Literary Terms & Genres

37 questions · Answers revealed below each question · Print this set

1.Which word for a long work of fiction comes from Italian for "new"?
- A. the romance
- B. the epic
- C. the novel
- D. the novella
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the novel
Did you know? English "novel" descends from the Italian novella, a piece of news.
2.Which literary genre depicts nightmarish future societies?
- A. dystopian fiction
- B. satire
- C. the campus novel
- D. detective fiction
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dystopian fiction
Did you know? Orwell, Huxley, and Zamyatin pioneered classic dystopias.
3.Which literary term stacks five unstressed-stressed beats per line?
- A. iambic pentameter
- B. hyperbole
- C. a monologue
- D. assonance
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iambic pentameter
Did you know? Shakespeare wrote most of his verse in iambic pentameter.
4.Which form uses animal characters to deliver a moral?
- A. the mock epic
- B. the parable
- C. the allegory
- D. the beast fable
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the beast fable
Did you know? Beast fables like Aesop's pair talking animals with closing morals.
5.Which literary genre ends with the fall of its noble hero?
- A. satire
- B. the campus novel
- C. the cautionary tale
- D. tragedy
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tragedy
Did you know? Aristotle's Poetics made tragedy the model dramatic form.
6.Which literary term compares two things using "like" or "as"?
- A. a metaphor
- B. an oxymoron
- C. a simile
- D. foreshadowing
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a simile
Did you know? "Brave as a lion" is a common simile.
7.Which genre takes its name from a style of medieval architecture?
- A. Renaissance drama
- B. Gothic fiction
- C. Baroque fiction
- D. Romanesque fiction
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Gothic fiction
Did you know? Walpole's castle novel gave Gothic fiction its architectural name.
8.Which literary genre resolves in laughter and usually marriage?
- A. comedy
- B. the epistolary novel
- C. dystopian fiction
- D. the cautionary tale
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comedy
Did you know? Shakespeare's comedies end in weddings and reconciliation.
9.Which literary term states that one thing is another?
- A. hyperbole
- B. an allegory
- C. a metaphor
- D. an unreliable narrator
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a metaphor
Did you know? "Time is a thief" is a classic metaphor.
10.Which literary genre turns on a mystery and its investigation?
- A. the fable
- B. the sea adventure novel
- C. the cautionary tale
- D. detective fiction
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detective fiction
Did you know? Poe's Dupin stories founded detective fiction in the 1840s.
11.Which literary term lets a character think aloud alone?
- A. a soliloquy
- B. alliteration
- C. personification
- D. hyperbole
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a soliloquy
Did you know? Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" is drama's most famous soliloquy.
12.Which literary genre ends with a stated moral lesson?
- A. the campus novel
- B. comedy
- C. tragedy
- D. the fable
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the fable
Did you know? Aesop's fables are the tradition's best-known examples.
13.Which literary genre compresses a scene into seventeen syllables?
- A. haiku
- B. tragedy
- C. the epistolary novel
- D. comedy
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haiku
Did you know? Basho is haiku's most revered master.
14.Which literary genre is told through letters and documents?
- A. the picaresque novel
- B. the cautionary tale
- C. detective fiction
- D. the epistolary novel
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the epistolary novel
Did you know? Dracula and Dangerous Liaisons are famous epistolary novels.
15.Which literary genre mocks folly through irony and ridicule?
- A. comedy
- B. the picaresque novel
- C. satire
- D. the fable
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satire
Did you know? Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a landmark of literary satire.
16.Which verse pattern carries an Italian name meaning "little sound"?
- A. the sestina
- B. the sonnet
- C. the octave
- D. the terza rima
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the sonnet
Did you know? The Italian sonetto named the fourteen-line sonnet.
17.Which literary term whose account the reader cannot fully trust?
- A. an unreliable narrator
- B. alliteration
- C. a metaphor
- D. a simile
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an unreliable narrator
Did you know? Lockwood's blinkered view frames Wuthering Heights.
18.Which literary genre fits fourteen lines into fixed rhyme schemes?
- A. comedy
- B. the sonnet
- C. haiku
- D. tragedy
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the sonnet
Did you know? Petrarch's sonnets shaped the form across Europe.
19.Which Japanese verse form runs five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables?
- A. the haiku
- B. the renga
