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 American Literature
Start Test
Study First
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. Wished to return to more primitive principles - to simplicity - sobriety - religious earnestness - and personal self-control. Aim was to purify church of England from 'Popery' - Persecuted harshly by Charles I and Archbishop of Canterbury William Lau
Phillip Roth
Broadside
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
James Weldon Johnson
2. A story told in song form. Ballads often tell stories of adventure and love.
Phillip Roth
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Racialism
Ballad
3. The primacy of science over religious - mythical - or spiritual interpretations of life.
William S. Burroughs
Washington Irving
Claude McKay
Scientism
4. Considered the greatest humorist of 19th century American Literature. Wrote 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.' Master of 'Local Color' writing. Used vernacular - exaggeration and deadpan narrator to create humor.
Polemic
Benjamin Franklin
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Dorthy Parker
5. Leader of naturalism in American writing. Wrote 'An American Tragedy'
Allegory
Theodore Dreiser
Racialism
Erica Jong
6. Created new poetic forms and subjects to fashion a distinctly American type of poetic expression. Rejected conventional themes - traditional literary references - allusions - and rhymes. Used long lines to capture rhythms of natural speech - free ver
William Byrd
Blank Verse
Bret Harte
Walt Whitman
7. Poetry that does not have a regular beat - rhyme or line length. Walt Whitman
Herman Melville
Free Verse
Drama
Transcendental Club
8. Best-known and most influential early Naturalist. Rougon-Marcquart
Allen Ginsberg
Benjamin Franklin
Emile Zola
John Adams
9. First Black woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Novel focus on black cultural identity in contemporary America. Wrote 'The Bluest Eye -' 'Tar Baby -' and 'Beloved'
Nietzscheism
The Day of Doom
Iambic Pentameter
Toni Morrison
10. Wrote 'The Call of the Wild -' 'White Fang -' ' Sea Wolf -' and 'To Build a Fire.' Socialist. Naturalist
Social Darwinism
Nativism
Meter
Jack London
11. Clever - memorable sayings.
Melting Pot
Aphorisms
Saul Bellow
William Bradford
12. People who are best adapted to survive are chosen through the process of natural selection.
William Bradford
Bret Harte
John Adams
Darwinism
13. Pilgrim's constitution. Shaped the politics - religion - and social behavior of the first settlers. Eventually influenced the shape - style and content of the U.S Constitution. William Bradford was famous for being one of the authors and signers.
Transcendentalism
Polemic
Allen Ginsberg
Mayflower Compact
14. Produced a number of sketches - poems - and a one-act pay titled 'Cane.'
Langston Hughes
John Steinbeck
John Winthrop
Jean Toomer
15. Work did not have a political agenda. Wrote 'Their Eyes Were Watching God -' 'Mules and Men -' and 'Jonahs Gourd Vine.' Considered one of the key black writers of the 20th Century.
Saul Bellow
Poetry
Zora Neal Hurston
Melting Pot
16. Confessional Poet - Won a Pulitzer for 'Live or Die'
Meter
Beat Movement
Frederick Douglass
Anne Sexton
17. Wrote 'The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man' and 'Lift Every Voice and Sing -' (The Black National Anthem)
James Weldon Johnson
Darwinism
Carl Sandburg
Jack London
18. (Colonial Period) 1. God is King and Ruler. 2. Our duty in this world is to see that God's will prevails.3. Man is depraved from birth. 4. Few will be saved. Damned are damned despite their best efforts. Belief in Covenant Theology : God's covenant w
Loaded Words
Calvinism
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
Epic Story
19. A philosophy pioneered by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1830's and 1840's - in which each person has direct communication with God and Nature - and there is no need for organized churches. It incorporated the ideas that mind goes beyond matter - intuiti
Transcendentalism
Booker T. Washington
Romanticism
William S. Burroughs
20. Writings interweave sexual and racial concerns; what it means to be black and homosexual in America in the 2nd half of the 20th Century.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ballad
James Baldwin
Social Darwinism
21. Wrote 'Songs of Jamaica' - Poetry and 'Harlem Shadows' (first great literary achievement of the Harlem Renaissance. Much of his poetry evokes the rich heritage of Jamaica.
Claude McKay
The 3 primary literary genres
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Robert Frost
22. A false science that argued tat different human races possessed distinguishing traits that determined their particular behavior and achievement in society.
Frank Norris
Racialism
Benjamin Franklin
Beat Writers
23. Local Colorist Wrote 'The Country of the Pointed Firs' Famous for use of idiomatic language - conservative values and imagery and vivid descriptions of rural New England.
Edward Teller
Zora Neal Hurston
Sarah Orne Jewett
Richard Wright
24. A type of literature win which words are selected and strung together for their beauty - sound - and power to express feelings.
John Smith
e.e cummings
Ernest Hemmingway
Poetry
25. Literary movement of the 19th century that traced the effects of heredity and environment on people who ere helpless to change their situations. Also called Determinism for its belief in the effects of environment - heredity - and chance on human fat
Beat Movement
Naturalism
Saul Bellow
Thomas Jefferson
26. The process of reading a poem to figure out it's meter.
Poetry
Meter
Atavism
Scan
27. First great writer of psychological fiction; obsessed with sin and guilt. 'The Scarlet Letter' - 'Young Goodman Brown' - Claimed his work was romance and therefore not required to be realistic.
