuality, the shaping of a text's meanings by reference to other texts.
canon: The term "literary canon" refers to a classification of literature. It is a term used widely to refer to a group of
literary works that are considered the most important of a particular time period or place. A literary canon
establishes a collection of similar or related literary works.
canonization: the canon applies a certain validity or authority to a work of literature. When a work is entered into
the canon, thus canonized, it gains status as an official inclusion into a group of literary works that are widely studied
and respected. There are no rigid qualifications for canonization and over time, works may be added or subtracted
from the canon.
collage: artistic technique of applying manufactured, printed, or found materials, such as bits of newspaper,
fabric, wallpaper, etc., to a panel or canvas, frequently in combination with painting. The word collage was first used
to refer to works by Dada and Surrealist artists, especially Max Ernst. In the 1960s collage was employed as a major
form of Pop art. It means in literature that a work, such as a literary piece, composed of both borrowed and original
material, combining unrelated styles.
confessional poetry: 1950s and 1960s. It has been described as poetry "of the personal". The content of
confessional poems is autobiographical and marked by its exploration of subject matter that was considered taboo at
the time. This subject matter included topics like mental illness, sexuality, and suicide. The school of poetry that
became known as "Confessional Poetry" was associated with several poets in the 1950s, including Robert
Lowell, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg.
cultural pluralism: smaller groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities, and their values
and practices are accepted by the wider culture provided they are consistent with the laws and values of the
wider society. It's often confused with Multiculturalism, which lacks the requirement of a dominant culture.
defamiliarization/ostranenie: 20th century, the artistic technique of presenting common things in an unfamiliar or
strange way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar. Movements including Dada, postmodernism, epic theatre,
and science fiction, it is also used as a tactic by recent movements such as culture jamming. The term

defamiliarization was first coined in 1917 by Viktor Shklovsky in his essay Art as Device.
Des Imagistes: edited by Ezra Pound and published in 1914, was the first anthology of the Imagism movement. It
was published in The Glebe, and later that year as a book. The eleven authors featured were: Richard
Aldington, Skipwith Cannell, John Cournos, H. D., F. S. Flint, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Amy Lowell, Ezra
Pound, Allen Upward, William Carlos Williams.
detective fiction: is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or
a detective investigates a crime, often murder. True detective fiction in the English-speaking world is considered to
have begun in 1841 with the publication of Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". The period of the 1920s and
1930s is generally referred to as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
dime novels: a type of inexpensive, usually paperback, melodramatic novel of adventure popular in the United
States roughly between 1860 and 1915; it often featured a western theme. Dime novels are, at least in spirit, the
antecedent of today's mass market paperbacks, comic books, and even television shows and movies based on the
dime novel genres. In the modern age, "dime novel" has become a term to describe any quickly written, lurid
potboiler and as such is generally used as a pejorative to describe a sensationalized yet superficial piece of written
work.
domestic realism: the leading characters belong to the middle class, usually represented in tragic drama in which the
action concerns family affairs rather than public matters of state. Can be found in the American tragedies of
Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller. Domestic tragedy is sometimes known as 'bourgeois
tragedy'.
dramatic monologue: A literary, usually verse composition in which a speaker reveals his or her character, often in
relation to a critical situation or event, in a monologue addressed to the reader or to a presumed listener. T. S. Eliot:
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
eclecticism: conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead
draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different
theories in particular cases. Poets often criticized by lack of consistency in their thinking.
ellipsis: The act of leaving out one or more words that are not necessary for a phrase to be understood. It is a series
of dots that usually indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without
altering its original meaning. Depending on their context and placement in a sentence, ellipses can also indicate an
unfinished thought, a slight pause, and nervous or awkward silence.
epigraph: In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or
component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a
wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional context. The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock.
epistemology: the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge and is also referred to as
"theory of knowledge". It questions what knowledge is and how it can be acquired, and the extent to which
knowledge pertinent to any given subject or entity can be acquired. Much of the debate in this field has focused on the
philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and
justification.
experimentalism: refers to written work usually fiction or poetry that emphasizes innovation, most especially
in technique. In the 1910s, artistic experimentation became a prominent force, and various European and American
writers began experimenting with the given forms. The Cantos of Ezra Pound, the post-WWI work of T. S. Eliot,
prose and plays by Gertrude Stein, were some of the most influential works of the time, though James Joyce's
Ulysses is generally considered the most important work of the time. The novel ultimately influenced not only more
experimental writers, such as Virginia Woolf and John Dos Passos, but also less experimental writers, such as
Hemingway.

expressionism: a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of
the 20th century. An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself... Its typical trait is to present the world
solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.
Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionism
was developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War. The Expressionist emphasis on individual
perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism and other artistic styles such as Naturalism and
Impressionism. Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner.
flapper: "new breed" of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to
jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for
wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise
flouting social and sexual norms. The Great Gatsby.
formalist poetry: late-20th and early 21st century movement in American poetry that has promoted a return to
metrical and rhymed verse. Despite the formal innovations of Modernism as exemplified in the work of T. S. Eliot
and Ezra Pound, and the widespread appearance of free verse in the early decades of the 20th century, many poets
chose to continue working predominantly in traditional forms, such as Robert Frost.
free verse: Free verse is an open form of poetry. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other
musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Ezra Pound & T. S. Eliot.
Harlem Renaissance: 1924-1929. A blossoming of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the
most influential movement in African American literary history. Embracing literary, musical, theatrical, and visual
arts, participants sought to reconceptualise the Negro apart from the white stereotypes that had influenced black
peoples relationship to their heritage and to each other. They also sought to break free of Victorian moral values and
bourgeois shame about aspects of their lives that might, as seen by whites, reinforce racist beliefs. At the time, it was
known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. Zora Neale Hurston,
Langston Hughes.
high modernism: Between the two WW-s. Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Frost. symbolic dualism (surface and depth, hidden
layers, vertical structures: always metaphorical). Coherence: a poets mind always puts extremely different tings
together in a new whole. Indirection: metaphor is a very basic formula. It tries to explain transcendental and abstract
issues via metaphors. The high modernist movement was particularly prevalent during the Cold War, especially in the
late-1950s and 1960s.
iceberg theory: Hemingways main instrument is the ellipsis and omission of certain parts from his works. The
reader can feel that there is more under the surface than what is actually written down. Hemingway believed the
true meaning of a piece of writing should not be evident from the surface story.
imagism: movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favoured precision of imagery and clear,
sharp language. As a poetic style it gave Modernism its start in the early 20th century, and is considered to be the first
organized Modernist literary movement in the English language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and
discursiveness. Imagism called for a return to what were seen as more Classical values, such as directness of
presentation and economy of language, as well as a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms.
Imagists use free verse. Poets Club. Ezra Pound & Amy Lowell.
interior monologue: always presents a character's thoughts directly, without the apparent intervention of a
summarizing and selecting narrator, it does not necessarily mingle them with impressions and perceptions. While an
interior monologue may mirror all the half thoughts, impressions, and associations that impinge upon the characters
consciousness, it may also be restricted to an organized presentation of that characters rational thoughts.
intertextuality: the concept of texts' borrowing of each others' words and concepts. This could mean as much as an
entire ideological concept and as little as a word or phrase. As authors borrow pro-actively from previous texts, their
work gains layers of meaning. Also, another feature of intertextuality reveals itself when a text is read in light of

another text, in which case all of the assumptions and implications surrounding the other text shed light on and
shape the way a text is interpreted. Ernest Hemingway draws language from metaphysical poet John Donne's
"Meditation XVII" in naming his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Jazz age: 1920s (ending with The Great Depression) when jazz music and dance became popular. This occurred
particularly in the United States, but also in Britain, France and elsewhere. Jazz played a significant part in wider
cultural changes during the period, and its influence on pop culture continued long afterwards. Jazz music originated
mainly in New Orleans, and is/was a fusion of African and European music. The Jazz Age is often referred to in
conjunction with the phenomenon referred to as the Roaring Twenties. The term "Jazz Age" was coined by F. Scott
Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby, Streetcar Named Desire.
Little Theater: Chicago 1912-1917. Experiments: move away from Broadway, this was The Little Theater movement.
The plays were too marginal for Broadway, content varied (important social issues as topics). Mostly staged European
avant-garde and modernist dramas.
Little Theater movement: 1912. In several large cities, beginning with Chicago, Boston, Seattle and Detroit,
companies formed theaters to produce more intimate, noncommercial, and reform-minded entertainments. They
all wanted to experiment something new, so they moved away from Broadway in order to be able to play plays that
were too marginal for Broadway.
lost generation: they came of age during World War I. They The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who
used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the
phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron. T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alan Seeger. Lost
means not vanished but disoriented, wandering, directionless a recognition that there was great confusion and
aimlessness among the war's survivors in the early post-war years.
mass culture: the set of ideas and values that develop from a common exposure to the same media, news sources,
music, and art. Mass culture is broadcast or otherwise distributed to individuals instead of arising from their day-today interactions with each other. Thus, mass culture generally lacks the unique content of local communities and
regional cultures. It developed in the 1990s in the United States due to the proliferation of newspapers and mass
transit with the finish of the transcontinental railroad.
melodrama: strictly: drama and music together. They were very sentimental and emotional, that is why melodrama
also means very emotional, pathetic dramas even without music. A dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters
in order to appeal to the emotions, often with strongly stereotyped characters. Melodrama is a style of drama that
has been applied on the stage, in movies and television, and radio formats, from the 18th century to the present.
memory play: The term coined by Tennessee Williams to describe non-realistic dramas, in which the audience
experiences the past as remembered by a narrator, complete with music from the period remembered, and images
representing the characters' thoughts, fears, emotions, and recollections projected on a scrim in the background.
metafiction: describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an
artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection.
