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Test your basic knowledge |
CLEP American Literature
Start Test
Study First
Subjects
:
clep
,
literature
Instructions:
Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
If you are not ready to take this test, you can
study here
.
Match each statement with the correct term.
Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.
This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. All written work that is not poetry - drama or song. Articles - autobiographies - biographies - essays - novels and editorials are prose.
Three main colonial era poets
Prose
Jack Kerouac
Melting Pot
2. Famous Poet and Novelist - 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'
Transcendental Club
Puritan Poetry
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
Maya Angelou
3. A story in poetic form. Has plot. characters and theme.
Frederick Douglass
John Smith
Narrative Poem
James Weldon Johnson
4. (Colonial Period) 1. God is King and Ruler. 2. Our duty in this world is to see that God's will prevails.3. Man is depraved from birth. 4. Few will be saved. Damned are damned despite their best efforts. Belief in Covenant Theology : God's covenant w
Anne Sexton
Calvinism
Nietzscheism
Edward Teller
5. Written by Cottonn Mather - to justify the execution of 19 women during the Salem Witch Trials.
Walt Whitman
Wonders of the Invisible World
Calvinism
Stanza
6. (Colonial Period) Best-known Southern colonial writer. Famous for 'The History of the Dividing Line' and 'The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover'
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
William Byrd
Scientism
The Declaration of Independence
7. Pilgrim's constitution. Shaped the politics - religion - and social behavior of the first settlers. Eventually influenced the shape - style and content of the U.S Constitution. William Bradford was famous for being one of the authors and signers.
Ralph Ellison
Foot
Countee Cullen
Mayflower Compact
8. Ranked as top American novelist - even though few of his contemporaries recognized his genius. Moby Dick is considered to be America's greatest prose epic. It is also top contender for best American novel. Wrote the first great romance about the Sout
Jack London
Carl Sandburg
Herman Melville
John Smith
9. Produced a number of sketches - poems - and a one-act pay titled 'Cane.'
Carl Sandburg
Jean Toomer
Langston Hughes
Meter
10. Well-known humorists.
Ballad
Walt Whitman
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Sonnet
11. The process of reading a poem to figure out it's meter.
Rhyme
Iambic Pentameter
Scan
John Steinbeck
12. Considered the voice of the Twenties. Wrote 'The Great Gatsby' - Heavy drinking problem.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Mayflower Compact
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
13. Wrote 'Portnoy's Complaint.' Work reflects the changing attitude of Jews living in post-World War II America.
Prose
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Robert Lowell
Phillip Roth
14. Wrote 'since feeling is first -' 'somewhere i have never traveled - gladly beyond -' and 'The Enormous Room' - Experimented with : form - punctuation - spelling - typography - grammar - imagery - rhythm - and syntax.
Maya Angelou
William Byrd
e.e cummings
Determinism
15. Credited with creating: the modern short story and the detective novel - and the entire genre of mystery. Wrote 'The Philosophy of Composition' - 'The Raven' - 'Tell-Tale Heart -' 'The Cask of Amontillado -' and 'The Gold Bug.' (The first detective
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Booker T. Washington
Henry James
Edgar Allen Poe
16. Clever - memorable sayings.
Lyric Poem
Aphorisms
James Baldwin
The 3 primary literary genres
17. The reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some distant ancestor that have not been present in intervening generations - such as hand like a hairy paw.
Edgar Lee Masters
Atavism
T.S Eliot
Polemic
18. Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot
Theodore Dreiser
Loss of Traditional Values
Sylvia Plath
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
19. Father of American Literature - First American writer to achieve an international reputation. Rip Van Winkle (antihero). Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The Devil and Tom Walker. Was 50 years old before his real name appeared on any of his books. Used alias
Genteel Tradition
Henry James
Edith Wharton
Washington Irving
20. A piece of literature intended to be performed in front of an audience.
Edward Teller
T.S Eliot
Drama
J.D Salinger
21. The Bard of Harlem; most successful black writer in America during the Harlem Renaissance. Wanted to capture the dominant oral traditions of black culture in written form. Best known for his poetry: 'The Weary Blues -' 'Fields of Wonder -' and 'The D
Nativism
Rhyme
Langston Hughes
James Baldwin
22. Poetry that does not have a regular beat - rhyme or line length. Walt Whitman
Sarah Orne Jewett
Scientism
Free Verse
Langston Hughes
23. Won 4 Pulitzers - Top 20th Century Poet - Wrote 'The Road Not Taken -' ' Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening -' and 'Mending Wall'
Romanticism
Narrative Poem
Ezra Pound
Robert Frost
24. A stanza.
Rhyme
James Baldwin
Verse
William Byrd
25. Key intellectual and philosophical voice of 19th-century America. Key player in the transcendentalist movement. First to define what made American poetry American - it is verse that celebrates ordinary experience rather than the epic themes of the pa
