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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. Book of feline poems - 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats -' formed the basis of the Broadway hit 'Cats.' Wrote 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Published 'The Waste-Land' which became the most famous poem of the first half of the 20th Centur
Genteel Tradition
Robert Lowell
Theodore Dreiser
T.S Eliot
2. Wrote 'Portnoy's Complaint.' Work reflects the changing attitude of Jews living in post-World War II America.
Willa Cather
Phillip Roth
Cotton Mather
W.E.B Du Bois
3. Wrote Catcher in the Rye
J.D Salinger
Bret Harte
Henry James
Drama
4. A line or group of lines repeated at the end of a poem or song. Refrains reinforce the main point and create musical effects.
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Monologue
Refrain
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
5. Major theme of 20th Century literature.
Nietzscheism
Claude McKay
Loss of Traditional Values
Monologue
6. (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
Romanticism
Jonathan Edwards
Scientism
Maya Angelou
7. A type of literature win which words are selected and strung together for their beauty - sound - and power to express feelings.
John Winthrop
Anne Sexton
Poetry
Refrain
8. Wrote 'The Souls of Black Folk' - Founder of the NAACP
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
W.E.B Du Bois
Determinism
Frank Norris
9. 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.
Toni Morrison
Prose
Sylvia Plath
Mayflower Compact
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
Benjamin Franklin
Modernism
James Fenimore Cooper
Frederick Douglass
11. A group of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
John Winthrop
Foot
Samuel Sewall
F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. Unorthodox writers who hung around the bars and coffee houses of San Francisco's North Beach.
Poetry
Benjamin Franklin
Beat Writers
Mary Wilkins Freeman
13. Most prominent black leader of his day. Wrote 'Up From Slavery'
Booker T. Washington
Allen Ginsberg
W.E.B Du Bois
Edgar Allen Poe
14. 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
Loss of Traditional Values
Edith Wharton
American Adam
Flannery O'Connor
15. That America's unique identity transcends ethnic - cultural - or religious backgrounds. Idea given by St. Jean de Crevecoeur
Edgar Lee Masters
Gothic
Edward Teller
Melting Pot
16. 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
Edgar Allen Poe
Erica Jong
The Day of Doom
Theodore Dreiser
17. Wrote 'The Invisible Man' - Considered a landmark achievement in American literature
Ralph Ellison
Nativism
John Winthrop
Naturalism
18. 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.
e.e cummings
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Genteel Tradition
Bret Harte
19. (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
Imagist Poetry
Modernism
Broadside
Cotton Mather
20. Ben Franklin paid his passage to America. First Pamphlet was Common Sense : credited with getting the colonists to see the 'advantage - necessity - and obligation' of breaking with Britain. Followed by a series of pamphlets - collectively called 'An
Gothic
American Adam
Emily Dickinson
Thomas Paine
21. The repeated use of identical sounds.
Zora Neal Hurston
Rhyme
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Flannery O'Connor
22. Local Colorist Wrote 'The Country of the Pointed Firs' Famous for use of idiomatic language - conservative values and imagery and vivid descriptions of rural New England.
Rhyme
Sarah Orne Jewett
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
Nathaniel Hawthorne
23. Genius; called the 'Black Keats' - Worked within traditional poetic forms rather than jazz rhythms. Wrote ' Copper Sun -' and 'The Ballad of the Brown Girl.'
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Blank Verse
Countee Cullen
Henry James
24. She holds a unique place in American history as both the wife of one president and the mother of another. In her own right - she was an ardent American patriot. Her perseverance during the American Revolution kept her family together and enabled her
Abigail Adams
Beat Writers
Blank Verse
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
25. A single sheet of paper printed on one or both sides. 'The Dying Redcoat'
Edward Teller
Broadside
Lyres
Scan
26. 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
Jack Kerouac
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
William Bradford
Drama
27. Autobiography is considered the one of the greatest ever written. Wrote Poor Richard's Alamanac
Samuel Sewall
Darwinism
Allegory
Benjamin Franklin
28. Written by Michael Wigglesworth - the most famous poem of 17th Century - proceeds from judgement day to hell and then to paradise. First American Best Seller.
Willa Cather
Thomas Jefferson
Ezra Pound
The Day of Doom
29. Written by Cottonn Mather - to justify the execution of 19 women during the Salem Witch Trials.
Genteel Tradition
Kate Chopin
James Baldwin
Wonders of the Invisible World
30. 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.
Meter
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Walt Whitman
Prose
31. A story in poetic form. Has plot. characters and theme.
Langston Hughes
John Adams
Narrative Poem
William Bradford
32. Movement in the early part of the 20th Century where writers experimented with new themes such as fragmentation - stream of consciousness - and imagery.
Modernism
Toni Morrison
Mayflower Compact
John Winthrop
33. The primacy of science over religious - mythical - or spiritual interpretations of life.
Ballad
Alice Walker
Puritan Poetry
Scientism
34. Greatest poet of American colonial period. Influenced T.S Elliot - Ezra Pound - and other modern-day metaphysical poets. Defined 'American'
Herman Melville
Kate Chopin
Edward Teller
Foot
35. 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
Claude McKay
Washington Irving
Broadside
Rhythm
36. 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
Three main colonial era poets
Edith Wharton
Transcendentalism
Flannery O'Connor
37. Used to describe literature that was pandered to the polite - refined - and delicate elements of society. Denied the unsavory underbelly of life.
Mayflower Compact
Zora Neal Hurston
Genteel Tradition
Social Darwinism
38. 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
Henry David Thoreau
Genteel Tradition
Herman Melville
Blank Verse
39. Wrote gold-rush stories like 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' and 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat'; never matched up to his previous fame local colorist
Poetry
Toni Morrison
Beat Movement
Bret Harte
40. 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'
Toni Morrison
Ernest Hemmingway
John Adams
Genteel Tradition
41. Wrote 'Daddy' and 'The Bell Jar' - Confessional Poet
Sylvia Plath
Refrain
Saul Bellow
Beat Movement
42. Wrote 'The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man' and 'Lift Every Voice and Sing -' (The Black National Anthem)
Puritan Poetry
Gwendolyn Brooks
James Weldon Johnson
T.S Eliot
43. 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
Carl Sandburg
Allen Ginsberg
Romanticism
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
44. (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
Sonnet
Transcendentalism
John Winthrop
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
45. America's most popular humorist in the 30s and 40s. Frequently explored the battle of the sexes. Wrote 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.'
Loaded Words
James Thurbur
Polemic
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
46. 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
Blank Verse
Determinism
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prose
47. A literary argument that aims to change public opinion rather than entertain.
Polemic
Loss of Traditional Values
James Thurbur
J.D Salinger
48. Leader of naturalism in American writing. Wrote 'An American Tragedy'
Theodore Dreiser
Norman Mailer
Loaded Words
Nativism
49. Produced a number of sketches - poems - and a one-act pay titled 'Cane.'
William S. Burroughs
Nativism
Jean Toomer
Aphorisms
50. 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
Langston Hughes
Social Darwinism
Edith Wharton
Rhyme