TEST REVIEW for seniors (4th six weeks) We will take the test either Wed / Thurs / Friday….
These are the terms used on the test with which you should be VERY familiar. Look them up!!! 
Irony, hyperbole, parallelism, allusion, personification, assonance, onomatopoeia, alliteration,
connotation, etymology, literal meaning, explicit definition, tone, mood, motif, style, LIDDS, colloquial,
idiom, biblical, protagonist, antagonist, catalyst, villain, theme, symbolism, allusion, satire, irony,
archetypes, heroines,
When one is writing an essay for a college application it is always smart to add voice so that the
scholarship committee may hear your individual personality within your essay. Essays without
personality, or voice, do not stand out as unique and memorable.
LIDDS is an acronym that helps a reader recognize an author’s STYLE of writing. L=Language used (is it
formal, slangy, modern, offensive? Kid talk???? Adult talk???? Professional big wordings? I= Images
(what type of pictures, smells, and sensory details are there? Why?) D= Diction (words actual
definition meanings and emotional meanings) D=Details (what little facts and details does the writer
give to make us see and think a certain way? S= Sentence structures. What is he doing with sentences?
Always use prewriting strategies such as “webbing” or “clustering” or “brainstorming” in order to get all
of your thoughts onto paper BEFORE writing an outline or even an introduction or anything. One will
only write in unorganized circles without a clear goal without FIRST at least “webbing” all of his/her
thoughts on scratch paper.
* Writing Response: Describe the characteristics of a literary work from the
Victorian literary genre. Describe the work’s organization, word choice, and
tone of this Victorian piece of work.
Again, you might use Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning on this one… or you could use The Strange
case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Any one of these will work here.
Organization is just telling HOW the book moves from one character or event to the other and WHY it
was put together that way.
Word choice is WHY the author names people or calls events that happen in the story by a certain name
or word. What purpose did the author have in naming it or her or him that word. Frankenstein is a
Doctor,,, why? Why is his man that he made called a “creature”? Why didn’t he give him a real NAME?
Was science (Darwin) trying to replace God in this time period? Is this why the good Doctor was
constantly called “my creator” and “father” by the “creature that he made?
Why is the lover who gets strangled in Porphyria’s Lover named Porphyria in the first place? Why is she
a “lover”? Why not a “mother” or a “sister”? Why is SHE the one who seduces HIM? Why not HIM
come into the cabin during the storm and seduce HER? Is a mental disorder better as a female than a
man? WHY? This shows word choice.
Tone is a fancy word for how the writer of the piece THOUGHT about the thing he/she was writing
about… Porphyria’s Lover is about how addictions or mental illnesses or physical illnesses are a lot like a
“woman” coming in and “seducing” a vulnerable “victim.” But… if the victim “strangles it [her] down,”
he/she might get a handle on it and be able to slightly kill it [addiction / illness] for the moment. So……
tone…does the person who wrote that like or dislike this idea? Does the writer think it is useless to try
to get rid of illnesses? Does the writer think it is a GOOD thing to fight the illness or a BAD thing?
Where in the poem did you get that idea? Maybe use THAT quote.
Frankenstein’s author thought that science might learn to create a living body, but only God could
create a loving, caring, human being; this is a Science vs. Nature conflict. Tone – what did Mary Shelly
think about this idea? She’s the author…. How do you KNOW she thinks this way? Character names?
Events that happen? Wordings? Ideas she presents in her story? What do you think the author is trying
to “get across” to us today?
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - author is writing about the two sides of a person. How does the author show
us that a human has TWO PARTS? How does the author feel about these two parts? How do you KNOW
he feels this way? What makes you think that? What part of the story lets you KNOW how the author
feels?
* Writing Response: Describe what the theme, the characters and the content
of a piece of Victorian literature tells about that historic era.
“Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning (The poem we read about in which the man strangled the
woman) is a Victorian poem that shows physical change (life and death) and mental change (the mental
illness of the iron deficiency called Porphyria). Remember: “Change is a common THEME of Victorian
literature.” This poem uses characters (two lovers) in order to try and explain the seduction of any
mental illness of which there are many forms – (addictions, obsessions, phobias, psychosis). Look back
over this poem and make sure you can explain HOW this poem get us (readers) into the head of a
person who has an addiction of some sort. If you can clearly EXPLAIN how the two lovers and the
strangling scenario shows Victorian thinkers’ obsession with HOW and WHY change happens within the
body and mind, you will make a FOUR on this short response. Remember, this is NOT a TAKS box
writing, but you DO HAVE TO AT LEAST pull ONE QUOTE from the poem to prove that what you are
saying is correct. It is as easy as A,B,C  Answer it / Back it up with a quote / Comment with insightful,
adult, logical thinking. That is it! Wah lah 
Victorian Age literature focuses on CHANGE, physical change and emotional change. The writers
delved into physical changes that were a new frontier for writers as a result of developments in the
sciences. They wrote about change in the physical scientific world around them as well as the
psychological changes within Victorian peoples’ minds as a result of world travels and travelers. The
globe was accessible as new and exciting frontier about which to write as well as the inner workings of
the human body and its psychology frontier (the inner workings of the mind). The mental workings of a
human’s personality were as exciting to dissect, analyze, and then write about as were a scientist’s
dissecting of a frog or a newly discovered microscopic organism.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s two sides of one human being’s psychology is a great example of a Victorian
writer analyzing and then writing about HOW physical scientific body CHANGES and mental CHANGES
were being thought about and written about like crazy within the Victorian Era. If you don’t want to use
Porphyria’s Lover by Browning, you might explain HOW The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly show CHANGE as a common Victorian theme.