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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. Well-known humorists.
Sarah Orne Jewett
Nativism
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Beat Movement
2. All written work that is not poetry - drama or song. Articles - autobiographies - biographies - essays - novels and editorials are prose.
The Declaration of Independence
Prose
Flannery O'Connor
Walt Whitman
3. A social and artistic movement of the 1950's stressing unrestrained literary self expression and nonconformity with the mainstream culture
Scan
Maya Angelou
Beat Movement
Kate Chopin
4. 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
Walt Whitman
Herman Melville
Benjamin Franklin
Carl Sandburg
5. Imagist Poet - Wrote 'In a Station of the Metro -' ' The Pisan Cantos -' 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberly -' and 'Mauberly.' Modeled 'Cantos' after Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' - Infamous traitor; Staunch supporter of Mussolini during WWII. Didn't speak for the
Transcendental Club
Thomas Paine
Three main colonial era poets
Ezra Pound
6. Friedrich Nitezche's belief in the 'will to power' as the primary force of society and the individual.
J.D Salinger
John Winthrop
Rhythm
Nietzscheism
7. Movement in the early part of the 20th Century where writers experimented with new themes such as fragmentation - stream of consciousness - and imagery.
Edgar Allen Poe
Jean Toomer
Persona
Modernism
8. Wrote 'Portnoy's Complaint.' Work reflects the changing attitude of Jews living in post-World War II America.
Claude McKay
Walt Whitman
Phillip Roth
Realism
9. Used to describe literature that was pandered to the polite - refined - and delicate elements of society. Denied the unsavory underbelly of life.
Ralph Ellison
The Day of Doom
Genteel Tradition
Transcendentalism
10. Wrote 'The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.' Escaped slave that became one o f the most effective orators of his day - an influential newspaper writer - a militant abolitionist - and a famous diplomat.
Frederick Douglass
Erica Jong
Puritan Poetry
John Smith
11. A story in poetic form. Has plot. characters and theme.
Stephen Crane
William Bradford
Narrative Poem
Phillip Roth
12. Local Colorist Wrote 'The Awakening' Writing is memorable for its : Vivid and economical style - Rich Local Dialect - and Penetrating view of the culture of South Louisiana.
Kate Chopin
Verse
Beat Movement
Determinism
13. A literary argument that aims to change public opinion rather than entertain.
James Fenimore Cooper
Mary Wilkins Freeman
James Thurbur
Polemic
14. The beat or rhythm of a poem - created by a pattern of stressed an unstressed syllables.
Gothic
Modernism
Robert Lowell
Meter
15. Wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' - first American novel to sell a million copies. The most influential book of the 19th century. Credited with starting the Civil War. Most famous American woman of her day.
Jack Kerouac
Calvinism
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Edgar Lee Masters
16. Naturalist - Wrote 'McTeague - a Story of San Francisco'
Sylvia Plath
Frank Norris
J.D Salinger
Cotton Mather
17. People who sang lyrics as they played string-like instruments.
Abigail Adams
Erica Jong
Lyres
Samuel Sewall
18. Wrote 'The Red Badge of Courage' and 'Maggie: A Girl of the Streets -' and 'The Open Boat.' Red Badge of Courage is considered the first modern war novel. Work is celebrated for its images and symbolism. Work is often described as impressionist due t
Transcendentalism
Stephen Crane
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
Zora Neal Hurston
19. People who are best adapted to survive are chosen through the process of natural selection.
Darwinism
Free Verse
Imagist Poetry
Lyric Poem
20. A long narrative that represents characters in a high position who take part in a series of adventures of significance.
Beat Movement
Darwinism
Rhythm
Epic Story
21. The reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some distant ancestor that have not been present in intervening generations - such as hand like a hairy paw.
