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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 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.






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






3. Any composition not written in verse.






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






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






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






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






8. 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.






9. 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






10. 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.






11. 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.






12. 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.






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






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






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






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






17. 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.






18. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






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






21. 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.






22. 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.






23. 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.






24. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






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






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






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






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






30. A short play based on a biblical story.






31. 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






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






33. 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.






34. 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.






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






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






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






38. 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.






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






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






41. A narrative work that reports true events.






42. 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.






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






44. 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.






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






46. 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






47. 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






48. 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.






49. 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.






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