Genteel Tradition
Thomas Paine
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
28. Wrote 'The Invisible Man' - Considered a landmark achievement in American literature
Zora Neal Hurston
Naturalism
Emile Zola
Ralph Ellison
29. Wrote 'since feeling is first -' 'somewhere i have never traveled - gladly beyond -' and 'The Enormous Room' - Experimented with : form - punctuation - spelling - typography - grammar - imagery - rhythm - and syntax.
Ernest Hemmingway
Thomas Jefferson
Abigail Adams
e.e cummings
30. Created the first American adventure story. First successful American novelist. 'Father of the American novel.' Very litigious - cranky and vain. Most famous for the 'Leatherstocking Tales': A series of five novels about the frontiersman - Natty Bump
Three main colonial era poets
Sonnet
James Fenimore Cooper
Ezra Pound
31. Resisted materialism and chose a life of simplicity - close to nature. Walden is a guidebook for life - showing the reader how to live wisely in a world designed to make wise living impossible. 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience' has become a primer
Modernism
Henry David Thoreau
Sarah Orne Jewett
Emily Dickinson
32. Well-known humorists.
Darwinism
Determinism
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Stanza
33. A stanza.
Verse
Scan
Polemic
Racialism
34. In the 1920s - became the symbol of the liberated woman for her wit and independence. Known for her caustic and clever poems and short stories.
Jonathan Edwards
Dorthy Parker
Allen Ginsberg
Free Verse
35. Friedrich Nitezche's belief in the 'will to power' as the primary force of society and the individual.
Nietzscheism
Aphorisms
Flannery O'Connor
Determinism
36. Movement in the early part of the 20th Century where writers experimented with new themes such as fragmentation - stream of consciousness - and imagery.
J.D Salinger
Stephen Crane
William Byrd
Modernism
37. Story in which the characters - setting and action represent abstract concepts apart from their literal meaning.
Calvinism
The Day of Doom
Allegory
T.S Eliot
38. Wrote 'My Antonia' and 'Death Comes for the Archbishop' Won a Pulitzer for her novel 'One of Ours'
Nativism
Bret Harte
Frank Norris
Willa Cather
39. Wrote 'The House of Mirth -' and 'The Age of Innocence' most famous for 'Ethan Frome' Noted use of indirection and allusion. First women to win a Pulitzer for 'The Age of Innocence' Main themes were upper-class life and the constraints it placed on b
Edith Wharton
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Emile Zola
Frank Norris
40. An organization of the leading transcendentalists living around Boston. They were interested in new developments in theology - philosophy - and literature. Major writers: Ripley - Emerson - Alcott - Fuller - Hawthorne - Thoreau - Channing - Hedge - P
James Thurbur
Transcendental Club
Saul Bellow
Maya Angelou
41. Wrote 'Portnoy's Complaint.' Work reflects the changing attitude of Jews living in post-World War II America.
The Declaration of Independence
T.S Eliot
Aphorisms
Phillip Roth
42. A regular pattern of words that end with the same sound.
Thomas Morton
Calvinism
Claude McKay
Rhyme Scheme
43. Autobiography is considered the one of the greatest ever written. Wrote Poor Richard's Alamanac
Nietzscheism
Jack London
Benjamin Franklin
Calvinism
44. Produces ribald - exuberant - feminist poems - novels and essays. Most famous novel is 'Fear of Flying.'
Herman Melville
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
Erica Jong
Jean Toomer
45. The Bard of Harlem; most successful black writer in America during the Harlem Renaissance. Wanted to capture the dominant oral traditions of black culture in written form. Best known for his poetry: 'The Weary Blues -' 'Fields of Wonder -' and 'The D
Langston Hughes
Racialism
Maya Angelou
Stanza
46. (Colonial Period) One of colonial New England's most eminent clergyman. Greatest achievement was as an historian of the Puritan experience. 'Diary of Cotton Mather' - Account of Mather wrestling with sexual temptation to marry a much younger women di
Naturalism
Calvinism
Genteel Tradition
Cotton Mather
47. Won 4 Pulitzers - Top 20th Century Poet - Wrote 'The Road Not Taken -' ' Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening -' and 'Mending Wall'
Thomas Morton
Robert Frost
Maya Angelou
Harriet Beecher Stowe
48. A group of lines in a poem. - Lines of poems are grouped into _______s - just as sentences of prose are grouped into paragraphs.
Cotton Mather
Stanza
Harriet Beecher Stowe
F. Scott Fitzgerald
49. Use of medieval - wild - or mysterious elements in literature. Features gloomy settings and horrifying events. Edgar Allen Poe is regarded as the American Master of Gothic writing.
Beat Writers
Abigail Adams
Phillip Roth
Gothic
50. Greatest poet of American colonial period. Influenced T.S Elliot - Ezra Pound - and other modern-day metaphysical poets. Defined 'American'
Robert Frost
Edward Teller
Narrative Poem
e.e cummings