Novels and stories that examine, experiment with, or poke fun at the conventions and genres of fiction itself. The
term "meta-fiction" means "beyond fiction" or "over fiction," indicating that the author or narrator stands "beyond" or
"over" the fictional text and judges it in a highly self-conscious way. E.g.: A story about a writer creating a story, a
story about a reader reading a book, a story that features itself (as a narrative or as a physical object), a story
containing another work of fiction within itself (A Clockwork Orange, Heart of Darkness), a story addressing the
specific conventions of story, such as title, character conventions, paragraphing or plots, a novel where the narrator
intentionally exposes him or herself as the author of the story, a book in which the book itself seeks interaction with
the reader, a story in which the readers of the story itself force the author to change the story, narrative footnotes,
which continue the story while commenting on it or a story in which the characters are aware that they are in a story.
metatextual: the explicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another text.
metatheatrical devices: reflecting comedy and tragedy, at the same time, where the audience can laugh at the

protagonist while feeling empathetic simultaneously. 1. ceremony within a play, 2. role-playing within a role, 3.
reference to reality, 4. self-reference of the drama, 5. play within a play.
mimesis: imitation or representation of something else by embodying its essence rather than an attempt to literally
duplicate the original. In Imagism, poets were not allowed to use mimesis, that is, to write something in an
illusionistic way. Instead, they had to use direct treatment.
moveable feast: a memoir by Ernest Hemingway about his years in Paris as part of the expatriate writers in the
1920s. The book describes Hemingway's apprenticeship as a young writer in Europe (especially in Paris) while
married to his first wife, Hadley.
multiculturalism: multiculturalism is the cultural diversity of communities and the policies that promote this
diversity. There is no dominant culture. Multiculturalism is often contrasted with the concepts of assimilationism and
has been described as a "salad bowl" or "cultural mosaic" rather than a "melting pot".
NAACP: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is an African-American civil rights
organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and
economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination"
objectism: the attitude, or the role of poet as mere object among other objects in nature, required for writing such
poetry. Olson rejected humanism's tendencies to privilege the human observer and to demote surrounding nature as
resources and implements. Charles Olson - Projective Verse. Getting rid of the lyrical interference of the individual
as ego, of the subject and his soul [] For man is himself an object.
objective correlative: literary term referring to a symbolic article used to provide explicit, rather than implicit, access
to such traditionally inexplicable concepts as emotion or color. It was popularized by T. S. Eliot: you need a layer of
objects, which later provides the symbolism and evokes the emotion the poet wants to evoke. The objective
correlatives purpose is to express the characters emotions by showing rather than describing feelings as pictured
earlier by anyone.
ontology: A philosophical term which denotes the study of being. As a literary term it has a special meaning, thanks
to John Crowe Ransom. According to him the texture and structure of a poem, which, combined, provide the
meaning, combine also to give it 'ontology' - that quality or property peculiar to itself which distinguishes it from
anything that is not poetry.
passing narrative: an account of a person (or group) claiming a racial or ethnic identity that she does not (or they do
not) possess. Such narratives speak to the authenticity, the ambiguity, and the performance of personal identity; they
also speak to issues of official and traditional categorization. The passing narrative necessarily unsettles notions of
belonging and ownership and underscores that race can be viewed as a construction or a series of conventions. Nella
Larsen: Passing: woman of mixed origins try to pass to whites.
pastiche: imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche celebrates,
rather than mocks, the work it imitates. Irony. Basic concept of postmodernism. Neil Gaimann: A Study in Emerald.
Petrarchan sonnet: was not developed by Petrarch himself, but rather by a string of Renaissance poets. 8+6 lines.
Rhyme scheme: a b b a a b b a c d e c d e (can vary). Conclusion of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, usually
positive, but here pessimistic.
