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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. Writings interweave sexual and racial concerns; what it means to be black and homosexual in America in the 2nd half of the 20th Century.
James Baldwin
Wonders of the Invisible World
Sylvia Plath
T.S Eliot
2. Produces ribald - exuberant - feminist poems - novels and essays. Most famous novel is 'Fear of Flying.'
Erica Jong
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
Rhythm
Puritan Poetry
3. Ben Franklin paid his passage to America. First Pamphlet was Common Sense : credited with getting the colonists to see the 'advantage - necessity - and obligation' of breaking with Britain. Followed by a series of pamphlets - collectively called 'An
Transcendental Club
Thomas Paine
Melting Pot
Meter
4. A literary argument that aims to change public opinion rather than entertain.
Polemic
Thomas Jefferson
Epic Story
Loaded Words
5. 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
Racialism
Ralph Waldo Emerson
William Faulkner
Walt Whitman
6. Wrote 'The Souls of Black Folk' - Founder of the NAACP
William Bradford
W.E.B Du Bois
Mary Wilkins Freeman
James Thurbur
7. (Colonial Period) First writer of American Literature. Wrote 'The Generall Historie of Virginia - New England - and The Summer Isles.' Archetypal American.
James Weldon Johnson
Verse
John Smith
J.D Salinger
8. Prose - Poetry - Drama
Loss of Traditional Values
Edgar Allen Poe
The 3 primary literary genres
Meter
9. End : occurs when words at the ends of lines of poetry rhyme. Internal: occurs when words within a sentences share the same sound - such as 'Each narrow cell in which we dwell.'
Determinism
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
Emile Zola
Robert Lowell
10. An artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th Century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature - emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination - departure from the attitudes and forms of
William S. Burroughs
Romanticism
Booker T. Washington
e.e cummings
11. 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
Iambic Pentameter
Henry David Thoreau
Free Verse
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
12. Unrhymed poetry Captures natural rhythm of speech.
Jean Toomer
Broadside
Calvinism
Blank Verse
13. A stanza.
Scientism
Loss of Traditional Values
Iambic Pentameter
Verse
14. Story in which the characters - setting and action represent abstract concepts apart from their literal meaning.
Thomas Jefferson
Allegory
Thomas Morton
Maya Angelou
15. 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
Richard Wright
Stephen Crane
Free Verse
Rhythm
16. (Colonial Period) Best-known Southern colonial writer. Famous for 'The History of the Dividing Line' and 'The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover'
Sarah Orne Jewett
William Byrd
Scientism
Ralph Ellison
17. 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
William S. Burroughs
Willa Cather
Herman Melville
Anne Sexton
18. 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.
Edward Teller
Atavism
Kate Chopin
Willa Cather
19. 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
William Faulkner
Naturalism
Romanticism
Stephen Crane
20. Won the Nobel Prize - Novels concentrate on the turmoil of modern Jewish life.
Genteel Tradition
Saul Bellow
Washington Irving
Broadside
21. Wrote 'Grapes of Wrath -' 'Of Mice and Men -' and 'East of Eden -' and 'Winter of Our Discontent.' Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature - Pulitzer and and the National Book Award.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
John Steinbeck
Beat Writers
Polemic
22. Father of American Literature - First American writer to achieve an international reputation. Rip Van Winkle (antihero). Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The Devil and Tom Walker. Was 50 years old before his real name appeared on any of his books. Used alias
Frederick Douglass
Richard Wright
Stanza
Washington Irving
23. Wrote 'Daddy' and 'The Bell Jar' - Confessional Poet
Sylvia Plath
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Beat Writers
James Thurbur
24. Confessional Poet - Wrote 'Lord Weary's Castle' and 'In Life Studies'
Jean Toomer
Mayflower Compact
Robert Lowell
John Adams
25. A pattern of stressed unstressed syllables that create a beat - as in music.
Lyres
Henry James
Rhythm
Broadside
26. Key intellectual and philosophical voice of 19th-century America. Key player in the transcendentalist movement. First to define what made American poetry American - it is verse that celebrates ordinary experience rather than the epic themes of the pa
Dorthy Parker
Imagist Poetry
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Kate Chopin
27. A story told in song form. Ballads often tell stories of adventure and love.
Willa Cather
Ballad
John Winthrop
Blank Verse
28. 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.
Mayflower Compact
Edgar Lee Masters
Beat Writers
Prose
29. A piece of literature intended to be performed in front of an audience.
Kate Chopin
Drama
Blank Verse
Cotton Mather
30. A regular pattern of words that end with the same sound.
Beat Writers
The Declaration of Independence
Rhyme Scheme
Prose
31. 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
Frederick Douglass
Norman Mailer
Edith Wharton
Narrative Poem
32. A literary mask a writer assumes for the purpose of creating a character in a poem.
Persona
Three main colonial era poets
William Byrd
James Baldwin
33. 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.
Allegory
e.e cummings
Broadside
Drama
34. The process of reading a poem to figure out it's meter.
Gwendolyn Brooks
William Faulkner
William Bradford
Scan
35. Friedrich Nitezche's belief in the 'will to power' as the primary force of society and the individual.
Prose
Nietzscheism
Phillip Roth
Norman Mailer
36. All events follow natural laws.
Free Verse
Determinism
William Byrd
Ralph Waldo Emerson
37. 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.
Lyres
Realism
Saul Bellow
Ralph Ellison
38. Clever - memorable sayings.
T.S Eliot
Kate Chopin
Vachel Lindsay
Aphorisms
39. New England local color writer - is known primarily for her two collections of stories. 'A Humble Romance' and 'A New England Nun'
Edgar Allen Poe
Allen Ginsberg
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Free Verse
40. Chicago School - Work bridges folk poetry and modernist poems. Used music and strong rhythm - Wrote 'The Congo'
Vachel Lindsay
Thomas Paine
Ezra Pound
Erica Jong
41. Confessional Poet - Won a Pulitzer for 'Live or Die'
W.E.B Du Bois
Anne Sexton
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Ralph Ellison
42. Stylistic Elements Parallel Structure: repeated used of phrases - clauses - or sentences that are similar in structure. Rhythm - Forceful and Direct Language
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
The Declaration of Independence
Erica Jong
James Weldon Johnson
43. Naturalist - Wrote 'McTeague - a Story of San Francisco'
Frank Norris
Ezra Pound
Rhyme
Stephen Crane
44. 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
Ralph Ellison
Stephen Crane
Washington Irving
45. First Black female poet to win a Pulitzer. Best known for her poems 'The Bean Eaters' and 'We Real Cool.'
Maya Angelou
Meter
Emily Dickinson
Gwendolyn Brooks
46. People who sang lyrics as they played string-like instruments.
Ernest Hemmingway
Lyres
Jack London
Genteel Tradition
47. A long narrative that represents characters in a high position who take part in a series of adventures of significance.
Epic Story
Jean Toomer
William Byrd
Calvinism
48. 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
Imagist Poetry
Genteel Tradition
Edgar Lee Masters
Jack London
49. Brief - musical poems that convey a speaker's feelings.
Richard Wright
Naturalism
Lyric Poem
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
50. 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
Edgar Lee Masters
Beat Writers
Refrain
James Fenimore Cooper