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 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






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






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






4. 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.






5. 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.






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






7. 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






8. 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






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






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






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






12. 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.






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






14. 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






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






16. 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.






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






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






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






20. A short play based on a biblical story.






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






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






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






24. A novel that tells a nonfictional - autobiographical story but uses novelistic techniques - such as fictionalized dialogue or anecdotes - to add color - immediacy - or thematic unity.






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






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






27. 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.






28. 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.






29. A narrative work that reports true events.






30. 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






31. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






39. 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.






40. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






41. 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.






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






43. 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.






44. 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.






45. 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.






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






47. 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.






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






49. 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.






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