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. 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






2. 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.






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






4. 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






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






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






7. 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






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






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






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






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






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






13. 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






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






15. 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.






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






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






18. Any composition not written in verse.






19. 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.






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






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






22. A short play based on a biblical story.






23. 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.






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






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






26. 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.






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






28. 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.






29. 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.






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






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






32. 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.






33. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






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






36. 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).






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 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.






39. A narrative work that reports true events.






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






41. 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.






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






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






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






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






46. Disturbing or absurd material presented in a humorous manner - usually with the intention to confront uncomfortable truths. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is a notable example.






47. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






49. 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.






50. 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