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American Lit Warm-Up:
Paraphrase the following sentence:
John Brown embraced abolitionist views and
spent the remainder of his life fighting against the
enslavement of humanity.
John Brown embraced abolitionist views and
spent the remainder of his life fighting against the
enslavement of humanity.
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John Brown embraced abolitionist views and
spent the remainder of his life fighting against
the enslavement of humanity. (replace
keywords with synonyms)
John Brown accepted anti-slavery ideas and
spent the rest of his years protesting against the
enforced servitude of human beings. (rearrange
sentence structure)
John Brown’s acceptance of anti-slavery ideas
led him to spend the rest of his years protesting
against the enforced servitude of human
beings.
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Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and
Herman Melville were known as antiTranscendentalists or Dark Romantics
Had much in common with Transcendentalists:
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Focus on the imagination and spirituality
Fascination with nature and its power, but
emphasized the negative aspects
Explored conflicts between good and evil,
psychological effects of guilt and sin, and
madness
AntiTranscendentalists
Herman Melville
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allan Poe
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Best known for MobyDick, a novel about
one man’s obsessive,
doomed mission to
hunt the great white
whale
Themes include the
relationship between
man and nature, fate
vs. free will, revenge,
and madness
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Considered the father
of the detective story
and the modern
horror story
Many mysteries
surround his life and
death
Best known for short
stories such as The
Tell-Tale Heart and
poetry including “The
Raven”
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Best known for The
Scarlet Letter, a novel
set in the Puritan
period in New
England.
Explores themes of sin
and redemption, guilt,
religion, and adultery
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“Go to the Grave”
“The Darken’d Veil”
“Earthly Pomp”
“Address to the
Moon”
“The Ocean”
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Your Task (with a partner):
Identify and define 5
unfamiliar words from your
chosen poem
 Identify three examples of
figurative language (simile,
metaphor, personification,
allusion, etc.)
 Complete a line-by-line
paraphrase of the four best
lines from the poem
 Write a one-sentence
statement of the poem’s
theme
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 List
three things that all of the
poems we read today have in
common.