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CLEP Common Literary Forms And Genres

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. A celebration of the simple - rustic life of shepherds and shepherdesses - usually written by a sophisticated - urban writer.






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






3. 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.






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






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






6. A lighthearted play characterized by humor and a happy ending.






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






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






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






11. 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.






12. 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






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






14. A narrative work that reports true events.






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






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






17. 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.






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






19. 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.






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 speech - often in verse - by a lone character. The most famous example being the 'To be or not to be' speech in Shakespeare's Hamlet.






22. 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.






23. Any composition not written in verse.






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






25. A succinct - witty statement - often in verse. For example - William Wordsworth's observation 'The child is the father of the man.'






26. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






27. 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.






28. A story meant to be performed in a theater before an audience. Most are written in dialogue form and are divided into several acts. Many include stage directions and instructions for sets and costumes.






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






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






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






32. An invented narrative - as opposed to one that reports true events.






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






34. 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






35. 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.






36. 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.






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






38. A concise expression of insight or wisdom: 'The vanity of others offends our taste only when it offends our vanity' (Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil).






39. The nonfictional story of a person's life - told by that person.






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






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






42. 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.






43. A lengthy narrative that describes the deeds of a heroic figure - often of national or cultural importance - in elevated language. Strictly - the term applies only to verse narratives like Beowulf or Virgil's Aeneid - but it is used to describe prose






44. A serious play that ends unhappily for the protagonist.






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






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






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






48. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






49. 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.






50. A short play based on a biblical story.