- C. the tanka
- D. the senryu
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the tanka
Did you know? The tanka's five-line pattern is Japan's oldest poetry form still in use.
20.Which literary genre unfolds on the high seas?
- A. the sonnet
- B. haiku
- C. the bildungsroman
- D. the sea adventure novel
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the sea adventure novel
Did you know? Melville and Conrad are masters of sea fiction.
21.Which literary term joins contradictory terms?
- A. a couplet
- B. an unreliable narrator
- C. assonance
- D. an oxymoron
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an oxymoron
Did you know? "Deafening silence" is a classic oxymoron.
22.Which literary genre is set around academic life?
- A. comedy
- B. the fable
- C. tragedy
- D. the campus novel
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the campus novel
Did you know? Lucky Jim and Stoner are beloved campus novels.
23.Which literary term repeats initial consonant sounds?
- A. an oxymoron
- B. alliteration
- C. a soliloquy
- D. assonance
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alliteration
Did you know? "Peter Piper picked a peck" alliterates on P.
24.Which literary genre follows a roguish hero through episodic adventures?
- A. the picaresque novel
- B. the sea adventure novel
- C. the fable
- D. tragedy
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the picaresque novel
Did you know? Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) founded the picaresque tradition.
25.Which literary term imitates the sound it names?
- A. a monologue
- B. personification
- C. a couplet
- D. onomatopoeia
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onomatopoeia
Did you know? "Buzz" and "hiss" are onomatopoeias.
26.Which literary genre traces a hero's growth from youth to maturity?
- A. satire
- B. the bildungsroman
- C. detective fiction
- D. haiku
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the bildungsroman
Did you know? Great Expectations and Wilhelm Meister are classic Bildungsromane.
27.Which literary term gives human traits to nonhuman things?
- A. assonance
- B. a soliloquy
- C. personification
- D. onomatopoeia
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personification
Did you know? "The wind whispered" personifies the wind.
28.Which literary genre warns through the fate of its characters?
- A. the sea adventure novel
- B. detective fiction
- C. satire
- D. the cautionary tale
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the cautionary tale
Did you know? Cautionary tales like Struwwelpeter scared Victorian children into manners.
29.Which literary term carries a hidden systematic meaning?
- A. an allegory
- B. a simile
- C. iambic pentameter
- D. an unreliable narrator
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an allegory
Did you know? Animal Farm is read as an allegory of the Russian Revolution.
30.Which literary term hints at events before they happen?
- A. a couplet
- B. an unreliable narrator
- C. iambic pentameter
- D. foreshadowing
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foreshadowing
Did you know? The witches' riddles foreshadow Macbeth's fate.
31.Which literary term exaggerates for effect?
- A. a simile
- B. alliteration
- C. hyperbole
- D. onomatopoeia
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hyperbole
Did you know? "I've told you a million times" is hyperbole.
32.Which Cuban author coined "lo real maravilloso", his name for magical realism?
- A. Gabriel García Márquez
- B. Juan Rulfo
- C. Jorge Luis Borges
- D. Alejo Carpentier
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Alejo Carpentier
Did you know? Carpentier advanced lo real maravilloso in prologues of the 1940s.
33.Which literary genre presents a crime in an impossible sealed space?
- A. the sonnet
- B. dystopian fiction
- C. the locked-room mystery
- D. the epistolary novel
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the locked-room mystery
Did you know? Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" founded the locked-room puzzle.
34.Which literary term pairs two rhyming lines?
- A. a couplet
- B. assonance
- C. an allegory
- D. foreshadowing
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a couplet
Did you know? Shakespeare's sonnets end in a rhyming couplet.
35.Which strict verse form repeats two refrains across nineteen lines?
- A. the sestina
- B. the ghazal
- C. the villanelle
- D. the pantoum
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the villanelle
Did you know? The villanelle's two refrains loop through its nineteen lines.
36.Which literary term repeats vowel sounds within lines?
- A. personification
- B. an oxymoron
- C. a soliloquy
- D. assonance
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assonance
Did you know? Assonance gives verse its chime without rhyme.
37.Which literary term is a long speech to other characters?
- A. an allegory
- B. a metaphor
- C. a monologue
- D. an unreliable narrator
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a monologue
Did you know? Mark Antony's funeral speech is a famous monologue.

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