SUBJECTS
|
BROWSE
|
CAREER CENTER
|
POPULAR
|
JOIN
|
LOGIN
Business Skills
|
Soft Skills
|
Basic Literacy
|
Certifications
About
|
Help
|
Privacy
|
Terms
|
Email
Search
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. 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.
Saul Bellow
Three main colonial era poets
Nativism
Booker T. Washington
2. Most prominent black leader of his day. Wrote 'Up From Slavery'
Zora Neal Hurston
J.D Salinger
Booker T. Washington
John Adams
3. 'The Old Man and the Sea -' 'The Sun Also Rises -' 'A Farewell to Arms -' and 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Writing style emphasizes: Short sentences - brief paragraphs - active verbs - authenticity - compression - clarity - and immediacy. Produced some
Harriet Beecher Stowe
William Faulkner
Ernest Hemmingway
Nathaniel Hawthorne
4. America's most popular humorist in the 30s and 40s. Frequently explored the battle of the sexes. Wrote 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.'
Sonnet
James Thurbur
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Maya Angelou
5. Naturalist - Wrote 'McTeague - a Story of San Francisco'
Romanticism
Frank Norris
Loaded Words
Rhyme Scheme
6. First vice president and second president. Member of the First and Second Continental Congresses. Helped draft the Declaration of Independence. Husband of Abigail Adams.
Ballad
John Adams
Meter
James Fenimore Cooper
7. Wrote Catcher in the Rye
William Bradford
Realism
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
J.D Salinger
8. 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
John Adams
Foot
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Aphorisms
9. (Colonial Period) Best-known Southern colonial writer. Famous for 'The History of the Dividing Line' and 'The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover'
Booker T. Washington
William S. Burroughs
William Byrd
Jack London
10. (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
Meter
Beat Movement
Robert Frost
William Bradford
11. Chicago School - Work bridges folk poetry and modernist poems. Used music and strong rhythm - Wrote 'The Congo'
Vachel Lindsay
Verse
Thomas Paine
Broadside
12. Famous Poet and Novelist - 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'
Maya Angelou
Naturalism
Dorthy Parker
Sonnet
13. Produces ribald - exuberant - feminist poems - novels and essays. Most famous novel is 'Fear of Flying.'
Nathaniel Hawthorne
W.E.B Du Bois
Erica Jong
Richard Wright
14. 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.
Stephen Crane
Flannery O'Connor
The Day of Doom
J.D Salinger
15. Well-known humorists.
Monologue
Rhyme
Frank Norris
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
16. A group of lines in a poem. - Lines of poems are grouped into _______s - just as sentences of prose are grouped into paragraphs.
Verse
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
Carl Sandburg
Stanza
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
Scientism
James Weldon Johnson
Cotton Mather
Calvinism
18. Literary movement of the 19th century that traced the effects of heredity and environment on people who ere helpless to change their situations. Also called Determinism for its belief in the effects of environment - heredity - and chance on human fat
Nietzscheism
Narrative Poem
Naturalism
Henry James
19. All events follow natural laws.
Puritan Poetry
John Winthrop
Determinism
Scientism
20. Major theme of 20th Century literature.
William Byrd
John Adams
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Loss of Traditional Values
21. Confessional Poet - Wrote 'Lord Weary's Castle' and 'In Life Studies'
Countee Cullen
Drama
Robert Lowell
Monologue
22. A story told in song form. Ballads often tell stories of adventure and love.
Ezra Pound
Emile Zola
Ballad
Langston Hughes
23. 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
William Byrd
Transcendentalism
Ernest Hemmingway
Sonnet
24. A 14-line poem with a set rhythm and rhyme scheme.
Anne Sexton
Sonnet
Rhythm
Atavism
25. All written work that is not poetry - drama or song. Articles - autobiographies - biographies - essays - novels and editorials are prose.
Prose
Rhyme
Booker T. Washington
The Day of Doom
26. 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.
Modernism
John Steinbeck
Stephen Crane
Vachel Lindsay
27. A type of literature win which words are selected and strung together for their beauty - sound - and power to express feelings.
Poetry
Narrative Poem
Carl Sandburg
Lyres
28. Coined the term 'Beat Generation' - Wrote 'On the Road' - All of his books are Autobiographical
Washington Irving
Transcendentalism
Jack Kerouac
e.e cummings
29. People who are best adapted to survive are chosen through the process of natural selection.
Darwinism
T.S Eliot
James Weldon Johnson
James Thurbur
30. The primacy of science over religious - mythical - or spiritual interpretations of life.
Atavism
Scientism
Cotton Mather
Anne Sexton
31. Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
Norman Mailer
William Bradford
Nativism
32. Writings portray the lives of poor - oppressed black women in the early 1900s.
Meter
Frederick Douglass
Samuel Sewall
Alice Walker
33. An organization of the leading transcendentalists living around Boston. They were interested in new developments in theology - philosophy - and literature. Major writers: Ripley - Emerson - Alcott - Fuller - Hawthorne - Thoreau - Channing - Hedge - P
Rhyme Scheme
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Melting Pot
Transcendental Club
34. 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.
Blank Verse
Robert Lowell
Sonnet
Realism
35. 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
Stephen Crane
Rhythm
Thomas Paine
Drama
36. A pattern of stressed unstressed syllables that create a beat - as in music.
Jack Kerouac
Free Verse
Alice Walker
Rhythm
37. (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
T.S Eliot
Lyres
John Winthrop
Three main colonial era poets
38. The repeated use of identical sounds.
Rhyme
Theodore Dreiser
Willa Cather
Bret Harte
39. Wrote 'The Invisible Man' - Considered a landmark achievement in American literature
Sylvia Plath
Ralph Ellison
Edgar Allen Poe
Zora Neal Hurston
40. Unrhymed poetry Captures natural rhythm of speech.
Racialism
Blank Verse
Edward Teller
Jean Toomer
41. 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
Claude McKay
Stephen Crane
T.S Eliot
Three main colonial era poets
42. (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
Naturalism
Rhyme
Thomas Paine
Puritan Poetry
43. First Black female poet to win a Pulitzer. Best known for her poems 'The Bean Eaters' and 'We Real Cool.'
Phillip Roth
Verse
Determinism
Gwendolyn Brooks
44. New England local color writer - is known primarily for her two collections of stories. 'A Humble Romance' and 'A New England Nun'
Refrain
Narrative Poem
Zora Neal Hurston
Mary Wilkins Freeman
45. A long narrative that represents characters in a high position who take part in a series of adventures of significance.
Epic Story
Iambic Pentameter
Beat Writers
Jack Kerouac
46. A piece of literature intended to be performed in front of an audience.
Drama
Bret Harte
Thomas Jefferson
Mayflower Compact
47. 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.
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Loss of Traditional Values
Polemic
Scan
48. 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.
Theodore Dreiser
Sylvia Plath
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Romanticism
49. (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
Calvinism
Phillip Roth
Transcendentalism
Flannery O'Connor
50. A stanza.
Allegory
Verse
Henry James
Lyres