Unit 4 Review
Terms and Applications
Terminology
 Teleology—the study of evidences of design in
nature or the belief that everything has a purpose
 Objective Correlative—an object, situation, or
event that instantly evokes a particular emotion
 Kant’s Categorical Imperative—“act only on that
maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will
that it should become a universal law”—make
moral decisions only on rules that you would like
to see universally accepted.
 Weltschmerz—world-weariness,
depression/apathy caused by comparing
actual world to ideal
Terminology
 Soliloquy—a long speech given alone on stage
by a character reflecting his/her innermost
thoughts
 Aside—a brief comment by a character meant
not to be heard generally, but only by the
audience or one other character on stage
 Misogyny—hatred of women
 Existentialism—a set of philosophical beliefs
postulating that “existence precedes essence”—
no one is “born” anything—and we are what we
do and should only be judged on that basis
Terminology
 Secular—nonreligious in general
 Medievalism—reliance on superstition, myth,
tradition, and dogma to interpret the world
 Renaissance Humanism—a belief in the
achievements, potential, and perfectibility of
humans—no original sin
 Psychological Criticism (Freudian)—analyzing
literature through psychological analysis of the
author, characters, or readers
 Textual Criticism—focusing only on the text, not
on biography, historical context, etc., to understand
a piece of literature
I am “preaching” that you should do
this
Try to figure out which of the terms above best
represent the following:
 Especially for some veterans, the flag perhaps
 There is no original sin
 Why bother voting? The world is a corrupt place
 That Hamlet must be crazy—why is he always
talking to himself?
 Because that’s the way it’s always been done!
 I am what I do
Practice
 Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s
 Ethan Frome suffered from separation anxiety
 Muttering under your breath to a friend during




class
Better stay home on Friday the 13th
If you think you should be able to drink and
drive, you should believe everyone can
Ray Kinsella’s hallucinations are a result of the
loss of his father
Public schools as opposed to religious schools
Practice
 “What a piece of work is a man”
 Hamlet suffered from this from the start
 A cute puppy makes people smile
 Romeo’s speech before drinking the poison
 The Progressive Era belief that society could be
perfected represented this
 Nobody has “potential”—they are what they do
 Hamlet’s judgment of himself as a coward
 Ignoring Shakespeare’s biography to interpret
the play
Practice
 Patriots tear up when they hear “The Star



Spangled Banner”
There is a purpose to everything beyond what
we can understand
By accepting the legitimacy of Hamlet’s desire
for revenge for his father’s murder, you must
accept that of Laertes as well
Hamlet’s Denmark had a belief in ghosts
Hamlet’s search to know whether what the
Ghost said as true or not
Practice
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
“Design”
by Robert Frost
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.
Which term
that we studied
this semester
does this poem
represent?