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 Literary Techniques
Start Test
Study First
Subjects
:
clep
,
literature
Instructions:
Answer 22 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. The use of sentimentality - gushing emotion - or sensational action or plot twists to provoke audience or reader response.
Verbal irony
Deus ex machina
Melodrama
Romantic irony
2. The perception of fate or the universe as malicious or indifferent to human suffering - which creates a painful contrast between our purposeful activity and its ultimate meaninglessness.
Parallelism
Pathos
Cosmic irony
Verbal irony
3. A technique in which the author lets the audience or reader in on a character's situation while the character himself remains in the dark. One example is in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex - when Oedipus vows to discover his father's murderer - not knowing -
Dramatic irony
Cosmic irony
Deus ex machina
Poetic license
4. The liberty that authors sometimes take with ordinary rules of syntax and grammar - employing unusual vocabulary - metrical devices - or figures of speech or committing factual errors in order to strengthen a passage of writing.
Allusion
Poetic license
Romantic irony
Anagnorisis
5. The use of specific types of words - phrases - or literary structures that are not common in contemporary speech or prose.
Invocation
Romantic irony
Poetic diction
Situational irony
6. A description or characterization that exaggerates or distorts a character's prominent features - usually to elicit mockery.
Bathos
Parallelism
Caricature
Epiphany
7. A sudden - powerful - and often spiritual or life changing realization that a character reaches in an otherwise ordinary or everyday moment.
Situational irony
Epiphany
Allusion
Caricature
8. The use of a statement that - by its context - implies its opposite. For example - in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar - Antony repeats - 'Brutus is an honorable man -' while clearly implying that Brutus is dishonorable.
Irony
Caricature
Allusion
Verbal irony
9. An author's deliberate use of hints or suggestions to give a preview of events or themes that do not develop until later in the narrative.
Foreshadowing
Anagnorisis
Pathos
Interior monologue
10. Greek for 'God from a machine.' The phrase originally referred to a technique in ancient tragedy in which a mechanical god was lowered onto the stage to intervene and solve the play's problems or bring the play to a satisfactory conclusion. Now - the
Melodrama
Situational irony
Deus ex machina
In medias rest
11. A technique in which one understanding of a situation stands in sharp contrast to another - usually more prevalent - understanding of the same situation.
Bathos
Allusion
Situational irony
Melodrama
12. From the Greek word for 'feeling -' the quality in a work of literature that evokes high emotion - most commonly sorrow - pity - or compassion.
Pathos
Bathos
Irony
Foreshadowing
13. A record of a character's thoughts - unmediated by a narrator.
Bathos
Interior monologue
Parallelism
Anagnorisis
14. A wide-ranging technique of detachment that draws awareness to the discrepancy between words and their meanings - between expectation and fulfillment - or - most generally - between what is and what seems to be.
Bathos
Irony
Parallelism
Cosmic irony
15. An author's persistent reminding of his or her presence in the work. By drawing attention to the artifice of the work - the author ensures that the reader or audience will maintain critical detachment and not simply accept the writing at face value.
Verbal irony
Romantic irony
Wit
Melodrama
16. A moment of recognition or discovery - primarily used in reference to Greek tragedy. For example - in Euripides' The Bacchae - Agave experiences it when she discovers that she has murdered her own son - Pentheus.
Anagnorisis
Bathos
Situational irony
Dramatic irony
17. A prayer for inspiration to a god or muse usually placed at the beginning of an epic. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey both open with this.
Epiphany
Foreshadowing
Invocation
Cosmic irony
18. A form of wordplay that displays cleverness or ingenuity with language.
Situational irony
Caricature
Wit
Parallelism
19. Similarities between elements in a narrative (such as two characters or two plot lines). For instance - in Shakespeare's King Lear - both Lear and Gloucester suffer at the hands of their own children because they are blind to which of their children
Melodrama
Parallelism
Romantic irony
Situational irony
20. A sudden and unexpected drop from the lofty to the trivial or excessively sentimental. It is sometimes used intentionally - to create humor - but just as often is derided as miscalculation or poor judgment on a writer's part. An example from Alexande
Interior monologue
Foreshadowing
Bathos
In medias rest
21. An implicit reference within a literary work to a historical or literary person - place - or event.
Invocation
Cosmic irony
Allusion
Poetic license
22. Latin for 'in the middle of things.' The term refers to the technique of starting a narrative in the middle of the action. For example - John Milton's Paradise Lost - which concerns the war among the angels in Heaven - opens after the fallen angels a
Cosmic irony
Poetic license
In medias rest
Verbal irony