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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. Greatest poet of American colonial period. Influenced T.S Elliot - Ezra Pound - and other modern-day metaphysical poets. Defined 'American'
Abigail Adams
The Declaration of Independence
Edward Teller
The Day of Doom
2. Poetry that does not have a regular beat - rhyme or line length. Walt Whitman
Iambic Pentameter
American Adam
Benjamin Franklin
Free Verse
3. All written work that is not poetry - drama or song. Articles - autobiographies - biographies - essays - novels and editorials are prose.
Prose
Gwendolyn Brooks
Richard Wright
Mayflower Compact
4. (Colonial Period) First writer of American Literature. Wrote 'The Generall Historie of Virginia - New England - and The Summer Isles.' Archetypal American.
John Smith
Melting Pot
Loaded Words
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
5. Confessional Poet - Won a Pulitzer for 'Live or Die'
Beat Writers
Emile Zola
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Anne Sexton
6. Clever - memorable sayings.
Scientism
Maya Angelou
Samuel Sewall
Aphorisms
7. 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
Ezra Pound
Toni Morrison
Allegory
Edgar Lee Masters
8. A 14-line poem with a set rhythm and rhyme scheme.
Prose
Sonnet
Henry James
Three main colonial era poets
9. Wrote 'My Antonia' and 'Death Comes for the Archbishop' Won a Pulitzer for her novel 'One of Ours'
Mary Wilkins Freeman
The Day of Doom
Willa Cather
Social Darwinism
10. Created the first American adventure story. First successful American novelist. 'Father of the American novel.' Very litigious - cranky and vain. Most famous for the 'Leatherstocking Tales': A series of five novels about the frontiersman - Natty Bump
John Smith
Calvinism
James Fenimore Cooper
Sonnet
11. All events follow natural laws.
Theodore Dreiser
Determinism
Stanza
Aphorisms
12. 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.
Bret Harte
Calvinism
Loss of Traditional Values
Kate Chopin
13. 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
Herman Melville
Saul Bellow
William S. Burroughs
The 3 primary literary genres
14. A social and artistic movement of the 1950's stressing unrestrained literary self expression and nonconformity with the mainstream culture
Thomas Jefferson
Mayflower Compact
Calvinism
Beat Movement
15. Anne Bradstreet - Michael Wigglesworth - Edward Taylor
Edgar Lee Masters
Alice Walker
Erica Jong
Three main colonial era poets
16. Wrote 'Grapes of Wrath -' 'Of Mice and Men -' and 'East of Eden -' and 'Winter of Our Discontent.' Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature - Pulitzer and and the National Book Award.
Drama
Gothic
John Steinbeck
Blank Verse
17. Confessional Poet - Wrote 'Lord Weary's Castle' and 'In Life Studies'
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Narrative Poem
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Robert Lowell
18. Applying the evolutionary 'survival of the fittest' concept to a world marked by struggle and competition. (Promulgated by Herbert Spencer - a best-selling sociologist of the late 19th Century.
Social Darwinism
Ezra Pound
Three main colonial era poets
Jack Kerouac
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.'
Polemic
Ezra Pound
Countee Cullen
Atavism
20. (Colonial Period) Best-known Southern colonial writer. Famous for 'The History of the Dividing Line' and 'The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover'
William Byrd
Three main colonial era poets
John Steinbeck
John Smith
21. A line or group of lines repeated at the end of a poem or song. Refrains reinforce the main point and create musical effects.
Loss of Traditional Values
Refrain
Ezra Pound
Stanza
22. Famous for writing - marriages - divorces and media hype. Wrote 'The Executioner's Song.'
Determinism
Anne Sexton
Robert Lowell
Norman Mailer
23. (Colonial Period) Only person to publicly repent his part in the Salem Witch Trials. Published America's first anti-slavery tract.
Samuel Sewall
Zora Neal Hurston
Puritan Poetry
Nativism
24. Wrote 'Howl -' ' Empty Mirror -' and 'Kaddish and Other Poems' - Poet
Jean Toomer
Bret Harte
Langston Hughes
Allen Ginsberg
25. (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
Jonathan Edwards
James Baldwin
Scan
Saul Bellow
26. First great writer of psychological fiction; obsessed with sin and guilt. 'The Scarlet Letter' - 'Young Goodman Brown' - Claimed his work was romance and therefore not required to be realistic.
