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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 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.






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






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






4. 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.






5. 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).






6. 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.






7. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






14. 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.






15. 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






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






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






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






19. 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






20. 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.






21. A narrative work that reports true events.






22. 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






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






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






25. 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.






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






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






28. 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.






29. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






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






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






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






34. 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.






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






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






37. 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.






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






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






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






41. 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.






42. 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






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






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






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






46. 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.






47. 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






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






49. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






50. 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.