Test your basic knowledge |

CLEP Common Literary Forms And Genres

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 short narrative that illustrates a moral by means of allegory.






2. A play such as Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale that mixes elements of tragedy and comedy.






3. An autobiographical work. Rather than focus exclusively on the author's life - it pays significant attention to the author's involvement in historical events and the characterization of individuals other than the author.






4. A concise expression of insight or wisdom: 'The vanity of others offends our taste only when it offends our vanity' (Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil).






5. A lengthy narrative that describes the deeds of a heroic figure - often of national or cultural importance - in elevated language. Strictly - the term applies only to verse narratives like Beowulf or Virgil's Aeneid - but it is used to describe prose






6. Bertolt Brecht's Marxist approach to theater - which rejects emotional and psychological engagement in favor of critical detachment.






7. A serious lyric poem - often of significant length - that usually conforms to an elaborate metrical structure.






8. A play that confronts a contemporary social problem with the intent of changing public opinion on the matter.






9. A poem that contains words that a fictional or historical character speaks to a particular audience. Alfred - Lord Tennyson's 'Ulysses' is a famous example.






10. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






11. A lighthearted play characterized by humor and a happy ending.






12. The nonfictional story of a person's life - told by that person.






13. The nonfictional story of a person's life. James Boswell's Life of Johnson is one of the most celebrated examples.






14. A succinct - witty statement - often in verse. For example - William Wordsworth's observation 'The child is the father of the man.'






15. A short pastoral poem in the form of a dialogue between two shepherds. Virgil's Eclogues is the most famous example of this genre.






16. A composition that is meant to be performed. The term often is used interchangeably with play.






17. Any composition not written in verse.






18. An autobiographical poetic genre in which the poet discusses intensely personal subject matter with unusual frankness.






19. A serious play that ends unhappily for the protagonist.






20. A novel in which the author's aim is to tell a story that illuminates and draws attention to contemporary social problems with the goal of inciting change for the better. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin - which exposed the horrors of Africa






21. A work that exposes to ridicule the shortcomings of individuals - institutions - or society - often to make a political point. Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is one of the most well known examples in English.






22. A particularly compressed and truncated short story. They are rarely longer than 1 -000 words.






23. A speech - often in verse - by a lone character. The most famous example being the 'To be or not to be' speech in Shakespeare's Hamlet.






24. A play consisting of a single act - without intermission and running usually less than an hour.






25. Fiction that concerns the nature of fiction itself - either by reinterpreting a previous fictional work or by drawing attention to its own fictional status.






26. A story about a heroic figure derived from oral tradition and based partly on fact and partly on fiction.






27. The brief narration of a single event or incident.






28. A formal poem that laments the death of a friend or public figure - or - occasionally - a meditation on death itself. In Greek and Latin poetry - the term applies to a specific type of meter (alternating hexameters and pentameters) regardless of cont






29. An invented narrative - as opposed to one that reports true events.






30. A novel set in an earlier historical period that features a plot shaped by the historical circumstances of that period.






31. A full-length fictional work that is novelistic in nature but written in verse rather than prose. Examples include Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate.






32. Works that express a preference for the natural over the artificial in human culture - and a belief that the life of primitive cultures is preferable to modern lifestyles.






33. A work of fiction of middle length - often divided into a few short chapters - such as Henry James's Daisy Miller.






34. A poetic work that features the strong rhythms of free versebut is presented on the page in the form of prose - without line breaks.






35. A story about the origins of a culture's beliefs and practices - or of supernatural phenomena - usually derived from oral tradition and set in an imagined supernatural past.






36. A narrative in which literal meaning corresponds clearly and directly to symbolic meaning. For example - the literal story in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress






37. A work of didactic literature that aims to influence the reader on a specific social or political issue.






38. A novel that focuses on the social customs of a certain class of people - often with a sharp eye for irony. Jane Austen's novels are prime examples of this genre.






39. A story meant to be performed in a theater before an audience. Most are written in dialogue form and are divided into several acts. Many include stage directions and instructions for sets and costumes.






40. A celebration of the simple - rustic life of shepherds and shepherdesses - usually written by a sophisticated - urban writer.






41. A novel - such as Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea - that the author uses as a platform for discussing ideas. Character and plot are of secondary importance.






42. A short poetic composition that describes the thoughts of a single speaker.






43. A short poetic expression of grief. It differs from an elegy in that it often is embedded within a larger work - is less highly structured - and is meant to be sung.






44. A fiction genre - popularized in the 1940s - with a cynical - disillusioned - loner protagonist.






45. Disturbing or absurd material presented in a humorous manner - usually with the intention to confront uncomfortable truths. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is a notable example.






46. A German term - meaning 'formation novel -' for a novel about a child or adolescent's development into maturity - with special focus on the protagonist's quest for identity. James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a notable example.






47. Literature intended to instruct or educate. For example - Virgil's Georgics contains farming advice in verse form.






48. A work of prose fiction that is much shorter than a novel (rarely more than forty pages) and focused more tightly on a single event.






49. Traditionally - a folk song telling a story or legend in simple language - often with a refrain.






50. A ritualized form of Japanese drama that evolved in the 1300s involving masks and slow - stylized movement.