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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 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






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






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






4. 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.






5. A narrative work that reports true events.






6. 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.






7. 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.






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






9. 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






10. 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.






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






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






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






14. 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.






15. 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.






16. A form of nonfictional discussion or argument that Michel de Montaigne pioneered in the 1500s.






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






18. 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.






19. A short play based on a biblical story.






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






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






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






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






25. 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).






26. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






36. 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






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






38. 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






39. 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.






40. 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.






41. 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






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






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






44. 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.






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






46. Any composition not written in verse.






47. 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.






48. 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.






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






50. 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.