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






2. 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.






3. 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






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






5. 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.






6. 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.






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






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






9. 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.






10. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






11. 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.






12. 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.






13. A narrative work that reports true events.






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






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






16. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






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






19. 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.






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






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






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






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






25. 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).






26. 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






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






28. 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






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






30. 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.






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






32. A short play based on a biblical story.






33. 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






34. Any composition not written in verse.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






42. 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






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






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






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






46. 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.






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






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






49. 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.






50. 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.