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. (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
Walt Whitman
Gothic
Washington Irving
2. That America's unique identity transcends ethnic - cultural - or religious backgrounds. Idea given by St. Jean de Crevecoeur
Jack Kerouac
James Fenimore Cooper
Epic Story
Melting Pot
3. 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
Transcendental Club
Jonathan Edwards
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Abigail Adams
4. Involves a speaker who addresses an unseen audience. Usually takes place at a crucial moment in the speaker's life.
Monologue
Rhythm
Ballad
Nativism
5. American novelist - essayist - social critic - painter and spoken performer. Most of his works are autobiographical. Frequently experimented with drugs. He wrote the 'Naked Lunch' and the 'Cities of Red Night'
William S. Burroughs
Naturalism
Nativism
Mayflower Compact
6. (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
Melting Pot
John Steinbeck
Ballad
Calvinism
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
Loss of Traditional Values
Beat Writers
Allen Ginsberg
Walt Whitman
8. Famous Poet and Novelist - 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'
Puritan Poetry
Maya Angelou
Narrative Poem
Iambic Pentameter
9. 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'
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Lyres
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Maya Angelou
10. The idea that there is something different - unique and special about Americans.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Verse
American Adam
11. Wrote 'The Call of the Wild -' 'White Fang -' ' Sea Wolf -' and 'To Build a Fire.' Socialist. Naturalist
Herman Melville
Jack London
Emile Zola
Lyres
12. Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot
William Byrd
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
Determinism
American Adam
13. (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
William Bradford
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Darwinism
Scan
14. Produces ribald - exuberant - feminist poems - novels and essays. Most famous novel is 'Fear of Flying.'
Toni Morrison
Erica Jong
Genteel Tradition
Polemic
15. 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
Emile Zola
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Loaded Words
Kate Chopin
16. 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
Thomas Paine
Lyres
The 3 primary literary genres
Henry David Thoreau
17. 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.
Wonders of the Invisible World
Loss of Traditional Values
Nativism
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
18. Writings interweave sexual and racial concerns; what it means to be black and homosexual in America in the 2nd half of the 20th Century.
Claude McKay
James Baldwin
Modernism
Gothic
19. Words that carry a strong emotional overtones.
William S. Burroughs
Loaded Words
Allen Ginsberg
Persona
20. Brief - musical poems that convey a speaker's feelings.
Modernism
Rhyme Scheme
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lyric Poem
21. 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.
Mayflower Compact
Benjamin Franklin
Theodore Dreiser
Vachel Lindsay
22. A stanza.
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
Aphorisms
Verse
Realism
23. New England local color writer - is known primarily for her two collections of stories. 'A Humble Romance' and 'A New England Nun'
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Monologue
Aphorisms
Samuel Sewall
24. Won the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize - Works focused on the South - Wrote 'As I Lay Dying -' 'Sanctuary -' and 'The sound and the Fury.' Experimented with Stream of Consciousness writing. Considered the most innovative novelist of his time.
Sarah Orne Jewett
William Faulkner
Theodore Dreiser
Nativism
25. People who sang lyrics as they played string-like instruments.
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
W.E.B Du Bois
Free Verse
Lyres
26. Well-known humorists.
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Walt Whitman
Verse
Jack Kerouac
27. 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.
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Frederick Douglass
Gothic
W.E.B Du Bois
28. 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
John Adams
Lyres
Herman Melville
29. Autobiography is considered the one of the greatest ever written. Wrote Poor Richard's Alamanac
Benjamin Franklin
Zora Neal Hurston
Foot
Transcendental Club
30. 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.
Emile Zola
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
Sarah Orne Jewett
Polemic
31. Produced a number of sketches - poems - and a one-act pay titled 'Cane.'
Determinism
Jean Toomer
Robert Frost
Emile Zola
32. 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
T.S Eliot
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Rhyme Scheme
Norman Mailer
33. 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
Bret Harte
Determinism
Foot
Norman Mailer
34. A group of lines in a poem. - Lines of poems are grouped into _______s - just as sentences of prose are grouped into paragraphs.
Stanza
Jack Kerouac
The 3 primary literary genres
Persona
35. Pattern of five feet (groups of syllables) - each having one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable.
Loaded Words
Gwendolyn Brooks
Thomas Morton
Iambic Pentameter
36. Story in which the characters - setting and action represent abstract concepts apart from their literal meaning.
James Thurbur
Allegory
Lyres
Racialism
37. Unrhymed poetry Captures natural rhythm of speech.
Rhythm
Broadside
Thomas Morton
Blank Verse
38. '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
Henry James
Maya Angelou
William Byrd
Ernest Hemmingway
39. 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
Toni Morrison
Emily Dickinson
Gwendolyn Brooks
John Steinbeck
40. Movement in the early part of the 20th Century where writers experimented with new themes such as fragmentation - stream of consciousness - and imagery.
Modernism
Herman Melville
Ernest Hemmingway
Norman Mailer
41. A false science that argued tat different human races possessed distinguishing traits that determined their particular behavior and achievement in society.
Racialism
Jean Toomer
Thomas Paine
Henry David Thoreau
42. 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.
Willa Cather
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Refrain
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
43. First vice president and second president. Member of the First and Second Continental Congresses. Helped draft the Declaration of Independence. Husband of Abigail Adams.
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Henry James
Jean Toomer
John Adams
44. 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.
Frederick Douglass
Toni Morrison
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Monologue
45. 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.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Frank Norris
Realism
Washington Irving
46. Wrote 'The Invisible Man' - Considered a landmark achievement in American literature
Scan
Nativism
Loaded Words
Ralph Ellison
47. The process of reading a poem to figure out it's meter.
Abigail Adams
Saul Bellow
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Scan
48. Confessional Poet - Won a Pulitzer for 'Live or Die'
Allen Ginsberg
Thomas Paine
Toni Morrison
Anne Sexton
49. 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.
The Day of Doom
Frederick Douglass
Poetry
Stanza
50. 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
Nietzscheism
Herman Melville
Iambic Pentameter
John Steinbeck