Poets Club (1908-1917): a group devoted to the discussion of poetry. It met in London in the early years of the
twentieth century. Mainly amateurs, met once a month for dinner, the reading of poems. They were against late
Victorian poetic practices. 1909: Ezra Pound joins the movement and becomes leader. 1914: Des Imagistes. 1916:
Some Imagist Poets. 1915: Pound gets bored, Amy Lowell becomes the leader. Ends as a movement in 1917.
popular culture: ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images, and other phenomena that are within the mainstream
of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of

the late 20th and early 21st century. Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the
everyday lives of the society. From the end of World War II, following major cultural and social changes brought by
mass media innovations, the meaning of popular culture began to overlap with those of mass culture, media culture,
image culture, consumer culture, and culture for mass consumption.
Provincetown Players (1915): nonprofit theatre company started in Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. The
first modern theater devoted to producing original works by American playwrights, the company's founding has
been called "the most important innovative moment in American theatre". Famed for staging the first productions
of plays by several important playwrights, including Eugene O'Neill and Susan Glaspell (Trifles), the group
employed many other notable writers, artists, and actors.
Quest narrative: A story that revolves around an adventure, a journey. They usually revolve around an epic scope
(a lot is at stake for the characters and/or world, the world itself is large and wide-sweeping, etc). It's characterized by
the protagonist stumbling onto several obstacles/challenges that must be completed in order to progress in the journey
(and story). Another characteristic is that the protagonist typically meets other characters that divulge necessary
knowledge that will enable the protagonist to complete his quest/adventure/journey. Huckleberry Finn.
radical modernism: Rimbaud, the Imagists, Pound, W. C. Williams, Stein. Direct presentation, anti-symbolist,
values are immanent (consist within limits) rather than transcendent. The surface has importance. Metonymy is the
governing trope, object is nothing else than an object, horizontal poetry. Freedom and experimenting that can set
them free from social and lingual expectations.
roaring twenties: a period of literary creativity, and works of several notable authors appeared during the period. D.
H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was a scandal at the time because of its explicit descriptions of sex. The
Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.
roman--clef: French for novel with a key, is a novel about real life, overlaid with a faade of fiction. The fictitious
names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction.
This "key" may be produced separately by the author, or implied through the use of epigraphs or other literary
techniques. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway is a disguised account of Hemingway's literary life in Paris and
his 1925 trip to Spain with several known personalities.
satire: a mode of writing that exposes the failings of individuals, institutions, or societies to ridicule and scorn. Satire
is often an incidental element in literary works that may not be wholly satirical, especially in comedy. A feature of
satire is strong irony or sarcasm, but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double
entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing.
science fiction: a popular modern branch of prose friction that explores the probable consequences of some
improbable or impossible transformation of the basic conditions of human (or intelligent non-human existence). This
transformation need not be brought about by a technological invention, but may involve some mutation of known
biological of physical reality, e.c.: time travel, ecological catastrophe etc. The Second Variety.
simulacrum: means "likeness, similarity", an image without the substance or qualities of the original. Simulacra often
appear in speculative fiction, e.g. Frankenstein or the claws in The Second Variety.
Southern gothic: American South, deeply flawed, disturbing or eccentric characters. While the tales in literature can
be set among various classes, the decay of the southern aristocracy and the setting of the plantation are the usual
settings for southern gothic tales in the popular mind. William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily. Tennessee Williams.
synesthesia: a blending or confusion of different kinds of sense-impression, in which one type of sensation is referred
to in terms more appropriate to another. Common synaesthetic expressions include the descriptions of colors as loud
or warm, and of sounds as smooth. The Great Gatsby uses a lot of synesthesia.
unreliable narrator: An imaginary storyteller or character who describes what he witnesses accurately, but
misinterprets those events because of faulty perception, personal bias, or limited understanding. Often the writer or

poet creating such an unreliable narrator leaves clues so that readers will perceive the unreliability and question the
interpretations offered. The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye.
Vorticism: Literary and artistic movement that flourished in England 191215. Founded by Wyndham Lewis, it
attempted to relate art to industrialization. It was partly inspired by Cubism, but it is more closely related to
Futurism in its embrace of dynamism, the machine age and all things modern. The name Vorticism was given to the
movement by Ezra Pound in 1913.
western: devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West. This
genre sometimes portrays the conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature in the name of civilization or
the confiscation of the territorial rights of the original (Native American) inhabitants of the frontier. Lullaby.
Yankee pastoral: Robert Frost. Within the United States, Yankee usually refers to people from the north, largely
those who fought for the regions in the Union side of the American Civil War, but also those with New England
cultural ties, such as descendants from colonial New England settlers, wherever they live. Its sense is more cultural
than literally geographic. The speech dialect of New England is called "Yankee" or "Yankee dialect." As Harriet
Monroe said: Perhaps no other poet in our history has put the best of the Yankee spirit into a book so completely.