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






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






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






4. 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






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






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






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






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






9. 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.






10. 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.






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






12. 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.






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






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






15. 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.






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






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






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






19. 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.






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






21. A short play based on a biblical story.






22. 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.






23. 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






24. 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.






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






26. Any composition not written in verse.






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






28. A narrative work that reports true events.






29. 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






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






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






32. 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.






33. 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.






34. 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.






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






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






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






38. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






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






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






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






43. 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.






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






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






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






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






48. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






49. 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.






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.







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