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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 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.






2. 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.






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






4. 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.






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






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






7. 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.






8. 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.






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






10. 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.






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






12. 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.






13. 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.






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






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






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






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






18. 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






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






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






21. 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.






22. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






23. 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.






24. A narrative work that reports true events.






25. 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.






26. 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.






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






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






29. 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.






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






31. 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.






32. A novel set in an earlier historical period that features a plot shaped by the historical circumstances of that period.






33. 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).






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






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






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






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 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






39. Any composition not written in verse.






40. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






41. 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.






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






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






44. 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






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






46. 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






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






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






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






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