Test your basic knowledge |

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. 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.






2. 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.






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






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






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






6. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






13. 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






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






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






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






17. 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






18. 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.






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






20. 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.






21. A narrative work that reports true events.






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






23. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






24. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






26. 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.






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






28. Any composition not written in verse.






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






30. 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.






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






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






33. 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.






34. 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.






35. 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.






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






37. 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






38. 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






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






40. 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






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






42. 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






43. 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.






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






45. A short play based on a biblical story.






46. 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.






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






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






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






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