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AP Lit Literature Allusions Flashcards

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2896856435BabbittA self-satisfied person concerned chiefly with business and middle-class ideals like material success; a member of the American working class whose unthinking attachment to its business and social ideals is such to make him a model of narrow-mindedness and self-satisfaction; after George F. Babbitt, the main character in the novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis0
2896856436BrobdingnagianGigantic, enormous, on a large scale, enlarged; after Brobdingnag, the land of giants visited by Gullivar in Gullivar's Travels, by Jonathan Swift1
2896856437BumbleTo speak or behave clumsily or faltering, to make a humming or droning sound; Middle English bomblem; a clumsy religious figure (a beadle) in a work of literature2
2896856438CinderellaOne who gains affluence or recognition after obscurity and neglect, a person or thing whose beauty or worth remains unrecognized; after the fairytale heroine who escapes from a life of drudgery through the intervention of a fairy godmother and marries a handsome prince3
2896856439Don JuanA libertine, profligate, a man obsessed with seducing women; after Don Juan, the legendary 14th century Spanish nobleman and libertine4
2897140998Don QuixoteSomeone overly idealistic to the point of having impossible dreams; from the crazed and impoverished Spanish noble who sets out to revive the glory of knighthood, romanticized in the musical The Man of La Mancha based on the story by Cervantes5
2897164785PanglossianBlindly or misleadingly optimistic; after Dr.Pangloss in Candide by Voltaire, a pedantic old tutor6
2897177697FalstaffianFull of wit and bawdy humor; after Falstaff, a fat, sensual, boastful, and mendacious knight who was the companion of Henry, Prince of Wales7
2897199482FrankensteinAnything that threatens or destroys its creator; from the young scientist in Mary Shelley's novel of this name, who creates a monster that eventually destroys him8
2897210493FridayA faithful and willing attendant, ready to turn his hand to anything; from the young savage found by Robinson Crusoe on a Friday, and kept as his servant and companion on the desert island9
2897229078GalahadA pure and noble man with limited ambition; in the legends of King Arthur, the purest and most virtuous knight of the Round Table, the only knight to find the Holy Grail10
2897248258Jerkyll and HydeA capricious person with two sides to his/her personality; from a character in the famous novel Dr.Jerkyll and Mr. Hyde who had more than one personality, a split personality (one good and one evil)11
2897269477LilliputianDescriptive of a very small person or of something diminutive, trivial or petty; after the Lilliputians, tiny people in Gullivar's Travels by Jonathan Swift12
2897669420Little Lord FauntleroyRefers either to a certain type of children's clothing or to a beautiful, but pampered and effeminate small boy; from a work by Frances H. Burnett, the main character, seven-year-old Cedric Errol, was a striking figure, dressed in black velvet with a lace collar and yellow curls13
2897687323LotharioUsed to describe a man whose chief interest is seducing s woman; from the play The Fair Penitent by Nicholas Rowe, the main character and seducer14
2897699309MalapropismThe usually unintentional humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase, especially the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended, but ludicrously wrong in context- Example: polo bears. Mrs. Malaprop was a character noted for her misuse of words in R. B. Sheridan's comedy The Rivals15
2897726449MilquetoastA timid, weak, or unassertive person; from Casper Milquetoast, who was a comic strip character created by H. T. Webster16
2897737070PickwickianHumorous, sometimes derogatory; from Samuel Pickwick, a character in Charles Dickens' Pickwickian Papers17
2897745056PollyannaA person characterized by impermissible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything, a foolishly or blindly optimistic person; from Eleanor Porter's heroine, Pollyanna Whittier, in the book Pollyanna18
2897759996Pooh-bahA pompous, ostentatious official, especially one who, holding many offices, fulfills none of them, a person who holds high office; after Pooh-Bah Lord-High-Everything-Else, character in The Mikado, a musical by Gilbert and Sullivan19
2897779308QuixoticHaving foolish and impractical ideas of honor, or schemes for the general good; after Don Quixote, a half-crazy reformer and knight of the supposed distressed, in a novel by the same name20
2897790215RobotA machine that looks like a human being and performs various acts of a human being, a similar but functional machine whose lack of capacity for human emotions is often emphasized by an efficient, insensitive person who functions automatically, a mechanism guided by controls from Karel Capek's Rossum's Universal Robots (1920), taken from the Czech "robota," meaning drudgery21
2897816995RodomontadeBluster and boasting, to boast (rodomontading or rodomontaded); from Rodomont, a brave, but braggart knight in Bojardo's Orlando Inamorato; King of Sarza or Algiers, son of Ulteus, and commander of both horse and foot in the Saracen Army22
2897830492ScroogeA bitter and/or greedy person; from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, an elderly stingy miser who is given a reality check by 3 visiting ghosts23
2897838726Simon LegreeA harsh, cruel, or demanding person in authority, such as an employer or officer that acts in this manner; from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Ward, the brutal slave overseer24
2897850889SvengaliA person with an irresistible hypnotic power; from a person in a novel written in 1894 by George Mauriers; a musician who hypnotizes and gains control over the heroine25
2897864109TartuffeHypocrite or someone who is hypocritical; central character in a comedy by Moliere produced in 1667; Moliere was famous for his hypocritical piety26
2897875178Uncle TomSomeone thought to have the timid service attitude like that of a slave to his owner; from the humble, pious, long-suffering Negro slave in Uncle Tom's Cabin by abolitionist writer Stowe27
2897892507Uriah HeepA fawning toadie, an obsequious person; from a character in Charles Dicken's David Copperfield (1849-50)28
2897903708Walter MittyA commonplace non-adventuresome person who seeks escape from reality through Daydreaming, a henpecked husband or dreamer; after a daydreaming henpecked "hero" in a story by James Thurber29
2897916062YahooA boorish, crass, or stupid person; from a member of a race of brutes in Swift's Gullivar's Travels who have the form and all the vices of humans30

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