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






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






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






4. 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






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






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






7. 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.






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






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. Any composition not written in verse.






11. 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.






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






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






14. 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.






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






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






17. 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.






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






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






20. 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.






21. 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






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






23. 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.






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






25. 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






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






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






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






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






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






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






32. 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).






33. 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.






34. 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.






35. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






36. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






43. 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






44. 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.






45. 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.






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






47. 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.






48. 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.






49. 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.






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