All CLEP Humanities Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #9 : Identifying Titles, Authors, Or Schools Of Nineteenth Century Fiction
Who wrote the novel Frankenstein?
Edward Saïd
Mary Shelley
Lord Byron
Oscar Wilde
Jane Austen
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818.
Example Question #10 : Identifying Titles, Authors, Or Schools Of Nineteenth Century Fiction
Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma were written by which author?
Jane Austen
Mary Shelley
Ernest Hemingway
Oscar Wilde
Mary Wollstonecraft
Jane Austen
Jane Austen is the author of these novels.
Example Question #71 : Fiction
Which French novelist was the author of the 1856 novel Madame Bovary?
Gustave Flaubert
Victor Hugo
Stendhal
Jules Verne
Alexandre Dumas
Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary was Gustave Flaubert's debut novel and wildly controversial upon its initial publication. Flaubert's novel tells the tale of a doctor's wife who conducts a number of scandalous affairs. While the plot was simple and straightforward, the book was filled with small patterns and perfectly constructed sentences, fitting Flaubert's quest to find "le mot juste," or the perfect word.
Example Question #72 : Fiction
Which of the following is NOT a work of Gothic fiction?
Dracula
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Castle of Otranto
Great Expectations
Frankenstein
Great Expectations
Gothic fiction was a development of the Romantic movement, and relied on a Gothic castle setting, horror elements, and sweeping plots. All of those features are present in all of the answer choices, except for Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. While Dickens was influenced by Gothic fiction, his work departed from it in focusing on everyday people's lives, and using almost no horror elements.
Example Question #73 : Fiction
Which American novel portrays the main character viewing his own funeral as part of a practical joke?
Catcher in the Rye
The Turn of the Screw
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Sister Carrie
The Age of Innocence
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876, details the life of a young boy growing up on the Mississippi River. At one point, Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn run off and make the town think they are dead, which leads to Tom witnessing his own funeral. Tom Sawyer also appears in Twain's 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Example Question #74 : Fiction
What is the Russian novel concerning a family's struggles between a father and three brothers?
Anna Karenina
Notes From Underground
Taras Bulba
The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov took Fyodor Dostoevsky over two years to write, and he intended the massive work as the first in a series, but he died four months after its publication. The novel concerns the Karamazov family, led by patriarch Fyodor Karamazov and his three sons of young adult age, the hotheaded Dmitri, the rational Ivan, and the faithful Alexei. Philosophical and emotional conflicts drive the plot and themes of the lengthy novel.
Example Question #75 : Fiction
What is the late-nineteenth-century novel of the Civil War by Stephen Crane?
War and Peace
Ethan Frome
Red Badge of Courage
Heart of Darkness
Andersonville
Red Badge of Courage
The 1895 novel, The Red Badge of Courage, was Stephen Crane's second novel, but his first success, making him a literary celebrity at the age of 24. Crane was inspired to write a tale of the Civil War thirty years after the end of the conflict, after reading tales of battles from veterans. Crane thought the journalistic reports did not convey what it was like psychologically to be in war, and so he crafted his story about a soldier by interviewing a host of Civil War veterans about their experiences.
Example Question #76 : Fiction
What is the early-nineteenth-century English novel about a young woman who plays matchmaker to the detriment of her own relationships?
Pride and Prejudice
The Heart of Midlothian
Great Expectations
Emma
Persuasion
Emma
Jane Austen's Emma, published in 1815, deals with a genteel young woman dealing with romantic intrigues in Regency-era England. What sets Emma apart is its focus on its main character's foibles in attempting to play matchmaker with everyone she knows. Using her typical wit and satire, Austen portrays Emma's headstrong attitude getting in the way of her own life.
Example Question #41 : Identifying Titles, Authors, Or Schools Of Fiction
Anna Karenina and War and Peace were written by which writer?
Ivan Turgenev
Leo Tolstoy
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Mikhail Katkov
Nikolai Gogol
Leo Tolstoy
Both Anna Karenina and War and Peace were written by Leo Tolstoy in the mid-nineteenth century.
Example Question #81 : Fiction
The author who is most well known for writing the Sherlock Holmes series of detective stories is __________.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Charles Dickens
Thomas Hardy
James Joyce
George Eliot
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes was an instant hit as soon as the detective was introduced in the late nineteenth century in serialized stories. The detective's creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, actually thought the Holmes stories would be easily forgotten and that his legacy would be built on more serious pieces of literature. Holmes was so well loved for his deductive reasoning, use of modern technology, and investigative work caused Conan Doyle to bring him back to life after killing him in a story.
All of the other answer options were influential British novelists of the 19th century, except for James Joyce, who wrote exclusively in the early 20th century.