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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 fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






3. A narrative work that reports true events.






4. 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.






5. 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.






6. 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.






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






8. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






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






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






12. 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.






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






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 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.






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






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






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






19. 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






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






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






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






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






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






25. 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.






26. 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).






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






28. 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.






29. Any composition not written in verse.






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






31. 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.






32. 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.






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






34. 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.






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






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






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






38. 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






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






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






41. 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.






42. 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.






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






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






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






46. 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






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






48. 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






49. 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.






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