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. (Colonial Period) Only person to publicly repent his part in the Salem Witch Trials. Published America's first anti-slavery tract.
Transcendental Club
Scan
Samuel Sewall
Anne Sexton
2. Won 4 Pulitzers - Top 20th Century Poet - Wrote 'The Road Not Taken -' ' Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening -' and 'Mending Wall'
Wonders of the Invisible World
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Gothic
Robert Frost
3. Writings interweave sexual and racial concerns; what it means to be black and homosexual in America in the 2nd half of the 20th Century.
John Steinbeck
Nietzscheism
James Baldwin
Emile Zola
4. 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.
Sonnet
William Bradford
Ballad
Mayflower Compact
5. 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.
Langston Hughes
Herman Melville
Ralph Ellison
Nathaniel Hawthorne
6. Chicago School - Work bridges folk poetry and modernist poems. Used music and strong rhythm - Wrote 'The Congo'
Vachel Lindsay
Theodore Dreiser
W.E.B Du Bois
Beat Movement
7. Won the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize - Works focused on the South - Wrote 'As I Lay Dying -' 'Sanctuary -' and 'The sound and the Fury.' Experimented with Stream of Consciousness writing. Considered the most innovative novelist of his time.
T.S Eliot
Romanticism
William Faulkner
e.e cummings
8. 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
Allegory
Meter
Herman Melville
W.E.B Du Bois
9. 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
Romanticism
Polemic
Robert Lowell
James Baldwin
10. Produces ribald - exuberant - feminist poems - novels and essays. Most famous novel is 'Fear of Flying.'
Cotton Mather
The Declaration of Independence
Erica Jong
Frederick Douglass
11. A 14-line poem with a set rhythm and rhyme scheme.
Modernism
William Byrd
Sonnet
James Baldwin
12. Chicago School : Verses often concern ordinary - everyday people; realistic poems and dramatic emphasis attract a large audience. Wrote 'Chicago -' and a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Poems describe everyday Americans - have a positive tone - use sim
James Fenimore Cooper
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Carl Sandburg
Allen Ginsberg
13. (Colonial Period) One of the most brilliant of American thinkers. Theologian and philosopher; vigorous defender of Calvinistic orthodoxy at the end of the Puritan era. Influenced major nineteenth century writers such as Emerson - Hawthorne - Melville
Meter
Walt Whitman
Loaded Words
Jonathan Edwards
14. Involves a speaker who addresses an unseen audience. Usually takes place at a crucial moment in the speaker's life.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Monologue
Phillip Roth
Puritan Poetry
15. Wrote gold-rush stories like 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' and 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat'; never matched up to his previous fame local colorist
Bret Harte
Benjamin Franklin
Jack Kerouac
Beat Writers
16. A stanza.
Calvinism
Edgar Allen Poe
The Day of Doom
Verse
17. 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'
Toni Morrison
Lyric Poem
Sonnet
Three main colonial era poets
18. Third US President Referred to as the 'Sage of Monticello'Drafted the Declaration of Independence.
William Faulkner
Kate Chopin
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
Thomas Jefferson
19. A group of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
Narrative Poem
Foot
Thomas Paine
William Bradford
20. 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
Washington Irving
Booker T. Washington
Romanticism
William Bradford
21. 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.
Gothic
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Melting Pot
Robert Frost
22. 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
John Winthrop
Thomas Paine
T.S Eliot
Sylvia Plath
23. A group of lines in a poem. - Lines of poems are grouped into _______s - just as sentences of prose are grouped into paragraphs.
American Adam
Frederick Douglass
Stanza
Puritan Poetry
24. Wrote 'Daddy' and 'The Bell Jar' - Confessional Poet
Jack Kerouac
Sylvia Plath
Edgar Allen Poe
Saul Bellow
25. Poetry that does not have a regular beat - rhyme or line length. Walt Whitman
Social Darwinism
Stanza
Free Verse
Thomas Jefferson
26. New England local color writer - is known primarily for her two collections of stories. 'A Humble Romance' and 'A New England Nun'
Thomas Paine
Beat Movement
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Emile Zola
27. Pattern of five feet (groups of syllables) - each having one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable.
Allen Ginsberg
Iambic Pentameter
Gothic
Henry James
28. Wrote 'My Antonia' and 'Death Comes for the Archbishop' Won a Pulitzer for her novel 'One of Ours'
Willa Cather
Henry James
James Baldwin
Jack Kerouac
29. 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.
Atavism
Three main colonial era poets
Phillip Roth
The 3 primary literary genres
30. (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
Puritan Poetry
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Aphorisms
Realism
31. Most prominent black leader of his day. Wrote 'Up From Slavery'
Booker T. Washington
Epic Story
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Three main colonial era poets
32. The beat or rhythm of a poem - created by a pattern of stressed an unstressed syllables.
Meter
Booker T. Washington
Epic Story
Bret Harte
33. A pattern of stressed unstressed syllables that create a beat - as in music.
Drama
Emily Dickinson
William Faulkner
Rhythm
34. People who are best adapted to survive are chosen through the process of natural selection.
Transcendental Club
American Adam
Phillip Roth
Darwinism
35. That America's unique identity transcends ethnic - cultural - or religious backgrounds. Idea given by St. Jean de Crevecoeur
Melting Pot
Flannery O'Connor
Toni Morrison
Anne Sexton
36. Famous Poet and Novelist - 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'
Aphorisms
James Fenimore Cooper
Maya Angelou
Rhyme Scheme
37. 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.
Drama
Claude McKay
Dorthy Parker
William Byrd
38. She holds a unique place in American history as both the wife of one president and the mother of another. In her own right - she was an ardent American patriot. Her perseverance during the American Revolution kept her family together and enabled her
Countee Cullen
The 3 primary literary genres
Abigail Adams
Persona
39. Major theme of 20th Century literature.
Loss of Traditional Values
Jean Toomer
The Declaration of Independence
Genteel Tradition
40. 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
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Naturalism
Imagist Poetry
Determinism
41. 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
James Fenimore Cooper
Free Verse
Transcendentalism
Abigail Adams
42. Produced a number of sketches - poems - and a one-act pay titled 'Cane.'
Carl Sandburg
Robert Lowell
Edward Teller
Jean Toomer
43. 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.
Realism
Genteel Tradition
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Broadside
44. 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
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
Herman Melville
Claude McKay
Robert Lowell
45. Wrote 'The Invisible Man' - Considered a landmark achievement in American literature
Ralph Ellison
Sarah Orne Jewett
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
Rhyme
46. Credited with creating: the modern short story and the detective novel - and the entire genre of mystery. Wrote 'The Philosophy of Composition' - 'The Raven' - 'Tell-Tale Heart -' 'The Cask of Amontillado -' and 'The Gold Bug.' (The first detective
Allen Ginsberg
Edward Teller
Racialism
Edgar Allen Poe
47. Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot
Kate Chopin
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
Broadside
Stephen Crane
48. 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
Genteel Tradition
Edgar Allen Poe
Henry James
49. The belief that 'true' Americans were those of earlier Anglo-Saxon descent - and that this 'race' was under threat from the growing influx of Central European and Asian immigrants.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
James Thurbur
J.D Salinger
Nativism
50. A story in poetic form. Has plot. characters and theme.
Allegory
Narrative Poem
Jack London
Sonnet