American Literature Terms

1. Edwards, great American revivalist preacher
6. a comparison using "like" or "as"
8. tradition, passing down of cultural knowledge by mouth from generation to generation
10. Occum, "Father of American Indian Literature"
14. writing intended to instruct
16. references to people, places, events or works of literature
17. a similar structure in two or more phrases, clauses, or sentences
18. personal preferences that inhibit one from seeing the potential value of others' judgments
20. word choice

2. an address to an absent person, abstraction, or object
3. maintained that the solution to man's problems lies in human reason rather than in the supernatural revelation of the Bible
4. question asked to achieve an effect rather than to receive an answer
5. poet that explored intellectual subjects, theological subjects, and ingenious word plays
7. a striking, often elaborate, comparison carried out in considerable detail
9. giving human qualities to an animal, object, or person
11. recurring narrative elements that appear in stories across cultures and speak of universal human experiences
12. an imaginative comparison of two dissimilar things
13. descriptive words or phrases that appeal to sense perceptions to create an impression
15. divisions of a poem based on thought, meter, or rhyme
17. a statement that seems to be self-contradictory yet actually makes sense when understood in the right context
19. the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line