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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 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.






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






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






5. A short play based on a biblical story.






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






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






8. 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.






9. 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.






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






11. 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






12. 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.






13. 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.






14. 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.






15. 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.






16. 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.






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






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






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






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






21. A narrative work that reports true events.






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






23. 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.






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






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






26. A fictional prose narrative of significant length.






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






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






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






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






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






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. 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.






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






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






36. 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.






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






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






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






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






41. Any composition not written in verse.






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






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






44. 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






45. Fiction that is set in an alternative reality






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






48. 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.






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






50. 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.