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The novel for which Nathaniel Hawthorne is best known is: a) The Scarlet Letter b) Mobby Dick c) The Great Gatsby d) Sister Carrie One of the major themes of The Great Gatsby is a) the corruption of American innocence through the pursuit of wealth b) the prejudices and injustices of Americans toward American Indians c) the acceptance of death as a part of nature d) the loss of faith and the triumph of science A nineteenth-century writer known for his Romantic poetry and macabre stories is a) Washington Irving b) James Fenimore Cooper c) Edgar Allan Poe d) Bret Harte Ezra Pound was known for a) his novels of social conscience b) his pro-Communist essays c) his deeply religious poems and short stories d) his poetry, criticism, and political views Who was Emily Dickinson? a) a nineteenth-century novelist who explored women's sexual and emotional dependence b) a nineteenth-century poet who used the imagery of nature to explore human consciousness c) a twentieth-century poet who experimented with unusual stanza forms d) a twentieth-century writer who explored the black Midwestern experience Who wrote the lines: "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep"? a) Anne Sexton b) Robert Frost c) A. R. Ammons d) Robert Lowell What is transcendentalism? a) a movement led by Alfred Jarry that stressed the lack of reason in human existence b) a movement led by Jean-Paul Sartre that stated that existence precedes essence c) a movement led by Tristan Tzara that tried to negate all traditional values In the arts d) a movement led by Ralph Waldo Emerson that stressed the divinity of man Who was the creator of the characters Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer? a) Herman Melville b) Hart Crane c) Thomas Wolfe d) Samuel Clemens

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What belief did the Naturalist movement in America stress? a) the importance of conservation of land and animal life b) the innocence and virtue of man in the state of nature c) the limitations of social conditions and heredity on man's capacity to change (???) d) the free and spontaneous act of literary composition 10. The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! are two novels by a) Robert Penn Warren b) William Faulkner c) Booth Tarkington d) Katherine Anne Porter 11. Herman Melville is famous for his: a) tales of life along the Mississippi River b) poems about the simple pleasures of sport and competition c) novels about sea voyages d) adventure stories about explorers and pirates 12. Ernest Hemingway's writing style is characterized by a) flowing imagery and poetic diction b) biting wit and sarcastic humor c) briefness and understatement d) sentimentality and use of symbolic structure 13. Henry James's influence on later writers stems from his a) attention to point of view and psychological realism b) use of regional dialect and historical settings c) emphasis on heroic traits in handicapped or impoverished characters d) all of the above 14. Walt Whitman's poetry was among the first in America to a) concentrate on rural themes b) eliminate regular metrical structure c) apply medievalism to American Art d) emphasize form over emotion 15. Who wrote Common Sense and The Rights of Man? a) Thomas Paine b) Henry Thoreau c) Thomas Jefferson d) Henry Adams

1.Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was a New Englander, a writer of short stories and novels. His story of Puritan America, The Scarlet Letter (1850), is his masterpiece; it tells of the illicit romance between a married woman and a minister and explores the themes of sin, guilt, and hypocrisy. 2.The Great Gatsby (1925) is the story of the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby, a man without a real past or emotional ties, and his effect on Tom and Daisy Buchanan and on the story's narrator, Nick Carraway. The novel is set during the 1920s and shows the emptiness of the lives of those who lived and prospered in the Jazz Age. 3.Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was a controversial poet, critic, and essayist. Early in his career he promoted the school of Imagism, which stressed metaphor and image. Later he became involved in the Fascist movements of Hitler and Mussolini, broadcasting propaganda from Italy. 4.Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) became famous with the publication of his poem The Raven (1845), which many critics consider an imitation of the British romantic style. His tales of the grotesque, however, established him as an important writer. 5.Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a New England poet who in her later years became a recluse. She wrote almost two thousand poems, only seven of which were published in her lifetime. Her short verses, characterized by her use of dashes as punctuation, explored themes of love, death, and immortality. 6.Robert Frost (1874-1963) was not well known as a poet until he reached his forties. He wrote in traditional verse forms and developed themes of rural life and nature. 7.Transcendentalism was a movement that began in New England in the nineteenth century. It had its roots in the philosophy of Plato and stressed intuition as the means to understanding reality. Emerson, the leader of the movement, called for Transcendentalists to trust only direct experiences; their belief in man's divinity was the key to reliance on self rather than on an external God. 8.Samuel Clemens (1835-1910), who wrote under the pen name Mark Twain, created characters that reflected purely American traits and habits. His greatest character, Huck Finn, is a boy whose adventures on the Mississippi with Jim, a runaway slave, are a social commentary that condemns slavery and reveals the corruption of the American South. 9.Naturalism, a literary movement that came to America from France at the turn of the century, emphasized the subordination of characters to their environments. 10. The decadence and slow destruction of the Old South are major themes of the novels of William Faulkner (1897-1962). His Important works take place in a mythical county in Mississippi and involve several fictional families whose lives interweave. The Sound and the Fury (1929) tells the story of the disintegration of the Compson family. The narrative is in four distinct parts, the first three being the stream of consciousness of the three sons, one of whom is retarded. Absalom, Absalom! (1936) has multiple narrators, who tell of Thomas Sutpen and his doomed attempts to become a Southern aristocrat in the years preceding the Civil War. 11. Herman Melville (1819-1891) went to sea at the age of eighteen. For the next eight years, he alternated life aboard ships with life as a schoolteacher. Most of his writing Is based on his experiences on whalers in the South Pacific eg. the powerful Moby-Dick (1851), which integrates a symbolic tale of man and fate with realistic scenes of whaling and discussion of its history. 12. In novels such as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) used a spare, unemotional style punctuated by terse dialogue. His themes include courage, cynicism, and the loss of liberty. 13. The novelist, Henry James (1843-1916) is considered one of the greatest technicians of the form. Many of his works treat the international theme-the contrast of American and European characters and values. He strove to hone the point of view in his novels and stories so that revelations and insights belong to his characters rather than to an omniscient narrator. 14. Walt Whitman (1819-1892) wrote poetry that fit natural speech patterns rather than regular metrical structure. His most important work, a collection of poems called Leaves of Grass (1855), underwent many revisions and additions during the poet's lifetime. In his celebration of the human body, egalitarianism, and the sexual self, he was certainly ahead of his time. 15. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) believed in the need for reform through revolution. Common Sense (1776) called for the secession of the colonies from England and led to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. The Rights of Man (1792) was written in defense of the French Revolution and led to Paine's trial in England as a traitor. He lived in France until he was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, and he later died in poverty in the United States.