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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. 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.






3. 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.






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






5. A short play based on a biblical story.






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






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






8. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






14. 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).






15. 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






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






17. 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.






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






19. 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.






20. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






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






23. 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.






24. 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.






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






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






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 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.






29. 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.






30. A narrative work that reports true events.






31. 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






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






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






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 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






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






37. 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.






38. 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






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






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






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






42. 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.






43. Any composition not written in verse.






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






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






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






47. 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






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






49. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






50. 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.