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






2. 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.






3. 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.






4. 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.






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






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






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






8. A short play based on a biblical story.






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






10. 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.






11. Any composition not written in verse.






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






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. The brief narration of a single event or incident.






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






16. 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.






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






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






19. 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






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






21. 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.






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






23. 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.






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






25. A narrative work that reports true events.






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






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






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






29. 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).






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






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






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






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






34. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






35. 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






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






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






38. 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






39. 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.






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






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






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






43. 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.






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






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






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






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






48. 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.






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






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