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 #123 : Clep: Humanities

Who was the author of the early novel Don Quixote, published in two volumes between 1605 and 1615?

Possible Answers:

Francisco Rodrigues Lobo

William Shakespeare

Jean Racine

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Giambattista Marino

Correct answer:

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Explanation:

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 #42 : Identifying Titles, Authors, Or Schools Of Fiction

The 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling was written by which of the following authors?

Possible Answers:

William Makepeace Thackeray

Jane Austen

George Eliot

Henry Fielding

Charles Dickens

Correct answer:

Henry Fielding

Explanation:

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 #128 : Literature

Who is the German author who wrote the epistolary work The Sorrows of Young Werther?

Possible Answers:

Friedrich Maximilian Klinger

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Gottfried Herder

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Correct answer:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Explanation:

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 #129 : Literature

Which eighteenth-century English author wrote the novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman?

Possible Answers:

Laurence Sterne

Henry Fielding

Alexander Pope

Samuel Johnson

Jonathan Swift

Correct answer:

Laurence Sterne

Explanation:

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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