Test your basic knowledge |

CLEP Common Literary Forms And Genres

Subjects : clep, literature
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

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






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






3. 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.






4. Any composition not written in verse.






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






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






7. 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.






8. 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






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






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






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






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






13. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






19. 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.






20. 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.






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






22. 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.






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






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






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






26. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






27. 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.






28. 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.






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






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






31. 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






32. 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






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






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






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






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






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






39. 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.






40. A narrative work that reports true events.






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






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






43. 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.






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






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






46. 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.






47. A short play based on a biblical story.






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






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 fictional prose narrative of significant length.