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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. Used to describe literature that was pandered to the polite - refined - and delicate elements of society. Denied the unsavory underbelly of life.
Norman Mailer
Genteel Tradition
Vachel Lindsay
James Fenimore Cooper
2. Poetry that does not have a regular beat - rhyme or line length. Walt Whitman
Stephen Crane
Romanticism
Free Verse
John Adams
3. Story in which the characters - setting and action represent abstract concepts apart from their literal meaning.
Allegory
Racialism
e.e cummings
Stephen Crane
4. Writings portray the lives of poor - oppressed black women in the early 1900s.
Toni Morrison
Sonnet
John Smith
Alice Walker
5. 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
Norman Mailer
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Willa Cather
Social Darwinism
6. Wrote 'My Antonia' and 'Death Comes for the Archbishop' Won a Pulitzer for her novel 'One of Ours'
Gwendolyn Brooks
Willa Cather
Herman Melville
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
7. The beat or rhythm of a poem - created by a pattern of stressed an unstressed syllables.
Meter
Social Darwinism
Calvinism
Transcendentalism
8. Confessional Poet - Won a Pulitzer for 'Live or Die'
Booker T. Washington
Anne Sexton
Ballad
Bret Harte
9. (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
Benjamin Franklin
Jonathan Edwards
T.S Eliot
Kate Chopin
10. A group of lines in a poem. - Lines of poems are grouped into _______s - just as sentences of prose are grouped into paragraphs.
Transcendentalism
Persona
Richard Wright
Stanza
11. Resisted materialism and chose a life of simplicity - close to nature. Walden is a guidebook for life - showing the reader how to live wisely in a world designed to make wise living impossible. 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience' has become a primer
Three main colonial era poets
Richard Wright
Henry David Thoreau
Allen Ginsberg
12. Confessional Poet - Wrote 'Lord Weary's Castle' and 'In Life Studies'
Vachel Lindsay
Beat Writers
Robert Lowell
Scientism
13. A line or group of lines repeated at the end of a poem or song. Refrains reinforce the main point and create musical effects.
Refrain
Zora Neal Hurston
Melting Pot
Iambic Pentameter
14. Wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' - first American novel to sell a million copies. The most influential book of the 19th century. Credited with starting the Civil War. Most famous American woman of her day.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
John Winthrop
Herman Melville
Darwinism
15. Wished to return to more primitive principles - to simplicity - sobriety - religious earnestness - and personal self-control. Aim was to purify church of England from 'Popery' - Persecuted harshly by Charles I and Archbishop of Canterbury William Lau
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
Polemic
Thomas Paine
16. A social and artistic movement of the 1950's stressing unrestrained literary self expression and nonconformity with the mainstream culture
Beat Movement
Naturalism
Phillip Roth
Kate Chopin
17. Wrote 'The Souls of Black Folk' - Founder of the NAACP
Lyres
T.S Eliot
W.E.B Du Bois
Willa Cather
18. (Colonial Period) Wrote Of Plymouth Plantation (First Thanksgiving) - Chronicled the Pilgrim experience from the religious considerations that caused them to leave England for Holland and then for America.Style is dignified and Grave - and events are
Foot
Imagist Poetry
Theodore Dreiser
William Bradford
19. Genius; called the 'Black Keats' - Worked within traditional poetic forms rather than jazz rhythms. Wrote ' Copper Sun -' and 'The Ballad of the Brown Girl.'
Frederick Douglass
John Adams
Countee Cullen
Epic Story
20. Pattern of five feet (groups of syllables) - each having one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable.
Epic Story
Beat Writers
Carl Sandburg
Iambic Pentameter
21. Chicago School - Wrote 'Lucinda Matlock' - Created 'Spoon River Anthology' - Spoon River poems are characterized by: An unpoetic - colloquial style - frank descriptions of sex - a very critical view of small town life - and a description of he inner
Jonathan Edwards
Edgar Lee Masters
Atavism
Edwin Arlington Robinson
22. All written work that is not poetry - drama or song. Articles - autobiographies - biographies - essays - novels and editorials are prose.
Prose
Gwendolyn Brooks
Modernism
Rhythm
23. Wrote 'The House of Mirth -' and 'The Age of Innocence' most famous for 'Ethan Frome' Noted use of indirection and allusion. First women to win a Pulitzer for 'The Age of Innocence' Main themes were upper-class life and the constraints it placed on b
Racialism
Mayflower Compact
James Thurbur
Edith Wharton
24. 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
Thomas Jefferson
Edith Wharton
Frank Norris
Herman Melville
25. 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.
