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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. A group of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Foot
Scan
Zora Neal Hurston
2. (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
Flannery O'Connor
Claude McKay
Atavism
John Winthrop
3. A stanza.
Thomas Morton
Ezra Pound
Verse
Washington Irving
4. A piece of literature intended to be performed in front of an audience.
Drama
Meter
Racialism
Edgar Lee Masters
5. Third US President Referred to as the 'Sage of Monticello'Drafted the Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Jefferson
Maya Angelou
Norman Mailer
Broadside
6. Anne Bradstreet - Michael Wigglesworth - Edward Taylor
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
Transcendental Club
Three main colonial era poets
Nativism
7. 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
Racialism
Edith Wharton
Scientism
8. 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.
James Fenimore Cooper
Puritan Poetry
Transcendentalism
Gothic
9. First Black female poet to win a Pulitzer. Best known for her poems 'The Bean Eaters' and 'We Real Cool.'
Gwendolyn Brooks
Determinism
Lyres
Lyric Poem
10. 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
Henry David Thoreau
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
Emily Dickinson
Sarah Orne Jewett
11. 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
Allegory
John Adams
Atavism
Herman Melville
12. A group of lines in a poem. - Lines of poems are grouped into _______s - just as sentences of prose are grouped into paragraphs.
Prose
Stanza
John Smith
Samuel Sewall
13. Wrote 'Daddy' and 'The Bell Jar' - Confessional Poet
Loaded Words
Sylvia Plath
Scan
Rhyme
14. Recluse - agoraphobic - Didn't title her poems. All are designated by numbers. Paved the way for the Imagist movement of the 1920s. Considered on of the founders of Modern American Poetry. Concrete imagery - forceful language - and unique style usher
John Winthrop
Ballad
Emily Dickinson
Erica Jong
15. Involves a speaker who addresses an unseen audience. Usually takes place at a crucial moment in the speaker's life.
Jack London
Foot
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
Monologue
16. 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.
William Faulkner
Puritan Poetry
Jack London
Social Darwinism
17. (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
Thomas Jefferson
Lyres
Allegory
18. Characterized by: Ordinary Language - Free Verse - Concentrated Word Pictures - Very specific words and phrases - Advanced by Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell; also utilized by Robert Frost
Imagist Poetry
Rhythm
Allegory
Henry James
19. Wrote 'Portnoy's Complaint.' Work reflects the changing attitude of Jews living in post-World War II America.
Thomas Jefferson
Phillip Roth
Loaded Words
J.D Salinger
20. People who sang lyrics as they played string-like instruments.
Prose
John Adams
Lyres
Vachel Lindsay
21. A false science that argued tat different human races possessed distinguishing traits that determined their particular behavior and achievement in society.
Stephen Crane
Racialism
Gwendolyn Brooks
Frederick Douglass
22. Confessional Poet - Won a Pulitzer for 'Live or Die'
Prose
Anne Sexton
Narrative Poem
The Day of Doom
23. A story told in song form. Ballads often tell stories of adventure and love.
Melting Pot
Mayflower Compact
Ballad
Henry David Thoreau
24. Work did not have a political agenda. Wrote 'Their Eyes Were Watching God -' 'Mules and Men -' and 'Jonahs Gourd Vine.' Considered one of the key black writers of the 20th Century.
Robert Frost
Zora Neal Hurston
Edgar Lee Masters
Refrain
25. Chicago School - Work bridges folk poetry and modernist poems. Used music and strong rhythm - Wrote 'The Congo'
Carl Sandburg
Jack London
T.S Eliot
Vachel Lindsay
26. (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
Claude McKay
Thomas Morton
Saul Bellow
Cotton Mather
27. Produced a number of sketches - poems - and a one-act pay titled 'Cane.'
Jean Toomer
W.E.B Du Bois
James Thurbur
Stephen Crane
28. First vice president and second president. Member of the First and Second Continental Congresses. Helped draft the Declaration of Independence. Husband of Abigail Adams.
John Adams
W.E.B Du Bois
Edith Wharton
Norman Mailer
29. Movement in the early part of the 20th Century where writers experimented with new themes such as fragmentation - stream of consciousness - and imagery.
Countee Cullen
Modernism
Maya Angelou
Lyric Poem
30. (Colonial Period) Only person to publicly repent his part in the Salem Witch Trials. Published America's first anti-slavery tract.
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
J.D Salinger
Samuel Sewall
Jack London
31. (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
William Byrd
Puritan Poetry
Benjamin Franklin
Ralph Ellison
32. Wrote Catcher in the Rye
Three main colonial era poets
Harriet Beecher Stowe
J.D Salinger
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
33. Considered the voice of the Twenties. Wrote 'The Great Gatsby' - Heavy drinking problem.
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Jack London
Harriet Beecher Stowe
F. Scott Fitzgerald
34. (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
Polemic
Frederick Douglass
Calvinism
Bret Harte
35. Wrote 'The Souls of Black Folk' - Founder of the NAACP
W.E.B Du Bois
Blank Verse
Sonnet
John Winthrop
36. 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
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Racialism
Langston Hughes
Social Darwinism
37. 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
John Steinbeck
Henry David Thoreau
Transcendentalism
Gwendolyn Brooks
38. Stylistic Elements Parallel Structure: repeated used of phrases - clauses - or sentences that are similar in structure. Rhythm - Forceful and Direct Language
Allen Ginsberg
The Declaration of Independence
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
39. 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
Edith Wharton
Determinism
Gothic
Persona
40. (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
The 3 primary literary genres
William Bradford
Sarah Orne Jewett
William S. Burroughs
41. 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.
Sarah Orne Jewett
Stanza
Thomas Morton
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
42. Words that carry a strong emotional overtones.
John Smith
The 3 primary literary genres
Loaded Words
Narrative Poem
43. Friedrich Nitezche's belief in the 'will to power' as the primary force of society and the individual.
Washington Irving
Darwinism
Jonathan Edwards
Nietzscheism
44. The idea that there is something different - unique and special about Americans.
Ralph Ellison
Bret Harte
Beat Writers
American Adam
45. A type of literature win which words are selected and strung together for their beauty - sound - and power to express feelings.
Rhyme
Robert Frost
John Steinbeck
Poetry
46. 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
Romanticism
Dorthy Parker
Richard Wright
The Day of Doom
47. 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.
The Day of Doom
Rhythm
Dorthy Parker
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
48. A long narrative that represents characters in a high position who take part in a series of adventures of significance.
Rhyme Scheme
Atavism
Epic Story
Mayflower Compact
49. Wrote 'The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.' Escaped slave that became one o f the most effective orators of his day - an influential newspaper writer - a militant abolitionist - and a famous diplomat.
James Baldwin
Sylvia Plath
Frederick Douglass
Romanticism
50. Story in which the characters - setting and action represent abstract concepts apart from their literal meaning.
Walt Whitman
The Day of Doom
Allegory
Nathaniel Hawthorne