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






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






3. 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






4. 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.






5. 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






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






7. A narrative work that reports true events.






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






9. 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






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






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






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






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






14. 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.






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






16. A novel that focuses on the social customs of a certain class of people - often with a sharp eye for irony. Jane Austen's novels are prime examples of this genre.






17. 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.






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






19. 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






20. 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.






21. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






23. 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.






24. 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.






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






26. 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






27. 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.






28. 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.






29. 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.






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






31. 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.






32. 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.






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






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






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






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






37. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






44. Any composition not written in verse.






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






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






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






48. 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).






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