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






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






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






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






6. 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.






7. 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.






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






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






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






11. 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.






12. A narrative work that reports true events.






13. 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.






14. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






15. 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.






16. 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.






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






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






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






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






21. 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.






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






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






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






25. 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.






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






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






28. 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






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






30. 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.






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






32. 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.






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






34. Any composition not written in verse.






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






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






37. 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.






38. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






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






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






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






43. 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.






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






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






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






47. 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






48. 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.






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






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