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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 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






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






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






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






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






6. 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.






7. 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.






8. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






9. A short play based on a biblical story.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






17. 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






18. 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.






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






20. 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






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






22. 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.






23. 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.






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






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






26. 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






27. 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.






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






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






30. 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






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






32. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






38. A narrative work that reports true events.






39. The brief narration of a single event or incident.






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






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






42. Any composition not written in verse.






43. 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.






44. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






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






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






48. 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.






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






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