Langston Hughes
Claude McKay
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ralph Waldo Emerson
26. All events follow natural laws.
Determinism
Romanticism
Edgar Allen Poe
Racialism
27. A pattern of stressed unstressed syllables that create a beat - as in music.
Rhythm
Polemic
e.e cummings
Modernism
28. (Colonial Period) One of colonial New England's most eminent clergyman. Greatest achievement was as an historian of the Puritan experience. 'Diary of Cotton Mather' - Account of Mather wrestling with sexual temptation to marry a much younger women di
Puritan Poetry
Cotton Mather
Epic Story
Loaded Words
29. People who sang lyrics as they played string-like instruments.
J.D Salinger
Lyres
Romanticism
Genteel Tradition
30. Confessional Poet - Wrote 'Lord Weary's Castle' and 'In Life Studies'
William Faulkner
Jack London
e.e cummings
Robert Lowell
31. Use of medieval - wild - or mysterious elements in literature. Features gloomy settings and horrifying events. Edgar Allen Poe is regarded as the American Master of Gothic writing.
Sylvia Plath
Gothic
Drama
Lyres
32. Most prominent black leader of his day. Wrote 'Up From Slavery'
Booker T. Washington
Modernism
Lyres
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
33. End : occurs when words at the ends of lines of poetry rhyme. Internal: occurs when words within a sentences share the same sound - such as 'Each narrow cell in which we dwell.'
Toni Morrison
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
Edgar Allen Poe
Atavism
34. A type of literature win which words are selected and strung together for their beauty - sound - and power to express feelings.
William Byrd
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Realism
Poetry
35. First Black female poet to win a Pulitzer. Best known for her poems 'The Bean Eaters' and 'We Real Cool.'
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Countee Cullen
Gwendolyn Brooks
36. A literary mask a writer assumes for the purpose of creating a character in a poem.
Blank Verse
Mary Wilkins Freeman
T.S Eliot
Persona
37. Best-known and most influential early Naturalist. Rougon-Marcquart
Emile Zola
Rhyme Scheme
Three main colonial era poets
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
38. (Colonial Period) Stands in direct opposition to the principles - personalities and literary styles of William Bradford and John Winthrop. Did not come to settle the land and establish God's Kingdom - but to trade beaver pelts and live pleasantly. Es
Thomas Morton
Drama
Alice Walker
Calvinism
39. People who are best adapted to survive are chosen through the process of natural selection.
Darwinism
Richard Wright
Transcendental Club
Gothic
40. Chicago School - Work bridges folk poetry and modernist poems. Used music and strong rhythm - Wrote 'The Congo'
Vachel Lindsay
James Thurbur
The 3 primary literary genres
Robert Frost
41. (Colonial Period) One of the most brilliant of American thinkers. Theologian and philosopher; vigorous defender of Calvinistic orthodoxy at the end of the Puritan era. Influenced major nineteenth century writers such as Emerson - Hawthorne - Melville
Robert Frost
Beat Writers
Free Verse
Jonathan Edwards
42. Wrote 'The Invisible Man' - Considered a landmark achievement in American literature
Rhyme
Blank Verse
Ralph Ellison
e.e cummings
43. Unorthodox writers who hung around the bars and coffee houses of San Francisco's North Beach.
Beat Writers
Jean Toomer
James Baldwin
Allegory
44. (Colonial Period) Primarily written to set forth orthodox Calvinist Christianity. Not considered the best representation of poetry during the whole period. Rarely approached excellence of English models. Too much of an emphasis on heavenly values and
Theodore Dreiser
Beat Writers
Genteel Tradition
Puritan Poetry
45. A line or group of lines repeated at the end of a poem or song. Refrains reinforce the main point and create musical effects.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Refrain
Racialism
Erica Jong
46. A literary argument that aims to change public opinion rather than entertain.
Polemic
Determinism
Imagist Poetry
Theodore Dreiser
47. A social and artistic movement of the 1950's stressing unrestrained literary self expression and nonconformity with the mainstream culture
William Byrd
Aphorisms
Beat Movement
Blank Verse
48. Writings interweave sexual and racial concerns; what it means to be black and homosexual in America in the 2nd half of the 20th Century.
Emily Dickinson
James Baldwin
Thomas Jefferson
Iambic Pentameter
49. Used to describe literature that was pandered to the polite - refined - and delicate elements of society. Denied the unsavory underbelly of life.
Imagist Poetry
Genteel Tradition
Edith Wharton
Robert Frost
50. Considered the greatest humorist of 19th century American Literature. Wrote 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.' Master of 'Local Color' writing. Used vernacular - exaggeration and deadpan narrator to create humor.
Kate Chopin
Countee Cullen
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Blank Verse