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.

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.

Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville were known as anti-Transcendentalists or Dark Romantics

Had much in common with Transcendentalists: 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

Anti-Transcendentalists

Nathaniel Hawthorne Herman Melville

Edgar Allan Poe

Best known for Moby-Dick, 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

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”

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

“Go to the Grave” “The Darken’d Veil” “Earthly Pomp” “Address to the

Moon” “The Ocean”

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

List three things that all of the poems we read today have in common.