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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. Wrote 'Richard Cory' - Created poems dealing with historic myths and characters. Known primarily for short - ironic characteristics of ordinary individuals. Won 3 Pulitzers : 'Collected Poems -' 'The Man Who Died Twice -' and 'Tristram'
Aphorisms
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
William Byrd
Edwin Arlington Robinson
2. 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.
Edgar Allen Poe
Naturalism
William S. Burroughs
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
3. 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
Calvinism
Saul Bellow
Imagist Poetry
Aphorisms
4. All events follow natural laws.
Sarah Orne Jewett
Rhyme
William Faulkner
Determinism
5. Anne Bradstreet - Michael Wigglesworth - Edward Taylor
Imagist Poetry
Edith Wharton
Three main colonial era poets
Transcendental Club
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
Jonathan Edwards
Imagist Poetry
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gothic
7. 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.
Loss of Traditional Values
Calvinism
The Day of Doom
Gothic
8. A type of literature win which words are selected and strung together for their beauty - sound - and power to express feelings.
Ballad
Poetry
Allegory
Allen Ginsberg
9. A social and artistic movement of the 1950's stressing unrestrained literary self expression and nonconformity with the mainstream culture
Stanza
Foot
Toni Morrison
Beat Movement
10. Words that carry a strong emotional overtones.
Loaded Words
Robert Frost
John Smith
Edgar Allen Poe
11. 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.
Meter
Dorthy Parker
James Baldwin
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
12. People who sang lyrics as they played string-like instruments.
Lyres
Puritan Poetry
James Fenimore Cooper
Allegory
13. The reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some distant ancestor that have not been present in intervening generations - such as hand like a hairy paw.
Edgar Lee Masters
Atavism
The Day of Doom
Vachel Lindsay
14. A story told in song form. Ballads often tell stories of adventure and love.
Foot
Edith Wharton
Ballad
Gwendolyn Brooks
15. Movement in the early part of the 20th Century where writers experimented with new themes such as fragmentation - stream of consciousness - and imagery.
Walt Whitman
Langston Hughes
Modernism
The Day of Doom
16. Produced a number of sketches - poems - and a one-act pay titled 'Cane.'
Ezra Pound
Flannery O'Connor
Jean Toomer
Monologue
17. Best-known and most influential early Naturalist. Rougon-Marcquart
Naturalism
Poetry
Saul Bellow
Emile Zola
18. (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
Thomas Morton
Norman Mailer
Alice Walker
James Fenimore Cooper
19. Written by Cottonn Mather - to justify the execution of 19 women during the Salem Witch Trials.
Saul Bellow
Jack London
Wonders of the Invisible World
Polemic
20. Friedrich Nitezche's belief in the 'will to power' as the primary force of society and the individual.
Nietzscheism
Carl Sandburg
Atavism
J.D Salinger
21. 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.
Ballad
Social Darwinism
Maya Angelou
Phillip Roth
22. Writings portray the lives of poor - oppressed black women in the early 1900s.
Sarah Orne Jewett
Alice Walker
James Weldon Johnson
Robert Lowell
23. Story in which the characters - setting and action represent abstract concepts apart from their literal meaning.
Henry James
Edward Teller
Vachel Lindsay
Allegory
24. 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
Carl Sandburg
Jean Toomer
Transcendental Club
Verse
25. Greatest poet of American colonial period. Influenced T.S Elliot - Ezra Pound - and other modern-day metaphysical poets. Defined 'American'
Edward Teller
Toni Morrison
Stephen Crane
Transcendentalism
26. Wrote 'The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man' and 'Lift Every Voice and Sing -' (The Black National Anthem)
James Weldon Johnson
Loaded Words
Naturalism
Frederick Douglass
27. 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
Rhythm
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Puritan Poetry
Lyres
28. A single sheet of paper printed on one or both sides. 'The Dying Redcoat'
John Smith
Broadside
Dorthy Parker
Realism
29. All written work that is not poetry - drama or song. Articles - autobiographies - biographies - essays - novels and editorials are prose.
Edgar Lee Masters
James Baldwin
Henry David Thoreau
Prose
30. 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.
Sonnet
Realism
e.e cummings
Ezra Pound
31. New England local color writer - is known primarily for her two collections of stories. 'A Humble Romance' and 'A New England Nun'
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Jack Kerouac
Robert Frost
32. A group of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
Rhythm
Alice Walker
Foot
Langston Hughes
33. A pattern of stressed unstressed syllables that create a beat - as in music.
Scan
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rhythm
Modernism
34. Brief - musical poems that convey a speaker's feelings.
Stephen Crane
Lyric Poem
The 3 primary literary genres
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
35. 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
The Day of Doom
Countee Cullen
Bret Harte
Atavism
36. 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
Flannery O'Connor
Racialism
James Fenimore Cooper
Phillip Roth
37. Chicago School - Work bridges folk poetry and modernist poems. Used music and strong rhythm - Wrote 'The Congo'
Allegory
Maya Angelou
Jack Kerouac
Vachel Lindsay
38. 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
Jack Kerouac
Rhyme Scheme
Henry David Thoreau
Edwin Arlington Robinson
39. Confessional Poet - Wrote 'Lord Weary's Castle' and 'In Life Studies'
Jack Kerouac
Robert Lowell
Gwendolyn Brooks
Romanticism
40. (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
e.e cummings
John Winthrop
Phillip Roth
Cotton Mather
41. Genius; called the 'Black Keats' - Worked within traditional poetic forms rather than jazz rhythms. Wrote ' Copper Sun -' and 'The Ballad of the Brown Girl.'
Mayflower Compact
Thomas Paine
Countee Cullen
Blank Verse
42. Pattern of five feet (groups of syllables) - each having one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable.
Iambic Pentameter
Samuel Sewall
Frank Norris
Flannery O'Connor
43. Unrhymed poetry Captures natural rhythm of speech.
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
The 3 primary literary genres
Carl Sandburg
Blank Verse
44. Most prominent black leader of his day. Wrote 'Up From Slavery'
Sonnet
Edward Teller
Booker T. Washington
Saul Bellow
45. The primacy of science over religious - mythical - or spiritual interpretations of life.
Scientism
Vachel Lindsay
Ralph Ellison
Determinism
46. (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
Three main colonial era poets
Walt Whitman
Puritan Poetry
Thomas Paine
47. A literary argument that aims to change public opinion rather than entertain.
Jack London
Polemic
Emile Zola
Foot
48. 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
Transcendental Club
Loaded Words
Robert Frost
Willa Cather
49. 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
Wonders of the Invisible World
Refrain
50. Coined the term 'Beat Generation' - Wrote 'On the Road' - All of his books are Autobiographical
Melting Pot
William S. Burroughs
Edgar Lee Masters
Jack Kerouac