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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 short play based on a biblical story.






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






3. 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.






4. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






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






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






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






9. 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.






10. 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.






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






12. 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.






13. 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






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






15. 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






16. A narrative work that reports true events.






17. 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.






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






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






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






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






22. 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.






23. 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






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






31. 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.






32. 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.






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






34. 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.






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






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






37. 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.






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. 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.






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






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






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






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






45. 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






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






47. Any composition not written in verse.






48. 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.






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






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