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CLEP Common Literary Forms And Genres

Subjects : clep, literature
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
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  • Match each statement with the correct term.
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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 poetic composition that describes the thoughts of a single speaker.






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






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






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






5. Originally - a realistic novel detailing a scoundrel's exploits. The term grew to refer more generally to any novel with a loosely structured - episodic plot that revolves around the adventures of a central character.






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






7. 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






8. A romance that describes the adventures of medieval knights and celebrates their strict code of honor - loyalty - and respectful devotion to women.






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






10. 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






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






12. A genre of fiction that presents an imagined future society that purports to be perfect and utopian but that the author presents to the reader as horrifyingly inhuman.






13. 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.






14. 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).






15. Any composition not written in verse.






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






17. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






18. A short play based on a biblical story.






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






20. A novel that tells a nonfictional - autobiographical story but uses novelistic techniques - such as fictionalized dialogue or anecdotes - to add color - immediacy - or thematic unity.






21. A narrative work that reports true events.






22. A humorous and often satirical imitation of the style or particular work of another author.






23. 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






24. A work that imitates the style of a previous author - work - or literary genre. Alternatively - the term may refer to a work that contains a hodgepodge of elements or fragments from different sources or influences. It differs from parody in that its






25. A play written in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries that presents an allegory of the Christian struggle for salvation.






26. 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.






27. 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






28. 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.






29. 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.






30. A short narrative that illustrates a moral by means of allegory.






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






32. 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.






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






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






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






36. 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.






37. 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.






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






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






40. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






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






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






44. A nonrealistic story - in verse or prose - that features idealized characters - improbable adventures - and exotic settings.






45. 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.






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






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






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






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






50. 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.