Walt Whitman
Ernest Hemmingway
Edith Wharton
Atavism
22. A stanza.
Aphorisms
Transcendental Club
Verse
Emile Zola
23. Chicago School - Work bridges folk poetry and modernist poems. Used music and strong rhythm - Wrote 'The Congo'
Vachel Lindsay
Henry David Thoreau
Drama
The Declaration of Independence
24. A story told in song form. Ballads often tell stories of adventure and love.
Drama
Rhythm
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ballad
25. Prose - Poetry - Drama
Zora Neal Hurston
The 3 primary literary genres
Puritan Poetry
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
26. Best-known and most influential early Naturalist. Rougon-Marcquart
John Adams
Epic Story
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Emile Zola
27. First Black female poet to win a Pulitzer. Best known for her poems 'The Bean Eaters' and 'We Real Cool.'
Zora Neal Hurston
Three main colonial era poets
Prose
Gwendolyn Brooks
28. Words that carry a strong emotional overtones.
Booker T. Washington
Nativism
Loaded Words
Stanza
29. Characterized by: Ordinary Language - Free Verse - Concentrated Word Pictures - Very specific words and phrases - Advanced by Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell; also utilized by Robert Frost
Epic Story
Lyric Poem
Imagist Poetry
Thomas Morton
30. A false science that argued tat different human races possessed distinguishing traits that determined their particular behavior and achievement in society.
Booker T. Washington
Jean Toomer
Langston Hughes
Racialism
31. Ranked as top American novelist - even though few of his contemporaries recognized his genius. Moby Dick is considered to be America's greatest prose epic. It is also top contender for best American novel. Wrote the first great romance about the Sout
Rhythm
John Winthrop
Herman Melville
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
32. Anne Bradstreet - Michael Wigglesworth - Edward Taylor
Beat Writers
Three main colonial era poets
Carl Sandburg
Mayflower Compact
33. Writings portray the lives of poor - oppressed black women in the early 1900s.
Countee Cullen
Alice Walker
Meter
Lyric Poem
34. (Colonial Period) Primarily written to set forth orthodox Calvinist Christianity. Not considered the best representation of poetry during the whole period. Rarely approached excellence of English models. Too much of an emphasis on heavenly values and
Sarah Orne Jewett
Polemic
Frank Norris
Puritan Poetry
35. Literary movement of the 19th century Presented the details of ordinary life in art. Realists rejected the heroic and adventurous and concentrated on pessimistic views of poverty - prostitution and pain. Reaction to Romanticism.
Edgar Allen Poe
Beat Movement
Realism
Emile Zola
36. 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.
Sarah Orne Jewett
Loaded Words
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Persona
37. 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'
Social Darwinism
Aphorisms
Toni Morrison
Scan
38. 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
Rhyme Scheme
Mayflower Compact
Kate Chopin
Edith Wharton
39. 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.
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
Gothic
Rhyme Scheme
Anne Sexton
40. A regular pattern of words that end with the same sound.
Rhyme Scheme
Calvinism
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
American Adam
41. Applying the evolutionary 'survival of the fittest' concept to a world marked by struggle and competition. (Promulgated by Herbert Spencer - a best-selling sociologist of the late 19th Century.
Melting Pot
Claude McKay
Washington Irving
Social Darwinism
42. Wrote 'Richard Cory' - Created poems dealing with historic myths and characters. Known primarily for short - ironic characteristics of ordinary individuals. Won 3 Pulitzers : 'Collected Poems -' 'The Man Who Died Twice -' and 'Tristram'
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
James Thurbur
Stanza
43. All events follow natural laws.
Edith Wharton
Determinism
Richard Wright
Samuel Sewall
44. 'The Old Man and the Sea -' 'The Sun Also Rises -' 'A Farewell to Arms -' and 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Writing style emphasizes: Short sentences - brief paragraphs - active verbs - authenticity - compression - clarity - and immediacy. Produced some
Edward Teller
Herman Melville
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Ernest Hemmingway
45. Greatest poet of American colonial period. Influenced T.S Elliot - Ezra Pound - and other modern-day metaphysical poets. Defined 'American'
Edward Teller
Maya Angelou
Modernism
Jean Toomer
46. The idea that there is something different - unique and special about Americans.
Determinism
American Adam
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Bret Harte
47. Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
J.D Salinger
Flannery O'Connor
Bret Harte
48. Considered the voice of the Twenties. Wrote 'The Great Gatsby' - Heavy drinking problem.
Lyres
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Richard Wright
William Faulkner
49. Stylistic Elements Parallel Structure: repeated used of phrases - clauses - or sentences that are similar in structure. Rhythm - Forceful and Direct Language
Mary Wilkins Freeman
William Faulkner
The Declaration of Independence
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
50. 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.
Sarah Orne Jewett
Aphorisms
Edgar Allen Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne