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CLEP Common Literary Forms And Genres

Subjects : clep, literature
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
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  • Match each statement with the correct term.
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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. A poem that contains words that a fictional or historical character speaks to a particular audience. Alfred - Lord Tennyson's 'Ulysses' is a famous example.






2. Bertolt Brecht's Marxist approach to theater - which rejects emotional and psychological engagement in favor of critical detachment.






3. Literature intended to instruct or educate. For example - Virgil's Georgics contains farming advice in verse form.






4. A nonrealistic story - in verse or prose - that features idealized characters - improbable adventures - and exotic settings.






5. A ritualized form of Japanese drama that evolved in the 1300s involving masks and slow - stylized movement.






6. A novel written in the form of letters exchanged by characters in the story - such as Samuel Richardson's Clarissa or Alice Walker's The Color Purple. This form was especially popular in the 1700s.






7. A work that exposes to ridicule the shortcomings of individuals - institutions - or society - often to make a political point. Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is one of the most well known examples in English.






8. A short prose or verse narrative - such as those by Aesop - that illustrates a moral - which often is stated explicitly at the end.






9. Any composition not written in verse.






10. A formal poem that laments the death of a friend or public figure - or - occasionally - a meditation on death itself. In Greek and Latin poetry - the term applies to a specific type of meter (alternating hexameters and pentameters) regardless of cont






11. A play such as Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale that mixes elements of tragedy and comedy.






12. An autobiographical poetic genre in which the poet discusses intensely personal subject matter with unusual frankness.






13. A composition that is meant to be performed. The term often is used interchangeably with play.






14. A novel in which the author's aim is to tell a story that illuminates and draws attention to contemporary social problems with the goal of inciting change for the better. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin - which exposed the horrors of Africa






15. A narrative work that reports true events.






16. A romance that describes the adventures of medieval knights and celebrates their strict code of honor - loyalty - and respectful devotion to women.






17. A full-length fictional work that is novelistic in nature but written in verse rather than prose. Examples include Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate.






18. A form of nonfictional discussion or argument that Michel de Montaigne pioneered in the 1500s.






19. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






20. Fiction that concerns the nature of fiction itself - either by reinterpreting a previous fictional work or by drawing attention to its own fictional status.






21. A fiction genre - popularized in the 1940s - with a cynical - disillusioned - loner protagonist.






22. A short pastoral poem in the form of a dialogue between two shepherds. Virgil's Eclogues is the most famous example of this genre.






23. A work of didactic literature that aims to influence the reader on a specific social or political issue.






24. Disturbing or absurd material presented in a humorous manner - usually with the intention to confront uncomfortable truths. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is a notable example.






25. A story about a heroic figure derived from oral tradition and based partly on fact and partly on fiction.






26. An autobiographical work. Rather than focus exclusively on the author's life - it pays significant attention to the author's involvement in historical events and the characterization of individuals other than the author.






27. A serious lyric poem - often of significant length - that usually conforms to an elaborate metrical structure.






28. A play consisting of a single act - without intermission and running usually less than an hour.






29. A story about the origins of a culture's beliefs and practices - or of supernatural phenomena - usually derived from oral tradition and set in an imagined supernatural past.






30. A short poetic composition that describes the thoughts of a single speaker.






31. A genre of fiction that presents an imagined future society that purports to be perfect and utopian but that the author presents to the reader as horrifyingly inhuman.






32. Works that express a preference for the natural over the artificial in human culture - and a belief that the life of primitive cultures is preferable to modern lifestyles.






33. A particularly compressed and truncated short story. They are rarely longer than 1 -000 words.






34. A humorous and often satirical imitation of the style or particular work of another author.






35. A play from the Middle Ages featuring saints or miraculous appearances by the Virgin Mary.






36. A work of prose fiction that is much shorter than a novel (rarely more than forty pages) and focused more tightly on a single event.






37. A narrative in which literal meaning corresponds clearly and directly to symbolic meaning. For example - the literal story in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress






38. A play that confronts a contemporary social problem with the intent of changing public opinion on the matter.






39. A short play based on a biblical story.






40. A novel set in an earlier historical period that features a plot shaped by the historical circumstances of that period.






41. A work of fiction of middle length - often divided into a few short chapters - such as Henry James's Daisy Miller.






42. A humorous imitation of a serious work of literature. The humor often arises from the incongruity between the imitation and the work being imitated. For example - Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock uses the high diction of epic poetry to talk abou






43. A German term - meaning 'formation novel -' for a novel about a child or adolescent's development into maturity - with special focus on the protagonist's quest for identity. James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a notable example.






44. Originally - a realistic novel detailing a scoundrel's exploits. The term grew to refer more generally to any novel with a loosely structured - episodic plot that revolves around the adventures of a central character.






45. A play written in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries that presents an allegory of the Christian struggle for salvation.






46. A short poetic expression of grief. It differs from an elegy in that it often is embedded within a larger work - is less highly structured - and is meant to be sung.






47. The nonfictional story of a person's life. James Boswell's Life of Johnson is one of the most celebrated examples.






48. Traditionally - a folk song telling a story or legend in simple language - often with a refrain.






49. A poetic work that features the strong rhythms of free versebut is presented on the page in the form of prose - without line breaks.






50. A novel that tells a nonfictional - autobiographical story but uses novelistic techniques - such as fictionalized dialogue or anecdotes - to add color - immediacy - or thematic unity.