Thomas Morton
Wonders of the Invisible World
e.e cummings
Vachel Lindsay
26. Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
Refrain
J.D Salinger
Edgar Lee Masters
27. Literary movement of the 19th century Presented the details of ordinary life in art. Realists rejected the heroic and adventurous and concentrated on pessimistic views of poverty - prostitution and pain. Reaction to Romanticism.
American Adam
Realism
Romanticism
Puritan Poetry
28. Wrote 'Portnoy's Complaint.' Work reflects the changing attitude of Jews living in post-World War II America.
Robert Frost
Maya Angelou
Phillip Roth
Allen Ginsberg
29. First Black woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Novel focus on black cultural identity in contemporary America. Wrote 'The Bluest Eye -' 'Tar Baby -' and 'Beloved'
Transcendental Club
Toni Morrison
Walt Whitman
Henry David Thoreau
30. 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.
Gothic
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Transcendental Club
Ralph Waldo Emerson
31. In the 1920s - became the symbol of the liberated woman for her wit and independence. Known for her caustic and clever poems and short stories.
Naturalism
Ezra Pound
Dorthy Parker
William Faulkner
32. Local Colorist Wrote 'The Awakening' Writing is memorable for its : Vivid and economical style - Rich Local Dialect - and Penetrating view of the culture of South Louisiana.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Transcendentalism
Foot
Kate Chopin
33. Chicago School - Work bridges folk poetry and modernist poems. Used music and strong rhythm - Wrote 'The Congo'
Langston Hughes
Vachel Lindsay
Persona
Atavism
34. Imagist Poet - Wrote 'In a Station of the Metro -' ' The Pisan Cantos -' 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberly -' and 'Mauberly.' Modeled 'Cantos' after Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' - Infamous traitor; Staunch supporter of Mussolini during WWII. Didn't speak for the
Prose
Ezra Pound
John Smith
Cotton Mather
35. That America's unique identity transcends ethnic - cultural - or religious backgrounds. Idea given by St. Jean de Crevecoeur
Melting Pot
Robert Lowell
Persona
Willa Cather
36. Naturalist - Wrote 'McTeague - a Story of San Francisco'
Edgar Lee Masters
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Frank Norris
Booker T. Washington
37. The primacy of science over religious - mythical - or spiritual interpretations of life.
Scientism
Iambic Pentameter
Aphorisms
Rhyme Scheme
38. The belief that 'true' Americans were those of earlier Anglo-Saxon descent - and that this 'race' was under threat from the growing influx of Central European and Asian immigrants.
Nativism
Walt Whitman
Thomas Jefferson
John Smith
39. Friedrich Nitezche's belief in the 'will to power' as the primary force of society and the individual.
The Day of Doom
Nietzscheism
Booker T. Washington
Determinism
40. Considered the voice of the Twenties. Wrote 'The Great Gatsby' - Heavy drinking problem.
Puritan Poetry
Verse
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Three main colonial era poets
41. A 14-line poem with a set rhythm and rhyme scheme.
James Baldwin
Sonnet
Erica Jong
Washington Irving
42. Wrote Catcher in the Rye
Melting Pot
Emily Dickinson
J.D Salinger
Lyric Poem
43. Major theme of 20th Century literature.
Loss of Traditional Values
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Narrative Poem
Erica Jong
44. Local Colorist Great Niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Verse
Flannery O'Connor
Social Darwinism
45. (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
Cotton Mather
Loss of Traditional Values
Flannery O'Connor
James Thurbur
46. 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.
Countee Cullen
Edgar Lee Masters
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Naturalism
47. Southern Gothic writer. Creates stories that simultaneously shock readers and reflect her strong Catholic faith.
48. Wrote 'Daddy' and 'The Bell Jar' - Confessional Poet
Frank Norris
Allen Ginsberg
Sylvia Plath
Vachel Lindsay
49. A literary argument that aims to change public opinion rather than entertain.
Thomas Paine
Polemic
Booker T. Washington
Henry James
50. A philosophy pioneered by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1830's and 1840's - in which each person has direct communication with God and Nature - and there is no need for organized churches. It incorporated the ideas that mind goes beyond matter - intuiti
Benjamin Franklin
Prose
Transcendentalism
Willa Cather