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






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






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






4. 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.






5. 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.






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






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






9. A narrative work that reports true events.






10. 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).






11. 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.






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






13. 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.






14. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






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






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






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






19. 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.






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 poem that contains words that a fictional or historical character speaks to a particular audience. Alfred - Lord Tennyson's 'Ulysses' is a famous example.






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






23. 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.






24. 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






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






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






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






28. 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






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






30. 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.






31. A short play based on a biblical story.






32. 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.






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






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. 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.






36. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






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






39. 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






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






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






42. 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






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






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






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






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






47. 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.






48. 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.






49. Any composition not written in verse.






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