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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. The brief narration of a single event or incident.






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






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






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






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






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






7. 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






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






9. A short narrative that illustrates a moral by means of allegory.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






17. A novel - such as Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea - that the author uses as a platform for discussing ideas. Character and plot are of secondary importance.






18. A work that imitates the style of a previous author - work - or literary genre. Alternatively - the term may refer to a work that contains a hodgepodge of elements or fragments from different sources or influences. It differs from parody in that its






19. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






20. 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.






21. A short play based on a biblical story.






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 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






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






25. 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.






26. 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.






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






28. 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.






29. A narrative work that reports true events.






30. 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.






31. 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.






32. A form of high-energy comedy that plays on confusions and deceptions between characters and features a convoluted and fast-paced plot.






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






34. 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






35. 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.






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






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






38. 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.






39. 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.






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






41. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






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






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






45. 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.






46. Any composition not written in verse.






47. 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.






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






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






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