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






2. 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






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






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






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






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






7. 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.






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






9. 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






10. A narrative work that reports true events.






11. 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.






12. 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






13. 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.






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






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






16. 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.






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






18. 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






19. 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.






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






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






22. 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.






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






24. Any composition not written in verse.






25. 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.






26. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






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






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






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






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






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






33. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






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






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






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






38. 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.






39. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






46. 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.






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






48. 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.






49. 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.






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