Kate Chopin
Nathaniel Hawthorne
William S. Burroughs
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
27. (Colonial Period) Began 'The History of New England' aboard the Arbella in 1630. Lead 2 -000 English emigrant to Massachusetts Bay. Made daily journal-style entries until his death. Intended it to be an account of his long governorship. Style is pla
Richard Wright
Genteel Tradition
The Day of Doom
John Winthrop
28. Produced a number of sketches - poems - and a one-act pay titled 'Cane.'
Gothic
Nativism
Jean Toomer
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
29. Wrote 'Portnoy's Complaint.' Work reflects the changing attitude of Jews living in post-World War II America.
Phillip Roth
Drama
Free Verse
Loaded Words
30. Written by Cottonn Mather - to justify the execution of 19 women during the Salem Witch Trials.
Thomas Jefferson
Iambic Pentameter
Wonders of the Invisible World
Sonnet
31. 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
Realism
Rhyme
Henry David Thoreau
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
32. People who are best adapted to survive are chosen through the process of natural selection.
James Fenimore Cooper
Three main colonial era poets
Darwinism
Samuel Sewall
33. 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
Cotton Mather
Loss of Traditional Values
Washington Irving
Henry David Thoreau
34. Involves a speaker who addresses an unseen audience. Usually takes place at a crucial moment in the speaker's life.
Monologue
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edwin Arlington Robinson
F. Scott Fitzgerald
35. 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
Aphorisms
Prose
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
Romanticism
36. The primacy of science over religious - mythical - or spiritual interpretations of life.
Scientism
Anne Sexton
Puritan Poetry
Nietzscheism
37. Movement in the early part of the 20th Century where writers experimented with new themes such as fragmentation - stream of consciousness - and imagery.
Modernism
Norman Mailer
Loss of Traditional Values
William Bradford
38. Chicago School : Verses often concern ordinary - everyday people; realistic poems and dramatic emphasis attract a large audience. Wrote 'Chicago -' and a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Poems describe everyday Americans - have a positive tone - use sim
John Smith
Anne Sexton
Carl Sandburg
Ezra Pound
39. Wrote 'Songs of Jamaica' - Poetry and 'Harlem Shadows' (first great literary achievement of the Harlem Renaissance. Much of his poetry evokes the rich heritage of Jamaica.
Claude McKay
Anne Sexton
The Day of Doom
Kate Chopin
40. 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
Edgar Lee Masters
Transcendentalism
Alice Walker
Anne Sexton
41. An artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th Century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature - emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination - departure from the attitudes and forms of
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Edward Teller
Realism
Romanticism
42. First vice president and second president. Member of the First and Second Continental Congresses. Helped draft the Declaration of Independence. Husband of Abigail Adams.
Beat Writers
The Declaration of Independence
John Adams
Richard Wright
43. 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.
Loaded Words
Mayflower Compact
Flannery O'Connor
Cotton Mather
44. A regular pattern of words that end with the same sound.
Rhyme Scheme
Norman Mailer
William Bradford
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
45. Writings portray the lives of poor - oppressed black women in the early 1900s.
Alice Walker
Walt Whitman
Vachel Lindsay
Aphorisms
46. Won the Nobel Prize - Novels concentrate on the turmoil of modern Jewish life.
Erica Jong
Thomas Paine
Three main colonial era poets
Saul Bellow
47. Story in which the characters - setting and action represent abstract concepts apart from their literal meaning.
Toni Morrison
American Adam
e.e cummings
Allegory
48. Wrote Catcher in the Rye
J.D Salinger
Monologue
William Byrd
Vachel Lindsay
49. The repeated use of identical sounds.
Rhyme
Sarah Orne Jewett
Saul Bellow
Nietzscheism
50. Created new poetic forms and subjects to fashion a distinctly American type of poetic expression. Rejected conventional themes - traditional literary references - allusions - and rhymes. Used long lines to capture rhythms of natural speech - free ver
Walt Whitman
Sylvia Plath
Transcendental Club
Sarah Orne Jewett