CLEP Humanities : Identifying Titles, Authors, or Schools of Seventeenth- or Eighteenth-Century Fiction
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for CLEP Humanities
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Example Questions
Example Question #1 : Identifying Titles, Authors, Or Schools Of Seventeenth Or Eighteenth Century Fiction
Who was the author of the early novel Don Quixote, published in two volumes between 1605 and 1615?
Giambattista Marino
Jean Racine
William Shakespeare
Francisco Rodrigues Lobo
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The two-part literary work The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha was a landmark of world literature, as it was written in a prose style in epic length. This makes it one of the earliest novels, and made its author, the Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, world famous. Its influence would stretch centuries, as it was still a model for novels during the nineteenth century.
Example Question #2 : Identifying Titles, Authors, Or Schools Of Seventeenth Or Eighteenth Century Fiction
The 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling was written by which of the following authors?
Charles Dickens
George Eliot
Henry Fielding
William Makepeace Thackeray
Jane Austen
Henry Fielding
The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling was one of the very first English novels, with its author, Henry Fielding, being more well known at the time of its publication as a playwright than as a novelist. Fielding's picaresque novel unfolded over eighteen books, detailing the eponymous protagonist's romantic and social life in a comic vein. Fielding's work provided a great deal of inspiration for the large wave of novelists that emerged in England in the nineteenth century, including Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and William Makepeace Thackeray.
Example Question #2 : Identifying Titles, Authors, Or Schools Of Seventeenth Or Eighteenth Century Fiction
Who is the German author who wrote the epistolary work The Sorrows of Young Werther?
Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Maximilian Klinger
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Gottfried Herder
Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther is a novel that takes the form of a series of letters from a young man named Werther to his friend about the peasants in the fictional town of Wahlheim. The book was an important part of the Sturm und Drang movement in Germany that valued emotionalism and subjectivity in writing. Its publication made an instant literary star out of its author, the twenty-five-year-old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, launching his incredible career.
Example Question #3 : Identifying Titles, Authors, Or Schools Of Seventeenth Or Eighteenth Century Fiction
Which eighteenth-century English author wrote the novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman?
Jonathan Swift
Samuel Johnson
Alexander Pope
Henry Fielding
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was published in nine volumes over eight years, from 1759 to 1767. The book is a humorous take on the sprawling novel of the eighteenth century, wherein the author, Laurence Sterne, has the protagonist and narrator ostensibly tell his life story, but takes so many digressions that very little of his story is actually told. The book was immediately popular among the reading public, and its winding narrative has been seen as a major foreshadowing of modernist narrative, prevalent in the twentieth century.
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