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Final Exam Review: Honors American Literature
Your final exam will be comprised of TWO SECTIONS:
1. SAT Vocabulary Words: Weeks 1-14
2. Background Notes on American Literary Periods
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Key historical facts (wars, major events, etc.) associated with each
movement
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Key authors associated with each movement
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Which movement each literary work we have studied belongs to
o William Shakespeare’s The Tempest
o Native American creation myths & European exploration
narratives
o Benjamin Franklin’s “On Moral Perfection” (from his
autobiography)
o Poetry from Dead Poets Society film
o Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County”
o Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”
o Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
o F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
o Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby
o John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity”
o Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
o Patrick Henry’s “Speech to the Virginia Convention”
o Thomas Paine’s “The Crisis, No. 1”
o Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”
o Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass
o Negro spirituals
o Abraham Lincoln’s “The Gettysburg Address”
o Harlem Renaissance poetry
o Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” and “Letter from
Birmingham City Jail”
o Army-McCarthy Senate Hearings
For the “SAT Vocabulary” section, you need to know the following:
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The definitions of all 140 SAT vocabulary words (worksheets should
be in the “Vocabulary” section of your notebook)
How to use the words in a sentence
How to match up similar words (synonyms) by definition
For the “American Literary Periods” section, you need to know the
following:
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Definitions/dates of all literary periods and subgenres
o Colonial Period
 Puritanism
 Native American Oral Literature
o Revolutionary Period
 Enlightenment (Age of Reason)
 Rhetoric
o Romanticism Period
 Transcendentalism
 Dark Romanticism/Gothic Literature
o Realism Period
 Naturalism
 Regionalism/Local Color
o Modernism Period
 Imagism
 Harlem Renaissance
o Postmodernism Period
 Beats
 Confessionals
 General Postmodern Techniques
Intertextuality
Pastiche
Parody
Self-Reflexivity