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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. 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
Maya Angelou
Determinism
Vachel Lindsay
James Fenimore Cooper
2. The repeated use of identical sounds.
Stanza
Jack Kerouac
Rhyme
Jonathan Edwards
3. (Colonial Period) Stands in direct opposition to the principles - personalities and literary styles of William Bradford and John Winthrop. Did not come to settle the land and establish God's Kingdom - but to trade beaver pelts and live pleasantly. Es
Drama
Thomas Morton
American Adam
The Day of Doom
4. 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.
e.e cummings
Three main colonial era poets
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Scan
5. A social and artistic movement of the 1950's stressing unrestrained literary self expression and nonconformity with the mainstream culture
Rhythm
Beat Movement
Cotton Mather
Meter
6. '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
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
Ernest Hemmingway
William Byrd
Frank Norris
7. 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.
e.e cummings
Sarah Orne Jewett
Gwendolyn Brooks
John Steinbeck
8. (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
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
Drama
James Thurbur
9. Written by Michael Wigglesworth - the most famous poem of 17th Century - proceeds from judgement day to hell and then to paradise. First American Best Seller.
William S. Burroughs
The Day of Doom
Carl Sandburg
The Declaration of Independence
10. Wrote 'Howl -' ' Empty Mirror -' and 'Kaddish and Other Poems' - Poet
Thomas Paine
William S. Burroughs
Allen Ginsberg
Alice Walker
11. American novelist - essayist - social critic - painter and spoken performer. Most of his works are autobiographical. Frequently experimented with drugs. He wrote the 'Naked Lunch' and the 'Cities of Red Night'
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
W.E.B Du Bois
Robert Lowell
William S. Burroughs
12. 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
James Baldwin
Melting Pot
Modernism
13. Most prominent black leader of his day. Wrote 'Up From Slavery'
Flannery O'Connor
Booker T. Washington
Meter
Drama
14. America's most popular humorist in the 30s and 40s. Frequently explored the battle of the sexes. Wrote 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.'
Rhyme Scheme
Vachel Lindsay
James Thurbur
James Baldwin
15. 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.
Ernest Hemmingway
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Refrain
Epic Story
16. Story in which the characters - setting and action represent abstract concepts apart from their literal meaning.
Prose
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
Allegory
Calvinism
17. Produced a number of sketches - poems - and a one-act pay titled 'Cane.'
Prose
Jean Toomer
Phillip Roth
Nathaniel Hawthorne
18. That America's unique identity transcends ethnic - cultural - or religious backgrounds. Idea given by St. Jean de Crevecoeur
Thomas Morton
Melting Pot
Sylvia Plath
Herman Melville
19. Local Colorist Great Niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'
Ezra Pound
Sonnet
Darwinism
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
20. 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.
The 3 primary literary genres
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Richard Wright
Allegory
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.
Romanticism
Gothic
End Rhyme vs Internal Rhyme
e.e cummings
22. Wrote Catcher in the Rye
Sylvia Plath
Monologue
J.D Salinger
Zora Neal Hurston
23. 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
Henry David Thoreau
Beat Writers
Sylvia Plath
Iambic Pentameter
24. Autobiography is considered the one of the greatest ever written. Wrote Poor Richard's Alamanac
Robert Benchley - Will Rogers and the Marx Brothers
Lyres
John Smith
Benjamin Franklin
25. Used to describe literature that was pandered to the polite - refined - and delicate elements of society. Denied the unsavory underbelly of life.
Free Verse
Genteel Tradition
Vachel Lindsay
Stanza
26. New England local color writer - is known primarily for her two collections of stories. 'A Humble Romance' and 'A New England Nun'
Mary Wilkins Freeman
William S. Burroughs
Claude McKay
Scan
27. Chicago School - Wrote 'Lucinda Matlock' - Created 'Spoon River Anthology' - Spoon River poems are characterized by: An unpoetic - colloquial style - frank descriptions of sex - a very critical view of small town life - and a description of he inner
Modernism
Edgar Lee Masters
Thomas Morton
Jonathan Edwards
28. Friedrich Nitezche's belief in the 'will to power' as the primary force of society and the individual.
Nietzscheism
Allen Ginsberg
Willa Cather
Theodore Dreiser
29. The process of reading a poem to figure out it's meter.
Countee Cullen
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Ernest Hemmingway
Scan
30. Written by Cottonn Mather - to justify the execution of 19 women during the Salem Witch Trials.
Prose
Calvinism
John Smith
Wonders of the Invisible World
31. A group of lines in a poem. - Lines of poems are grouped into _______s - just as sentences of prose are grouped into paragraphs.
The Declaration of Independence
Wonders of the Invisible World
Stanza
Loaded Words
32. Won 4 Pulitzers - Top 20th Century Poet - Wrote 'The Road Not Taken -' ' Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening -' and 'Mending Wall'
Robert Frost
Rhyme
The Declaration of Independence
Epic Story
33. Book of feline poems - 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats -' formed the basis of the Broadway hit 'Cats.' Wrote 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Published 'The Waste-Land' which became the most famous poem of the first half of the 20th Centur
Naturalism
William Byrd
Free Verse
T.S Eliot
34. 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.
Alice Walker
Phillip Roth
American Adam
Realism
35. Wrote 'The Souls of Black Folk' - Founder of the NAACP
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dorthy Parker
W.E.B Du Bois
Washington Irving
36. 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
Poetry
Edgar Allen Poe
Stephen Crane
Puritans (Saints - Separatists)
37. Naturalist - Wrote 'McTeague - a Story of San Francisco'
Gothic
Thomas Paine
Frank Norris
Stephen Crane
38. A literary argument that aims to change public opinion rather than entertain.
Thomas Jefferson
Willa Cather
Polemic
Loss of Traditional Values
39. (Colonial Period) Only person to publicly repent his part in the Salem Witch Trials. Published America's first anti-slavery tract.
Social Darwinism
Samuel Sewall
Washington Irving
Rhythm
40. 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
Bret Harte
Verse
Edith Wharton
Edwin Arlington Robinson
41. 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
Genteel Tradition
Norman Mailer
Herman Melville
Romanticism
42. A story in poetic form. Has plot. characters and theme.
Narrative Poem
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rhyme
Loss of Traditional Values
43. (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
Cotton Mather
Countee Cullen
Epic Story
Stephen Crane
44. Coined the term 'Beat Generation' - Wrote 'On the Road' - All of his books are Autobiographical
Realism
Phillip Roth
Poetry
Jack Kerouac
45. Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot
Rhyme Scheme
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
Ballad
T.S Eliot
46. (Colonial Period) Began 'The History of New England' aboard the Arbella in 1630. Lead 2 -000 English emigrant to Massachusetts Bay. Made daily journal-style entries until his death. Intended it to be an account of his long governorship. Style is pla
Edward Teller
Thomas Paine
John Winthrop
Ballad
47. Won the Nobel Prize - Novels concentrate on the turmoil of modern Jewish life.
Transcendentalism
Samuel Sewall
Saul Bellow
Zora Neal Hurston
48. All events follow natural laws.
Persona
Two Most Famous Poets of the 20th Century
Determinism
Claude McKay
49. 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
Phillip Roth
Sylvia Plath
James Thurbur
50. A 14-line poem with a set rhythm and rhyme scheme.
Darwinism
Rhyme Scheme
Sonnet
Jonathan Edwards