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






2. 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).






3. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






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






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






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






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






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






10. A short play based on a biblical story.






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






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






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






14. 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






15. 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.






16. 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.






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






18. 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.






19. 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






20. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






22. 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.






23. 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.






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






25. 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






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






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






28. 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.






29. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






35. Any composition not written in verse.






36. 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.






37. 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.






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






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






40. 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.






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






42. A narrative work that reports true events.






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






44. 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






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






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






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






48. 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.






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