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 novel written in the form of letters exchanged by characters in the story - such as Samuel Richardson's Clarissa or Alice Walker's The Color Purple. This form was especially popular in the 1700s.






2. A narrative work that reports true events.






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






4. 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






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






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






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






9. 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






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






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






12. 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






13. A form of high-energy comedy that plays on confusions and deceptions between characters and features a convoluted and fast-paced plot.






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






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 lighthearted play characterized by humor and a happy ending.






17. 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.






18. 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.






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






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






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






22. 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).






23. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






25. 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.






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






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






28. 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.






29. 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.






30. 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.






31. A play from the Middle Ages featuring saints or miraculous appearances by the Virgin Mary.






32. A humorous imitation of a serious work of literature. The humor often arises from the incongruity between the imitation and the work being imitated. For example - Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock uses the high diction of epic poetry to talk abou






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






34. 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






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






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






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






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






39. A short prose or verse narrative - such as those by Aesop - that illustrates a moral - which often is stated explicitly at the end.






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






41. 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.






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






43. 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.






44. 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.






45. A short play based on a biblical story.






46. 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.






47. 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.






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






49. 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.






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